War, Money, and the Nation-State Let us now
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
The Army of Flanders mutinied no less than forty-six times between 1572 and 1607; but so also, if less frequently, did equally formidable forces, like the Swedes in Germany or Cromwell’s New Model Army. It was Richelieu who sourly observed, in his Testament Politique: History knows many more armies ruined by want and disorder than by the efforts of their enemies; and I have witnessed how all the enterprises which were embarked on in my day were lacking for that reason alone.91 This problem of pay and supply affected military performance in all sorts of ways: one historian has demonstrated that Gustavus Adolphus’s stunningly mobile campaigns in Germany, rather than being dictated by military-strategic planning in the Clausewitzian sense, reflected a simple but compelling search for food and fodder for his enormous force.92 Well before Napoleon’s aphorism, commanders knew that an army marched upon its stomach. But these physical restrictions applied at the national level, too, especially in raising funds for war.
chapter: War, Money, and the Nation-State