The Business of War in Europe. 1000–1600 109erable part, an example of pay-off resulting from collision between
superior armed force and less well equipped rivals. To the land em
pires of Siberia and the Americas should therefore be added a sea
empire of the Asian coastline, initially dominated by Portuguese and
later by Dutch and English ships. It was thus not merely the financial
organization of marine enterprise but also its “frontier” character that
made it self-supporting. Closer to the center of European society,
armed enterprise by one sovereign was sure to provoke a counter
effort by rivals; and only rarely could a ruler conquer territories from
which important tax income could be garnered.
The success of the Spanish government in fashioning a vast empire
in the Americas and its failure to maintain control over the Nether
lands illustrate these facts very clearly. Spanish military effort in the
New World paid off handsomely. Indeed it was the swelling flow of
New World silver after the 1550s that made Philip think he could
conduct war both in the Mediterranean against the Turks and in the
north against the Dutch. Moreover, Spain’s earlier experience of em
pire building in Europe had not been discouraging. The Spanish sol
diers who conquered Naples and Milan between 1520 and 1525 and
consolidated Hapsburg dominion over Italy in the following years may
have come close to making war pay for itself. Long before the
Spaniards appeared on the scene, the kingdom of Naples and the
duchy of Milan had both developed a tax system capable of sustaining
relatively large armed forces on a permanent basis. By simply substi
tuting Spanish personnel for the Italian condottieri who had previously
drawn pay for defending these states, the costs of empire in Europe
could be met without putting much extra strain on Castilian taxpayers.
This ceased to be true after 1568, when the major theater of war
shifted northward to the Netherlands.
The reason for this economic reversal was largely technological.
The spread of the trace italienne meant that the size of the Spanish
army had to be increased very sharply to conduct a war of sieges. Even
when victorious, the Spaniards had to build or restore fortifications in
captured localities and then garrison them. Each siege, along with each
fortified and garrisoned strongpoint, required gunpowder and shot in
ever expanding quantities. Simultaneously, the infusion of American
silver into the European economy radically raised prices for all com
modities. Small wonder, therefore, that even though he tripled Cas
tile’s taxes between 1556 and 1577, Philip II had to repudiate his
debts on four separate occasions (1557, 1560, 1575, 1596) and never
managed to pay his soldiers on time.