The Business of War in Europe, 1000–1600 113
had manifested itself clearly and unmistakably from the fourteenth
century onward, thanks to the absence of effective inhibitions against
the private accumulation of relatively large amounts of capital in
Europe.
Why did not command mobilization also prevail in Europe? Cer
tainly Philip II and his ministers would have felt far more comfortable
if it had. They knew how to tax and how to confiscate just as effec
tively as Chinese and Islamic officials did. The fate of Castile, where
restraints on royal taxation were minimal within the Spanish empire,
demonstrated their ability in this direction. But alas for the command
principle! Much of what Philip needed for his armies was not available
within peninsular Spain. His repeated efforts to establish factories
producing cannon and other needed commodities always failed to
flourish. Perversely, from a Spanish official point of view, it was
exactly in places where the king’s will was not sovereign that economic
activity and arms production concentrated. Private enterprise system
atically located large-scale undertakings where taxes were low and
prices could be freely adjusted to what the market would bear. Thus,
for example, the bishopric of Liège, adjacent to the Spanish Nether
lands but not under Spanish rule, became the major seat of armaments
production for the Dutch wars, supplying a large proportion of the
material needed by both the Spanish and the Dutch armies.^44
Liège became an important armament center only after 1492 when
the bishopric disarmed and officially proclaimed itself neutral. Subse
quent military occupations, of which there were several, had the im
mediate effect of disrupting gun manufacture. Hence, if rulers wished
to avail themselves of the products of Liège gunmakers’ skills—which
rapidly became the best and cheapest of Europe and the world—they
had to withdraw their soldiers and let the market again come freely
into play. Only so could the flow of goods and services required to
produce thousands of guns a year resume its course. Only when the
artisans and capitalists of Liège and other arms centers did not have to
part with their goods at prices decreed by Spanish or any other politi
cal authority, could rulers get what they wanted in the quantities to
which they had become accustomed. Their very weakness thus
allowed the Liégeois to set their own prices. Even the mightiest rulers
had to pay what was asked, or do without. Nor was Liège unique.
- Cf. Jean Le jeune, La formation du capitalism moderne dans la principauté de Liège au
XVI siècle (Liège, 1939), p. 181; Claude Gaier, Four Centuries of Liège G unmaking
(London, 1977), pp. 29–31.
