(^124) Chapter Four
forms of combat were able to maneuver in the face of an enemy. By
responding to the general’s command they could take advantage of
some unforeseen circumstance to turn a stubbornly contested field
into lopsided victory. European armies, in other words, evolved very
rapidly to the level of the higher animals by developing the equivalent
of a central nervous system, capable of activating technologically dif
ferentiated claws and teeth.
The third notable military-political structure which emerged from
the Thirty Years War was French. After the peace of Cateau-
Cambrésis, ending the Italian wars (1559), France had fallen prey to
prolonged civil disturbances, partly inspired by religious quarrels be
tween Calvinists and Catholics, and partly precipitated by an uncertain
dynastic succession to the throne. The fact that employment in Italy
had come to an end for French fighting men also had something to do
with the repeated outbreaks of domestic disorder, since unemployed
and restless soldiers could be counted on to respond eagerly to any
occasion for the exercise of their profession. Internal broils distracted
the royal government as late as 1627–28, when Louis XIII’s armies
besieged and conquered the Calvinist stronghold of La Rochelle.
Thereafter, French military resources were directed across the fron
tier, against the Hapsburg rulers of Spain and Germany. It was this
French intervention in the Thirty Years War that finally frustrated the
Catholic imperial effort to unite Germany and suppress heresy.
At first, French generals were inferior to the battle-experienced
commanders of Spain and Germany; but by 1643, when the French
defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi, the French too had achieved a level
of skill in the art of war equivalent to the best in Europe. Thereupon
the larger resources that the French king had at his command gave the
Bourbon monarchy the capacity to eclipse any rivals, simply by put
ting larger and better-trained armies into the field. The political his
tory of the second half of the seventeenth century turned on this
elemental fact.
It hinged, also, on the fact that even after the Peace of Westphalia
ended the war in Germany (1648), neither the Hapsburg emperor nor
the French king found it wise or necessary to disband all the troops
that had fought for them during the Thirty Years War. Indeed, since
peace with Spain was not concluded until 1659, the French had to
keep troops under arms until after that date; and in 1661 when the
new king, Louis XIV, took power in person, he decided that glory and
prudence alike required him to keep a standing army in perpetual
readiness for war. The fact that civil disorder had broken out anew in
brent
(Brent)
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