Advances in Europe’s Art of War, 1600–1730 125France between 1648 and 1653 made a strong impression on young
Louis. His standing army was initially designed to assure the king’s
superiority over any and every challenge to his authority from within
France, and only secondarily intended for foreign adventure.Improvements in the Control of ArmiesThe successful suppression of the Fronde, as this final round of old-
fashioned civil disorder in France was called, marked a significant
turning-point in the history of European war and statecraft. Or
perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it marked the time at
which transalpine states finally caught up with the level of administra
tive management and control over armed force that had been attained
in Venice and Milan two centuries earlier. The fact is that nearly every
aspect of French and Austrian management of their armed establish
ments in the second half of the seventeenth century had been antici
pated by Venice and Milan. Civilian control of supply, regular pay
ment of the soldiers with money derived from tax revenues, along
with differentiation and tactical coordination of infantry, cavalry, and
artillery all were shared between fifteenth-century Italian city-states
and seventeenth-century transalpine monarchies. Even the work of
Louis XIV’s famous minister, Michel Le Tellier, and his son, the Mar
quis de Louvois, secretary of state for war, in supplying the French
army, regularizing its structure, and standardizing equipment, can be
closely paralleled by the work of a little-known Venetian provedditore,
Belpetro Masselini (in office 1418—55), who did the same for the
troops that defended the Republic of St. Mark.^6
One aspect of the new standing armies of northern Europe, how
ever, was without clear parallel in earlier times, and its importance was
such as to deserve rather special consideration here. For Louvois was
assisted in his efforts to manage the royal army by an itinerant in
spector, Lieutenant Colonel Martinet, whose name passed into the
English language as a symbol of rigorous insistence on details of disci
pline. This, indeed, was what Martinet excelled in. Instructions from
Louvois issued in 1668 required him to do no less.
... you ought to order them [designated infantry officers] to be
on hand every day when the guard changes, and, before it dis-
6. Cf. Louis André, Michel Le Tellier et Louvois, 2d ed. (Paris, 1943); Louis André,
Michel Le Tellier et l’organization de Vannée monarchique (Montpelier, 1906). On Masse
lini and his administrative reforms, see Michael E. Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Mas
ters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London, 1974), pp. 126–27.