128 Chapter Four
university man, trained in mathematics and classics. Confronted by the
problem of fighting the Spaniards in the Low Countries, he looked to
the Roman past for models and sought to distill lessons in the art of
war from the pages of Vegetius, Aelian,^9 and other classical authors.
Prince Maurice did not imitate Roman precedents slavishly; he did,
however, emphasize three things that had not been common in Euro
pean armies before his time. One was the spade. Roman soldiers had
habitually fortified their encampments with makeshift earthen ram
parts. Maurice did the same, and in particular made his soldiers dig
themselves in when besieging enemy-held towns and forts. Digging
had not been much emphasized by European armies before his time.
To take refuge behind a wall or by burrowing in a ditch carried a taint
of cowardice; and armies usually relied on conscripted laborers from
the neighborhood to do most of the digging that was judged needful.
For Prince Maurice s troops, however, the spade was mightier than the
sword—or musket. By systematically digging ditches and erecting
ramparts to defend its outer perimeter, a besieging army could protect
itself against a relieving expedition while continuing to press the siege.
Following this regimen, Maurice’s armies suffered fewer casualties
from defenders’ fire, while burrowing steadily forward, closer and
closer to the defended ditch and wall, until a final assault became
practicable. A siege became a matter of engineering, i.e., of moving
vast quantities of earth. Handling the spade became the besieging
soldiers’ daily occupation. Heavy work of that kind had the incidental
effect of almost banishing idleness and dissipation, the usual pastime
of earlier armies when besieging a strongpoint. Prince Maurice, in
fact, earnestly disapproved of idleness; when his soldiers were not
digging, they were kept busy drilling instead.
The development of systematic drill was the second and by far the
most important innovation Maurice introduced on the basis of Roman
precedents. He compelled his soldiers to practice the motions re
quired to load and fire their matchlocks; pikemen likewise had to
practice the positions in which pikes should be held when marching
and in battle. This kind of instruction was not entirely new. Armies had
always had to train recruits, but earlier drillmasters acted on the not
unreasonable assumption that as soon as everyone knew how to use
his weapon, their task had been accomplished. Maurice differed from
- Aelian was a Greek who wrote a book on tactics in the time of Trajan, when the
Roman Empire and its army were at their peak. It was translated into Latin in 1550, and
so combined the authority of antiquity with an aura of novelty when Prince Maurice
began his military reforms. According to Werner Halbweg, Die Heeresreform der Orianer
unddie Antike (Berlin, 1941), p. 43, Aelian provided the main inspiration for Maurice’s
reforms.
