Advances in Europe's Art of War, 1600–1750^135
country, informed military men of Europe all agreed that the new drill
had definitely proved superior to Spanish practices.
To the east, the Russians soon took note, and in 1649, a generation
after the new drill books had first appeared in German, a Russian
translation came out.^14 Romanoff armies thus tried to keep step with
developments in western Europe, though they still lagged noticeably
behind. The Turks, however, refused to believe that infidels could
improve on time-tested Moslem methods of training and deployment.
Even after a long series of defeats in the field proved otherwise
(1683–99, 1714–18), a belated attempt to train troops in European
fashion merely provoked a successful mutiny by the janissaries in
- Not until after almost another century of military disaster did
the sultan finally succeed in destroying the janissary corps in 1826 as a
preface to modernizing training and tactics. But by that time the
morale and cohesion of the Ottoman body politic had suffered ir
reparable damage. Consequently, efforts to catch up with European
military methods could not prevent further defeat and the ultimate
dissolution of the empire in 1918.^15
Further east, the new style of training soldiers became important
when European drillmasters began to create miniature armies by re
cruiting local manpower for the protection of French, Dutch, and
English trading stations on the shores of the Indian Ocean. By the
eighteenth century, such forces, however minuscule, exhibited a clear
superiority over the unwieldy armies that local rulers were accus
tomed to bring into the field. As a result, the great European trading
companies became territorial rulers over expanding areas in India
and Indonesia.^16 Only the Pacific shores of Asia remained insulated
from the enhanced efficiency of European troops—until 1839–41.
In earlier times one of the dilemmas that had surrounded European
soldiering was the discrepancy between technical efficiency, which
from the fourteenth century had favored predominantly infantry ar
mies, and the established hierarchy of civil society. An infantry force
recruited from the lower classes might be expected to challenge aris
tocratic dominance. The Swiss had done so, triumphantly, on their
- Richard Hellie, Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy (Chicago, 1971), pp.
187–88.
- On Ottoman failure to respond to European drill see V. J. Parry, “La manière de
combattre,” in V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp, eds., War, Technology and Society in the Middle
East (London, 1975), pp. 218–56.
- For details see James P. Lawford, Britain’s Army in India from Its Origins to the
Conquest of Bengal (London, 1978).
