The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (1998) by David Ellis

I picked up David Eltis’ “The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe” out of a clearance bin at Barnes & Noble many years ago. It remained buried and forgotten in a corner of my home library until I stumbled upon it after reading about naval innovation around the same period. It was a fortuitous find and timely rediscovery.

The book is built around Eltis’ early 1990s doctoral dissertation at Oxford. His thesis directly challenges the claims made famous by Professor Michael Roberts in his 1956 lecture at Queen’s University Belfast, which was later further endorsed but modified by Geoffrey Parker in 1988.

Roberts’ main argument was that “On the battlefield [of pre-seventeenth century Europe] firearms long represented a big step backward.” The longbow was far more deadly, he claimed, as it was more accurate, cheaper and easier to produce, far more mobile, and could be fired at a relatively blistering rate. For Roberts, the military revolution came in two phases. First, the introduction of uniform drilling by Maurice of Nassau between 1590 and 1609 dramatically improved the discipline, professionalism, and effectiveness of ground forces. Second, Gustavus Adolphus brought Nassau’s innovations to perfection under the wartime conditions of the Thirty Years War, standardized weapons, dramatically increased the size of armies, and introduced new ranks, uniforms and military academies. Roberts argues that these innovations, taken together, restored the offensive to warfare and made decisive set-piece battle a reality. Parker supported most of Roberts’ arguments, but put a heavier emphasis on the role of innovation in fortifications, particularly the famed trace italienne.

Eltis disputes much of the Roberts and Parker thesis. For him, the revolution came a full century earlier. “The sixteenth century was a period of massive change in all aspects of war,” he writes. Yes, sixteenth century firearms were clumsy, slow to load, and notorious inaccurate, but they represented a devastating increase in firepower at short range and were also a form of psychological warfare. The sloped plate body armor of the sixteenth century worn by most infantrymen was impervious to pikes and longbow arrows, but not firearms. “Battles went out of favour in the course of the sixteenth century not because of the inefficacy of firearms, as Professor Roberts has argued, but precisely because of their efficacy; their deadly effectiveness at close range.” Increasingly, commanders avoided battle rather than risk decisive defeat at close range, particularly if the enemy had any type of defensive position. “Firearms, together with cannon, had greatly increased the power of the defense,” Eltis writes, “both on the battlefield and within a fortified position.” It is that which led to a decrease in pitched battles in the course of the sixteenth century.

Eltis’ thesis is bold and direct: “In the course of the sixteenth-century war was revolutionized. Firearms, hitherto ineffective, underwent improvements and emerged as the dominant force on the battlefield and in siege warfare.” The primary tactical innovation was the combination of the pikeman square with arquebus and musketeers. Early modern warfare somewhat represented a game of rock-paper-scissors. Cavalry (scissors) could not defeat a well-sized and well-disciplined pikeman square (rock). Musketeers (paper), however, were highly vulnerable to cavalry owing to their slow rate of fire and cumbersome nature of early firearms. “Withdraw the advantage of terrain or the protection of a stand of pikes, and musketeers would be swept away by cavalry.” Yet, they were the only force that could defeat pike square, as a volley at close range delivered devastating firepower and negated the limitations of accuracy. Moreover, the sound and smoke and carnage acted as a psychological weapon. As one contemporary noted, firearms “cause more shock and very often more fear than harm.”

Therefore, in Eltis’ estimation, “The tactical combination of pikemen and infantry armed with firearms lay at the heart of the European military revolution.” And it relied heavily on training and discipline. The squares could be enormous, a full 100 men across and 75 deep. The effective management of the unit required an entirely new military rank, the sergeant-major, who was “ultimately responsible for the discipline and order of the army, and in particular of its pike squares.” The much-ballyhooed manuals of the early seventeenth century were just the culmination of the training was well known and practiced, according to Eltis. “The sixteenth-century introduction of training en masse for the infantry across Europe and the practical developments that this involved was the decisive step; the final perfection of these techniques needed to portray them on the printed page was a later refinement.”

The revolution wasn’t just about the infantry, however. Siege warfare “profoundly altered the face of war in Europe” by the mid-sixteenth-century. The cannon had come of age; earthen ramparts were the answer, and the angled bastion made them even more effective against gunpowder artillery. By the late 1500s, it took as many as 15,000 cannonballs to create a breach in a deep and angled earthen rampart. Moreover, the attacking army also had to consider enfilading fire from the flanking bastions of the trace italienne fortification. Eltis notes that eliminating those flanking positions was often more difficult than creating the breach. Even worse, once a breach was created, defenders would form a semi-circle around it from the inside of the fortification and unleash withering and concentrated firepower against it. The only sensible way to defeat a well-fortified position was to starve them out, which would take a minimum of nine months. Indeed, “an assault was a more fearful affair in the sixteenth century than at any time before in the history of siege warfare…the odds were stacked heavily in a competent defender’s favour.”

Finally, Eltis considers why England was so late to introduce the military innovations developed on the continent during the course of the sixteenth century. He notes that England enjoyed a long period of peace for most of the century and thus had no contact with or need for military innovation. Moreover, England’s long, proud, and successful tradition with the longbow, as demonstrated by convincing victories at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), militated against the wide-scale introduction of firearms. England’s slow introduction of firearms and the combined pike/musketeer tactical unit somewhat mirrors that nation’s experience innovating with tanks in the early twentieth century.

In closing, I rather enjoyed “The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe.” Eltis makes a strong case that many of the innovations and practices grouped under the military revolution of Gustavus Adolphus had a long progeny and were far more common that argued by Roberts and Parker. For anyone with a keen interest in military innovation in early modern Europe, this book deserves a spot on your shelf next to those by Parker, Parrot, Black, and others.