Fighting for Land - Fighting for Power: War Aim Making in Renaissance Europe

By Harald Kleinschmidt

From: The Way of the Knight and the Aesthetics of Women (2003)

1. Introduction

During the twentieth century, war has mainly been equated it with a violent contest by martial arms involving, as the contending parties, armed forces as parts of unified “societies”. This socialization of war was first conceptualized in the early nineteenth century and found its most powerful expression in the general theory of war which was devised by Carl von Clausewitz and of which fragments were published posthumously in 1832.[1] Several subsequent theories of war have been conceived under the impact of Clausewitz’s thought. Early in the twentieth century, sociologist Georg Simmel argued that warfare is an appropriate instrument for the accomplishment of national cohesion. Like many other German intellectuals of his time, Simmel welcomed the launching of the “Great War” in August 1914 as a valuable contribution to the formation of a genuine “national sentiment” and as a suitable instrument for “nation-building”.[2] Remarkably, Simmel’s arguments were not abandoned with the catastrophic ending of the war, but lingered on and continued to be applied throughout the 1920s and 1930s.[3]

            Another set of theories has been culled from a number of different sources in addition to Clausewitz’s thought. They rest on the conventional assumption, ultimately rooted in medieval ideas about just wars, that the legitimate conduct of domestic as well as of “international” war is considered to be the privilege of the institutions making up states and that it requires a regularized process as well as morally justifiable goals. They argue against the hypothesis that military coercion, regardless of its legitimacy, regularity and moral justifiability, is also an important factor in the making of states and “civilizations”. The legitimists among these theorists have argued that the legitimate conduct of war requires the existence of legitimate institutions of government and that, consequently, military violence by non-government actors represents acts of banditry and not war;[4] they have also concluded that war, when legitimate, can be subjected to general, legally binding  rules of conduct. They have also sought to determine general “correlates of war” as the factors which conduce legitimate governments to opt for war by some purported rationality.[5] Critics have argued that, in the capacity ascribed to them by the legitimists, states become the prime legitimizers of violent action as well as the major provoking agents for the infliction of mass violence, both legitimate and illegitimate in kind, and that the formation of states has commonly taken place, at least in Europe, through warfare.[6]

            These and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century theorists of war do, however, not only define war as a socialized type of violent action, but they also rest their work on a concept of action according to which action is end-rational and, moreover, committed to the competitive attainment of goals capable of changing the physical and socio-political environment. Such changes are taken to emerge from a dynamism which, in turn, is seen as resulting from certain “frictions”, some “tensions”[7] or “contradictions”[8] among conflicting forces in the physical and socio-political environment. Specifically, proponents of this dynamic perception of war have attributed to the conflicting parties the desire to employ war for the implementation of strategies through which some observed tensions and contradictions can be resolved. In short, what is implied in the current theories of war is that just wars and other forms of violent struggles are and ought to be instruments to promote change in resolving existing tensions and contradictions.

            A perceived friction, some recognized tensions and contradictions have consequently been held to determine the motivations leading contending parties to enter into war, be it, that tensions have been regarded as a necessary initial, though not sufficient, step towards war,[9] or that tensions have been believed to shape all conceivable categories of war aims.[10] Conversely speaking, wars which neither result from a friction, some tensions or contradictions nor contribute to their resolution, make no sense within the descriptive and analytical frameworks of these theories.

            In the context of conceptual history, however, the question is whether these characteristics of current nineteenth and twentieth century theories of war can be generally applied to all wars conducted within European history up to the end of the 18th century. Already one initial observation casts doubts on the generalizability of these theories; it emerges from the fact that much of nineteenth and twentieth century military historiography abounds with the criticism that, in Europe prior to the nineteenth century, wars were fought without much recognizable change resulting from them.[11] Such criticism emphasizes a cardinal point, namely that, in accordance with the current theories, there is the principal expectation that war belongs to the category of end-rational action which must usher in change.

            By contrast, it is arguable, and there is an abundance of evidence to support this argument, that war can also result from categories of action which are associated with the goal of preserving a stable physical and socio-political environment. Specifically, this was the case inside Europe during the Middle Ages, when the majority of wars were fought for such goals as the maintenance of a certain status by the contending parties and the prevention of attempted status alterations by an actor or group of actors or the preservation of the “power” of one contending party against the perceived threats of one or more others. Consequently, if the concept of war has to include violent actions which can, but do not have to promote change, it must be defined more broadly. Hence, in this context, war shall be understood as any kind of violent action that is regarded by contemporaries as the legitimate use of martial arms and follows some recognizable regularized process.[12] This definition takes into account various conceptualizations of war, relative to the space of communication within which they appear.

2.       Fighting for control over land

The later Middle Ages witnessed a fundamental increase in military expenditures, both for logistics and for the actual conduct of battle. Logistics became more expensive due to the revolution in military technology which occurred during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and produced more sophisticated weapons. The costs for the conduct of battle increased in consequence of the increase in the numbers of combatants who were mainly used as infantrymen. Already by the fourteenth century, the funds demanded for a year’s campaign would be in excess of what an aristocratic castle-owner could afford, specifically regarding the numbers of combatants and the provision of military technology; by the fifteenth century, the gap had widened further, for the aristocracy, as a rule, was incapable of acquiring or using firearms. In other words, the major innovations in military technology passed by the aristocracy whose members were also frequently unwilling to integrate themselves into the tactical formations required for the efficient use of bows and pikes, with the notable exception of the English aristocracy during the Hundred Years War. In consequence, the aristocracy-led cavalry gradually declined in number relative to the increased size of infantries and in its tactical importance as the paramount fighting force which it had enjoyed during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Hence the new weapons promoted profound tactical changes. By and large, those armies succeeded in battle action which could integrate themselves throughout the battle as lasting tactical formations of specialized contingents.[13]

            The major innovators in weapons technology and military tactics were dissenting neighborhood groups and the councils of towns and cities. In the long run, the aristocracy had little to offer against the capital with which the councils of towns and cities advanced the development and use of heavy firearms and against the forces of social cohesion which characterized the dissenting neighborhood groups of the Confederated Swiss and the Hussite revolutionaries. Moreover, since the early Middle Ages, the aristocracy had preferred dual combat as their specific combat style, because it implied the necessity of fighting the enemy face to face. But whereas the development of the new weapons widened the distance to be kept between the fighters on either side, aristocrats regarded it as a matter of honor to uphold the tradition of dual combat and rejected the long-distance weapons for their own use. In their place, they cultivated the dual combat in the form of the knightly tournament.

            But also the emerging territorial rulers benefited from the changes in tactics and military technology. This was so because some of these rulers were in charge of territories large enough to draft the necessary number of infantrymen into military service, and because they headed nascent bureaucracies which could be entrusted with the tasks of military planning and the provision of the regular flow of tax revenue and of the logistical and organizational infrastructure necessary for the deployment and use of the new weapons. For example, the Teutonic Order as a  ruler over land and people in Prussia was a major non-urban protagonist of the new military organization, but, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, also the dukes of Burgundy as well as the kings of England and France acted as military innovators.[14]

            In consequence, war could no longer be conceived as the peripheral business of status-loving aristocratic horsemen warriors. Instead, long wars became increasingly frequent. What had been a rare occurrence at the time of Charlemagne became a standard feature of warfare during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, namely campaigns that would last many years. Thus war began to impress itself upon the lives of everyone, both, in the direct sense that greater numbers of men were recruited for service, and in the indirect sense that the non-combatant population was charged with the payment of additional taxes together with a serious toll of human suffering which was inflicted upon them in consequence of battle action as well as during sieges. War also became the topic of an increasing number of scholarly writings devoted to military affairs, such as artillery manuals,[15]  military ethnographies,[16] treatises on the law of war,[17] and didactic treatises on the “Art of War”.[18] Likewise, war began to feature as the subject of legislation at the hands of rulers. Although already known since the time of Frederick Barbarossa, statutes and articles of war became the standard legal instruments to preserve order and discipline among the fighting forces.[19] It was against this background that St Thomas Aquinas could elaborate his theory of the just war and argue that wars could only be just if they were fought under the leadership of a legitimate ruler, for morally defendable goals and after an explicit public declaration of war.[20]

            The negative impacts of these changes were manifest and lamented already by contemporaries.  In ca 1387, Honoré Bouvet explained the title of his book on the law of war, L’Arbre de bataille [The Tree of Battle], by saying that he meant the “tree of battles” to signify a growing “tree of mourning”.[21] Supplementing the high medieval peace legislation, proposals for sustained peace surged since the beginning of the fourteenth century and peaked in 1464 with the grand proposal for perpetual peace by the Hussite King of Bohemia, George of Podiebrad.[22]

             In summary, by the fifteenth century, war had become a ubiquitous feature without being yet socialized. For, although war could involve everyone directly or indirectly, it did not militarize everyone’s lives. The best evidence for the still constrained character of warfare is provided in the fifteenth century by the area under control of Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy. It included the urban landscape of centers of production and distribution in the Low Countries, then one of the most prosperous parts of Europe. The financial capacities of these towns and cities allowed Charles the Bold to establish his formidable fighting force,[23] while the cities themselves were hardly affected by the wars which the Duke fought and lost. Instead, the towns and cities in the Low Countries continued to thrive without interruption after Charles’s defeat and violent death in 1477. Notwithstanding the limitations of war at the time, it can, however, not be denied that the amount of human suffering caused by the wars had substantially increased, with its increase being felt and lamented. It was in response to this obvious suffering that, since the fourteenth century, war came to be conceptualized as separate from and as the alternative to peace.

3. Fighting for power: The rise of war-proneness

Since the end of the fifteenth century, both, the European war theater and the intensity of warfare, have been continuously extended. During the sixteenth century, the goal of annihilating the opponent also led to genocide conducted together with and in consequence of the European conquests of America. The purposeful butchery, at the hands of European conquerors, of native American and Siberian warriors as well as non-combatants, specifically women and children,[24] falsifies the contention that violence, purposefully inflicted upon civilians, has been a peculiar feature of twentieth century European style warfare.

            The sixteenth century marked the most dramatic phase of that expansion. It was enhanced by the promotion of autodynamic modes of behavior[25] since the turn of the sixteenth century. That meant that everyone was expected to make self-reliant use of the energies contained in one’s own body for one’s own benefit. In consequence, such actions were awarded through which a person could display his or her willingness and capability to use his or her own energies for the purpose of meeting his or her own needs. Under the ensuing condition that many persons accepted the challenges of the autodynamic mode of behavior, competition for the successful assertion of personal capabilities increased. While this competition was mainly channeled into economic activities, the inclination to engage in risky military operations deepened and entailed the spreading of war-prone attitudes and the readiness for violent actions. Not infrequently, such actions had an unconcealed sadistic touch and were pursued for the plain purpose of inflicting pains and deadly wounds upon non-combatants and already defeated opponents.[26] Such readiness was amply confirmed by the fact that, since the time of Columbus, successful military entrepreneurs, such as Cortés, were demonstrably rewarded for their daringness.[27]   

            The distinctions made here can be visualized through the two following drawings [these two drawings can be found in the print version of this article], one late fifteenth century and one early sixteenth century drawing depicting the same theme.   The dates of both pictures are only a generation apart. In the late fifteenth century illumination, the artist displayed warriors in a densely packed array, namely the tactical formation to which Swiss armies were accustomed to adhere in the course of the battle.[28] By contrast, the artist of the early sixteenth century drawing showed a series of individual fighters engaged in dual combat without much tactical coordination. A comparative view of both drawings confirms that the display of individual bodily strength was the goal of the early sixteenth century artist. In his drawing, the individual fighters act from a position in which they can autodynamically strike or thrust in many different directions. By contrast, in the fifteenth century illumination, the fighters were characterized by their mutual dependence on the strength which they accumulate as constitutive parts of their joint tactical formation. Hence, in the fifteenth century picture, the tactical formation as a whole conveyed the strength, not the individual warrior, whereas, in its sixteenth century counterpart, the relationship was reversed, with the individual warriors, not the tactical formation, forming the center-pieces of the battle action.

            The cases are not singular. Instead, a multitude of drawings and paintings exist from the early sixteenth century, which visualize autodynamic modes of behavior. Many of these pictures on military topics were commissioned by Maximilian I as Roman King, Emperor Elect and Roman Emperor, who employed the best known German artists of his time for the production of encomiastic pieces of art.[29] In all these pictures, Maximilian’s paramount fighting force, the lansquenets, were represented, who were otherwise well-known for their war-proneness.[30] But the expression of war-proneness was not confined to pieces of imperial propaganda. In practice, it led to the popularization of martial arts, specifically fencing and wrestling whose practitioners rose in social status and moral appreciation and became a ubiquitous feature in sixteenth century towns and cities.[31]

            However, the lansquenet preference for dual combat differed from the uncoordinated knightly warfare of the high Middle Ages. Contrary to knightly dual combats, the lansquenet melees were part and parcel of the tactical formations into which the lansquenets were integrated. These formations included halbardiers as well as pikemen together with cavalry, a gradually increasing number of gunmen carrying portable firearms and the heavy artillery. All members of the tactical formations were subjected to disciplinary codes, which were sometimes enforced by the captains of the formations, although, on other occasions, lansquenets could also enact such rules autonomously.

            The lansquenets became the dominant fighting force of the sixteenth century and set the standards for military organization at large. Throughout the century, their war-proneness sparked off an arms race targeted at the provision of the largest possible number of warriors filling up the tactical formations. In this competition, success was granted only to those rulers who had at their command the administrative means and the financial resources necessary for the establishment and maintenance of large fighting forces. At the same time, naval warfare expanded through the equipment of war galleys with artillery. Fleets equipped by territorial rulers cruised the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Atlantic Ocean, the North and the Baltic Seas. Major sea battles were fought on the Mediterranean and in the English Channel, such as the battle of Lepanto in 1571, which was fought on the side of allied Christian rulers by a naval force, comprising a tactical formation of 200 galleys as warships and 100 roundships for transportation and logistics, manned by some 50,000 warriors. The Spanish Armada Invincible, dispatched to the English Channel for the conquest of Britain in 1588, was composed of perhaps 136 ships.[32] Like the naval forces at Lepanto, the Armada approached the British Isles in geometrical tactical formations. Moreover, the galleys were maneuvered by oarsmen who were arrayed in groups of eight or nine behind one single oar. They had to coordinate their movements precisely in order to be of effect. Hence, tactical formations as well as the internal organization of late sixteenth century naval combat displayed a concern for well-orderedness and discipline.

            Hence, the frequency and extension of warfare within the European war theater led to a further selection of territorial rulers and their subjection to a hierarchy at the top of which there were only those rulers who were administratively and financially capable of keeping under arms large-scale fighting forces. Among those rulers were the kings of Spain, France, England, Sweden and the Ottoman Turkish Sultan. By contrast, in wars other than imperial wars, the Emperor could only draw on the forces available to him from the Habsburg hereditary lands, whereas the declaration of imperial wars required the passing of a complicated legislative procedure which involved the Imperial Estates. The lesser rulers were often inclined to seek employment as military entrepreneurs in the service of a higher ruler. As entrepreneurs, they provided their own contingents of troops as mercenaries and received payments for their services. In this way, European warfare became a contest for the sovereign power of territorial rulers which eclipsed in the Thirty Years’ War.

4. Conclusion

This article will be published in: The Way of the Knight and the Aesthetics of Women, edited by Rosemarie Deist in Collaboration with Harald Kleinschmidt (Goeppingen: Kuemmerle, 2003).  We thank Professor Kleinschmidt for his permission to republish this article.