Population, Economics and the Raising of Armies
David Read
Charles Esdaille. Allen Lane, 2007.
The armies [in the War of the Spanish Succession] raised by the combatants
were very substantial. In 1710 Louis XIV's army amounted to 255,000 men and
that of Queen Anne of Britain to about 58,000; indeed, one estimate places
the figure for the French army as high as 360,000. At first sight these
figures appear quite small, and certainly much smaller than the armies that
were fielded in the Napoleonic period, but then, the population base was
much lower. In 1700 France had about 20 million inhabitants, whereas by
1800 the figure had risen to some 33 million, the equivalent figures for
Britain being 5 million and 16 million. With general prosperity and
especially levels of agricultural prosperity at a lower level, warfare was
also a far greater burden on society. And for France in particular the War
of the Spanish Succession represented a veritable calvary. As Louis was
unable to maintain a presence in either Germany or Italy, the entire weight
of the struggle fell on his unfortunate subjects. Conscription was very
heavy - between 1701 and 1713 455,000 men were called up - and still more
men were periodically pressed to dig fortifications, with the result that
agricultural production experienced a significant fall, thereby forcing up
bread prices. Larger, armies, an obsession with the attack and defence of
fortresses and the even greater prominence of cannon all made the cost of
the fighting enormous. Between 1700 and 1706 government expenditure amounted
to 1,100 million francs, while between 1708 and 1715 it rose to 1,900
million. Then in 1709 there came natural catastrophe. France had already
been ravaged by epidemics of dysentery and other scourges, but tin that year
she was struck by one of the worst winters ever recorded. With the harvest
completely destroyed, the populace succumbed to famine. No one knows how
many died, but so apocalyptic are the descriptions that have come down to us
that the figure certainly ran to many hundreds of thousands, and possibly
several millions.
Elsewhere things were not quite so desperate (though some of the German
states almost certainly put a greater proportion of their men under arms
than they ever had to in the Napoleonic period), and it might, too, be
pointed out that battles were by no means as frequent as they were a hundred
years later. This was an important distinction, but when the rival armies
did meet the results were still spectacular. In the first place, the field
armies of the period were not that much smaller than their Napoleonic
counterparts. At Blenheim, for example, 60,000 French and Bavarian troops
faced 56,000 Allies; at Malplaquet Marlborough had 110,000 troops and
Villars 80,000.; at Oudenarde 80,000 Allies fought 85,000 French; and at
Ramillies the two sides had 50,000 men apiece.
---
Cheers,
David Read
.
Soren Larsen
> Extract from "Napoleon's Wars -An International History 1803-1815" by
> Charles Esdaille. Allen Lane, 2007.
>
>
>
> The armies [in the War of the Spanish Succession] raised by the
> combatants were very substantial. In 1710 Louis XIV's army amounted
> to 255,000 men and that of Queen Anne of Britain to about 58,000;
> indeed, one estimate places the figure for the French army as high as
> 360,000. At first sight these figures appear quite small, and
> certainly much smaller than the armies that were fielded in the
> Napoleonic period, but then, the population base was much lower.
The Swedish army at the outbreak of the Great Northern War: 76.000 men
Total losses during the war from Sweden proper: 200.000 men
Population at the outbreak of the war 2 million
Denmark-Norway was almost as militarised as Sweden during the 18th century,
so it was certainly possible to field large armies before the napoleonic
period.
--
History is not what it used to be.
David Read
"Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
news:4a191113$0$15885$edfa...@dtext01.news.tele.dk...
........................
Indeed. I suppose Charles XII's Sweden was always more militarised than
Queen Ane's Britain, although Louis XIV's France, especially as the war
continued, became increasingly so. The situation for Sweden and
Denmark/Norway is reversed during the Napoleonic conflict. Presumably the
strain of militarisation and disastrous defeats had their effect. There is
also popular resistance to conscription and other enforced military service
to be looked, at, especially in cases of unpopular or unsuccessful wars.
Cheers,
David Read
Soren Larsen
Certainly. I was merely pointing out that fielding and supplying
large armies relative to poppulation size was not impossible prior to
the napoleonic period..
In "An Account of Denmark as It was in the Year 1692"
the english diplomat Robert Molesworth remarked:
"Denmark resembles ....... a Monster that is all head and no
Body, all Soldiers and no Subjects"
In the early 18th century the standing Danish fighting force was
70.000 (army+navy). That is one soldier pr 25 inhabitants.
France at the highest point during the Spanish war of succession
reached 1:66. Austria 1:80. Denmark was however not the only
highly militarised state . Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia
maintained ratios comparable to Denmark..
It came at a price though. The danish military accounted
for half the state expenditure during peace and 80%
during war..
This was however why Denmark could commit it's military
first to the GNW then the spanish war of succession and then
rejoin the great northern war.
The motivation for delivering troops to the Spanish war of succession
(Blenheim and Ramilles) was probably as much to get others to pay
for them, as it were to get a free hand to rejoin the GNW from
the anglo-dutch.
David Read
Extract from "Napoleon's Wars -An International History 1803-1815" by
Charles Esdaille. Allen Lane, 2007.
Yet in the long term the military picture was very bleak [in 1802]. Given
her population of 29 million, it might be thought that all France had to do
to acquire a mass army was to introduce universal military service. Needless
to say, however, matters were not nearly so straightforward, an effective
system of conscription being contingent upon an equally effective process of
political and administrative reform.
France had in fact possessed a system of universal conscription since 1798,
the so-called Loi Jourdan introduced in that year decreeing that all
unmarried men other than sole breadwinners, government officials, priests
and students, and the physically unfit, would become liable for military
service at the age of twenty in accordance with a quota system filled by
ballot. However, although this was to be the basis for conscription to the
French army throughout the Napoleonic period, at the time of its
introduction the Loi Jourdan was little more than a dead letter. From the
time of the first appearance of compulsory service on an ad hoc basis in the
emergency of 1793, this had been hated by the peasantry who constituted the
bulk of the population: service in the army meant loss of home, family and
the security of familiar surroundings, and brought with it privation, danger
and death; soldiers were notoriously brutal and licentious; and finally
conscription deprived peasant communities of much-needed labour, while being
rightly perceived as socially unjust (for, in general, the towns and the
bourgeoisie suffered less than the countryside and the peasantry). Nor did
large sections of the peasantry think the Revolution worth fighting for; in
many parts of the country the financial burdens under which they had
laboured had actually worsened since 1789;
. . .
Across large parts of France peasant unrest in consequence reached massive
proportions, the problem of public order being worsened still further by the
growing incidence of desertion, and, by extension, brigandage. By 1798, so
serious had the problem become that the Directory was quite incapable of
enforcing its authority over local government and with it both taxation and
conscription. With its difficulties augmented by the military disasters of
1799, the Directory turned in desperation to a revival of the Jacobinism of
1793, but in doing so it only deepened the crisis: much alarmed by what they
saw as a further threat to property and order, and financially very badly
hit by the economic depression and the Directory's attempts to stabilize the
financial situation by slashing payments on the national debt and
reorganizing the fiscal system, the notables - men of property, much of it
obtained in the course of the Revolution, who formed the bedrock of French
local government - withdrew their support from Paris. Sabotaged by popular
resistance and propertied non-co-operation alike, the Loi Jourdan had
therefore proved a complete failure, with only 131,000 of the first 400,000
men called up ever reaching their units.
---
Cheers,
David Read
David Read
"Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
> Certainly. I was merely pointing out that fielding and supplying
> large armies relative to poppulation size was not impossible prior to
> the napoleonic period..
----
.... Indeed. And I didn't say it wasn't, and neither did Charles Edaille.
You should have read a little further on, where Esdaille points out some
exceptions among German states in the early 18th C.
----
>
> In "An Account of Denmark as It was in the Year 1692"
> the english diplomat Robert Molesworth remarked:
>
> "Denmark resembles ....... a Monster that is all head and no
> Body, all Soldiers and no Subjects"
----
Thanks. This is very similar to what some English visitors to France were
saying during the Peace of Amiens in 1802/3.
----
>
> In the early 18th century the standing Danish fighting force was
> 70.000 (army+navy). That is one soldier pr 25 inhabitants.
>
> France at the highest point during the Spanish war of succession
> reached 1:66. Austria 1:80. Denmark was however not the only
> highly militarised state . Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia
> maintained ratios comparable to Denmark..
>
> It came at a price though. The danish military accounted
> for half the state expenditure during peace and 80%
> during war..
>
> This was however why Denmark could commit it's military
> first to the GNW then the spanish war of succession and then
> rejoin the great northern war.
>
> The motivation for delivering troops to the Spanish war of succession
> (Blenheim and Ramilles) was probably as much to get others to pay
> for them, as it were to get a free hand to rejoin the GNW from
> the anglo-dutch.
----
Indeed. Thanks for the additional details.
Cheers,
David Read
Soren Larsen
> "Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
> news:4a192020$0$15873$edfa...@dtext01.news.tele.dk...
>
>
>> Certainly. I was merely pointing out that fielding and supplying
>> large armies relative to poppulation size was not impossible prior to
>> the napoleonic period..
>
> ----
>
> .... Indeed. And I didn't say it wasn't, and neither did Charles
> Edaille. You should have read a little further on, where Esdaille
> points out some exceptions among German states in the early 18th C.
Two of those three states were less german than e.g. England.
Cheers
David Read
"Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
What makes you think Esdaille was talking about Sweden or Denmark?
Once again , thank for the Scandinavian stuff.
---
Cheers,
David Read
David Read
Charles Esdaille. Allen Lane, 2007.
"All across the Napoleonic imperium, the years 1808 and 1809 had seen a
massive acceleration in the demands of the state for manpower. Where systems
of conscription already existed, the pressures grew heavier. In France, 1808
saw the mobilization of three separate levies of 80,000 men, including many
from the year groups of 1809 and 1810. In the Kingdom of Italy, the 12,000
men taken each year from 1806 onwards had to be supplemented by an
additional levy of 9,000 men in 1809. In Baden, the 8,000-strong army was at
this moment directed to find an additional 6,000 men in preparation for the
war against Austria. And where no French-style system of conscription
existed, it was now introduced: in Naples, for example, the ballot began in
the summer of 1809. The extent of this 'blood-tax' can be exaggerated; even
in the Kingdom of Italy, where conscription has generally been regarded as
having been very severe, no more than 7 per cent of the available manpower
was ever taken in any given levy, while the expansion of the state's
frontiers meant there was actually a small decline in the proportion of the
male population to be taken. Yet the impact was none the less severe enough,
and in most parts of the empire there was considerable low-level resistance
in the form of desertion and draft evasion. All this produced much
brigandage, periodic riots and occasional outbreaks of wholesale
insurrection. In France, at least, improved policing and ever-increasing
legal penalties managed to greatly reduce the problem. But beneath the
surface the limits of popular acceptance were being placed under ever
greater strain, and all the more so given the fact that in part the warhead
changed its character. If the Austrian campaign had been, like the struggles
of 1805-7, a relatively civilized affair fought out within the so-called
'rules of war', the fighting in Spain and Portugal had, in popular legend at
least, assumed a very different character. Men sent to the Peninsula did not
just die in battle: just as often they were murdered or subjected to the
most appalling tortures. In short, confidence in the empire was undermined
even in France, while in Germany and Italy it was in effect smothered before
it had any chance to take off. There was as yet no revolution, nor anything
remotely resembling one, but from 1809 onwards it is hard to the French
imperium as anything other than a house of cards."
---
Cheers,
David Read
Soren Larsen
> "Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
> news:4a192d1c$0$15891$edfa...@dtext01.news.tele.dk...
>> David Read wrote:
>>> "Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
>>> news:4a192020$0$15873$edfa...@dtext01.news.tele.dk...
>>>
>>>
>>>> Certainly. I was merely pointing out that fielding and supplying
>>>> large armies relative to poppulation size was not impossible prior
>>>> to the napoleonic period..
>>>
>>> ----
>>>
>>> .... Indeed. And I didn't say it wasn't, and neither did Charles
>>> Edaille. You should have read a little further on, where Esdaille
>>> points out some exceptions among German states in the early 18th C.
>>
>> Two of those three states were less german than e.g. England.
>>
>
> What makes you think Esdaille was talking about Sweden or Denmark?
Together with Brandenburg-Prussia they were the most millitarised states
in Europe, so he either missed them or simply mislabelled them.
The other german states functioned as recruiting areas for those states.
(Sweden mostly recruiting at home or in their own german possessions)
Here is a list of danish recruiting offices in Germany from the
late 18th c:
1764-1768 M�hlhausen, Hildburghausen, N�rnberg, N�rdlingen, Frankfurt,
Worms, K�ln, Hildesheim, Bremen, og Oldenburg.
1783-1792 M�hlhausen, Hildburghausen, N�rnberg, N�rdlingen, Frankfurt,
Worms, Regensburg, Ulm, Hamburg, L�beck og Altona.
1795-1808 M�hlhausen, Hamburg, Bremen, L�beck og Altona
>
> Once again , thank for the Scandinavian stuff.
You are welcome
David Read
"Soren Larsen" <Wag...@yahoo.youknowwhere> wrote in message
------
Ah.. those German states. And most of them so tiny. Perhaps it was these as
well as Brandenburg-Prussia that Esdaille meant. I suspect Esdaille simply
ignored Scandinavia.
Never mind Soren, he does give them their due in the main body of this book
in question.
Cheers,
David Read
David Read
Charles Esdaille. Allen Lane, 2007.
With the administration of conscription still intact [early 1813], the men
came in well enough, while France's arsenals and workshops were able to
supply plenty of muskets and cannon, as well as at least a semblance of
uniform. Still loyal at this stage, the Confederation of the Rhine also
produced considerable numbers of fresh troops. By these means, then, within
four months of Napoleon's arrival in Paris, 170,000 men had been assembled
on the River Main in south-central Germany. With his new _grande arm�e_, the
emperor was confirmed in his determination not to bow down before Russia.
The sheer mass of men he commanded, however, blinded him to serious
problems. Far too many of his soldiers were raw recruits who lacked
experience and were not physically strong enough to cope with the rigours of
campaign life. Experienced officers and non-commissioned officers were
lacking, and the cavalry could not be easily re-equipped with decent horses.
And back in France the call-up of 250,000 men on top of the 150,000 men
taken in September 1812 and the 120,000 men taken in December 1811 had
placed a huge strain on the willingness of the population to co-operate. To
push this further would invite disaster. Among the poorer classes, wrote
Marbot, 'there was some grumbling, especially in the south and west, but so
great was the habit of obedience that nearly all the contingent went on duty';.
The real trouble, however, came from groups with more resources:
'After having made men serve who the ballot had exempted, they compelled
those who had quite lawfully obtained substitutes to shoulder their muskets
all the same. Many families had embarrassed and even ruined themselves to
keep their sons art home, for a substitute cost from 12,000 to 20,000 francs
at that time, and this had to be paid down. /There were some young men who
had obtained substitutes three times over, and were none the less compelled
to go; cases even occurred in which they had to serve in the same company
with the man whom they had paid to take their place.'
Commitment, then, was limited. As Fouch� says, 'the reason why France
willingly made the greatest sacrifices to support a man whose only success
had been to tread the ashes of Moscow' was that the populace thought that
their chief, chastened by misfortune, was ready to seize the first
favourable opportunity of bringing back peace.'
---
Cheers,
David Read