18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I

[selenak]

I don't have any statistics at hand to back it up - statistics are Mildred's territory - but I do think that generally (exceptions always possible, etc.), there was indeed some change, and it could well be for this reason. I mean, atrocities still happened, as you from your Jacobite fandom know only too well, but precisely the fact they now attract attention the way they do in the 18th century would seem to indicate they are no longer the norm, which sadly they really became in the 30 Years War.

There's also the way armies changed - the French army was backwards before the French Revolution because it kept to the "officers only from the nobility" thing for such a long time, and one reason Prussia went from a minor German fiefdom to a European scale power in just three generations was because the soldiers of its army got regular payment and clothing from the state which they really could rely on, which was as important as the endless drills for the Prussian army's successes. And of course, people going to war except for the territory they conquer to benefit them later when the war is over, so it's in their interest not to devastate it completely. And presumably, that's why Peter the Great shocks not just the Swedes but everyone when using scorched earth tactics for his own people and territory in order to cut Charles and the Swedish army off from their supplies, and why Napoleon didn't anticipate the Russians burning Moscow etc.

Re: Peter Hagendorf: Diary of a Mercenary from the 30-Years-War - I

[luzula]

Okay, actually I found some support for this now:

...the early modern period seems to represent something of a peak in the uncontrolled destructiveness of armies, a combination of the burgeoning size of field forces as compared to the Middle Ages with state finance and logistics systems unprepared to cope with the new larger armies. Medieval armies may not have been any nicer, but they were smaller which reduced their impact, while the armies of the 1700s and 1800s were increasingly better organized and supplied and as a result less logistically destructive.

and

Repeated ‘contributions’ and foraging over the course of the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) in the Low Countries and the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) in the Holy Roman Empire both created depopulated ‘no man’s land’ areas which in turn made further military operations logistically challenging as no army can forage a depopulated countryside; devastation on this scale and over this much area seemed to have been mostly out of reach for the smaller armies of the Middle Ages. In the late 1600s, we see a marked shift towards a greater degree of central state supply and control which begins to reduce the uncontrolled destructiveness of armies (even as the intentional capacity for destruction of armies is rising), though foraging is still a major factor in warfare well into the 1800s.

Quotes from military historian Brett Deveraux.

And the destructiveness of Cumberland in the Highlands had nothing to do with needing to get food/plunder, that was intentional as a political tool.

Hmm, I wonder whether the attitude towards rape of women by soldiers changed as well? I suppose I will just have to actually read that book about women and warfare in the early modern period to find out...I'm waiting for it to come in at the library.