So, there seems to be some interest in continuing our discussion of military history. Last time, we talked about the Battle of Agincourt, a rather notable French defeat. Now, despite what you may think, the French have a pretty notable history of military success, so I figured we could talk about some French successes. Also, I think it would be interesting to talk about a battle with significant historical impact, unlike Agincourt. That said, the battle itself is a fairly normal affair for the era, so, in reality, this post is going to be as much about the 30 Years War, one of the most significant wars in world history, and pike and shot tactics, which dominated European combat for more than two centuries, and was exported all over the world. These are things that, as Americans, we tend to not know much about, and so might be interesting.
The Thirty Years War
The Thirty Years war raged from 1618 to 1648. However, as you might expect, the origins of the war are pretty complex, and date back to the 1400s. First, though, we should talk a little bit about the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire itself dates back to 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor of the West. Charlemagne's grandchildren split his empire up in 843, eventually ending up in eastern and western halves. The western half became France, the eastern, the Holy Roman Empire. In the late 800s, things went very south in Europe, leading to nobles across Europe coming together to elect their kings, rather than accepting kings from a royal household. While most kings, over the course of the 900s and 1000s, managed to restore royal control over their own succession, this never happened in the HRE. Much of the history of the Empire in the Middle Ages is a story of political intrigue, intense negotiation and out and out civil war as various families competed to be elected, and then defend, their hold on the Empire. In 1356, Emperor Charles IV negotiated with the nobles of the Empire to end this chaotic state. He and the nobles agreed to the Golden Bull, where most nobles renounced their right to elect the Emperor, and, in turn, gained a great deal of power to run their affairs as they saw fit. Over the course of the 1400s, the House of Hapsburg established control over the seven remaining electors, and effectively turned the Empire into a hereditary position.
Meanwhile, in Europe, a number of people were becoming discontent with the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons. In the late 1300s, John Wycliffe of England called for the disestablishment of the European-wide church, and, effectively, for kings to take over running the church in their kingdoms. That didn't go over well, and he was executed for heresy in 1384. However, his ideas travelled throughout Europe, and in the first decade of the 1400s, Jan Hus, a major theologian in Prague, took up and expanded on his doctrines. In 1415, Hus was called to discuss his doctrines with the Council of Constance. While his safety was guaranteed by the Council, the executed him for heresy anyway. This execution kicked off a rebellion all throughout Bohemia (Modern day Czech Republic), which led to a series of wars known as the Hussite Wars. The Hussite army proved a tough nut to crack, but long term, the Holy Roman Emperor could devote enough resources to win them. So, in 1436, the Hussites signed a series of compacts with the Catholic Church and the HRE. These compacts created a variant Hussite Rite in the Catholic Church, made this Rite the official Church in Bohemia, and gave the locals some say in their clergy. In return, the Hussites accepted the supremacy of the Pope, and agreed not to preach their beliefs outside of Bohemia.
Wycliffe and Hus were not the only ones who had their issues with the Church. On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther, a professor of theology turned the world upside down with an essay shorter than this one. In all seriousness, the impact of the 95 Theses on the history of the world is beyond any superlative. We're just going to talk about one tiny corner of it today. Luther's theology caught on like wildfire, and his escape from the Diet of Worms in 1521 allowed him to continue building a successful alternative to the Catholic Church in the Holy Roman Empire, Scandinavia and parts of Poland- not to mention Johan Calvin's rival Reformed Church, which exploded across Western Europe. Dealing with Luther's Church in the Holy Roman Empire fell to Charles V, but he didn't get around to dealing with it until 1546, nearly 30 years after the 95 Theses. By that time, people had been born and grew to adults as Lutherans. While Charles' armies could defeat the armies of the Schmalkaldic League, the alliance of Lutheran nobles, he had no chance to root out the Lutheran Church. In 1555, Charles needed the war to end, and he needed his Lutheran nobles to support a war against the Ottomans. To get this support, he and the Lutherans signed the Peace of Augsburg. The Peace of Augsburg allowed each prince of the Empire to decide if his lands would be Lutheran or Catholic. After negotiating Augsburg, Charles V called it quits. He split his Empire into two parts. One part, the Holy Roman Empire, he gave to his brother, Ferdinand. The other part, his Spanish holdings (Did I mention that, in addition to being Holy Roman Emperor, Charles owned Spain, half of Italy, the Netherlands, and most of the Western Hemisphere?) went to his son, Phillip. Which started a whole 'nother mess.
The Peace of Augsburg hardly settled the issue of religion in the the HRE. It ignored Calvinism and Anabaptism, both of which were still illegal in the Empire. It also didn't have any provision for rulers changing religion. When one prince converted to a different confession, their subjects often called for other princes to step in and save them from damnation and forceful conversion, leading to many wars. After Augsburg, the Emperors tended to run a moderate course, trying to preserve peace and stability in the Empire over religious purity. This created factions at court, and, over time, a radical Catholic party that called for the extermination of Protestantism. (Not that there was any lack of Protestant nobles calling for the extermination of the Catholics, but they weren't Hapsburgs.) By the time Emperor Matthias became Emperor in 1612, the situation was coming to a head. His nephew, Ferdinand, led the Catholic faction at court, and opposed Matthias' policy of conciliation. Even worse for peace in the Empire, Matthias had no children, and Ferdinand was next in line to the throne.
Given that Ferdinand looked like the next Emperor. Matthias decided to give him some experience. In 1617, Matthias arranged Ferdinand's election to the Kingdom of Bohemia- which, as you'll recall, is stocked to the gills with well armed Hussites. Hussite leaders were not thrilled with Ferdinand as their king, and started putting together an army. In 1618, Ferdinand asked these leaders to meet with his representatives in Prague to negotiate a settlement. It's not clear what Ferdinand's position was (He seemed to mellow awfully fast when he took over a kingdom full of people happy to kill him), but the Hussites didn't trust him. In fact, they settled the issue by grabbing up Ferdinand's diplomats and tossing them out of a second story window. Traditionally, the Hussites declared war by tossing diplomats out of windows, and the revolt was on.
(Note, that's not even a joke. The Hussites opened the Hussite Wars by tossing Papal legates out of windows.)
The Hussites weren't above looking for friends. The Protestant Union, the alliance of Protestant nobles in the HRE, didn't trust Ferdinand either, for that matter. The Hussites argued that, once Ferdinand put them down, he'd come for the Protestants. Better to fight together than separately. The leaders of the Union agreed, and joined the Hussites in revolt. Also in 1618, Matthias died, leaving Ferdinand as the Emperor. However, Ferdinand didn't have the military to fight this massive war- the Hussites had the biggest army in the Empire, and the Protestants had the best general. Ferdinand had to call for help, and asked his cousin, Phillip IV of Spain, for help.
The entry of the Spanish into the war ignited a dormant war in the Netherlands. In the middle 1500s, many people living in and around Amsterdam converted to Calvinism. When Phillip II of Spain took control of the area in 1556, he began to put the screws to the Calvinists, leading to a revolt. In 1566, the northern part of the Spanish Netherlands declared its independence from Spain, and established the Dutch Republic. This led to 46 years of war that exhausted both Spain and the Dutch, and led to the Truce of 1609. This agreement made for an uneasy peace- the Spanish still claimed the Dutch Republic, but recognized their independent government. However, once the Spanish attacked the Protestants in the Empire, the Dutch broke the truce, and attacked Spanish forces nearby, reigniting the Dutch Revolt.
The Spanish, for all their problems, were the richest, most militarily powerful country in Europe. They owned literal mountains full of silver, tens of thousands of veteran soldiers, and a deep bench of excellent generals. In 1620, the Spanish Army utterly destroyed the Hussite Army at the Battle of White Mountain. (If you've wondered why you've never met a Hussite, but probably have met a Lutheran, that's why.) From 1620-1625, the Spanish army uprooted and destroyed the Hussite Church, and began moving into the southern part of the Empire to take care of the Lutherans. Lutheran nobles asked for any help they could get, and Christian IV, King of Denmark, stepped in to help. Unfortunately, Christian's army wasn't ready for war. Spanish forces smashed the Danish army and invaded Denmark. By 1629, Denmark was out of the war, and the Lutheran nobles of the Empire needed help again.
In 1630, that help came from Sweden.King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, one of the great generals of the are, had just wrapped up his conquest of Poland, and turned his army westward. In 1631, he battered the Spanish army in the Empire at the Battle of Bretienfield, and, hoped to finish the job in 1632 at the Battle of Lutzen. However, while scouting an area for a decisive attack that would carry the day, the Lion of Midnight caught a bullet in the chest, and died on the field. Without their great general, the Swedes retreated back to Poland over the next three years.
By 1634, Spain seemed to have pulled it off. They controlled the Empire, drove the Swedes out, were ready to move troops from Germany to the Netherlands to finish off the Dutch Republic, and had pretty much handled all the Protestant kings outside of the English,and they were having their own trouble. It looked like the Hapsburg holdings- the Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire, and Spain, would be reunited a century after their split.
That was great for the Hapsburgs. However, for the French, facing a united threat along their entire border, it was a nightmare. The Kingdom of France had undergone its own religious tumult in the later 1500s. Throughout the first decades of the 1600s, Cardinal Richelieu, the Prime Minister and, effectively, dictator of France, had struggled to repair French royal authority in France, and repair the damage of the French Wars of Religion. And he did not come this far, and and work this hard, to save France from itself only to see it become a satrapy of the Great Hapsburg Empire. In 1635, with the Swedes (Whom he had bankrolled) effectively out of the war, Richelieu brought France into the war on the side of the Protestants in the HRE.
(Yes, a Cardinal, one of the people responsible for electing the Pope, brought a Catholic kingdom into a religious war against the Catholics. You read that entirely correctly.)
The war didn't go well for the French at the start. The Spanish had a massive reserve of veterans and mercenaries to draw from, a big pile of people willing to lend them money, and excellent generals with years of experience. The French... didn't. In 1636, the Spanish raided deep into northern France, and from 1637-1640, neither side gained much of an advantage. However, in 1640, the French captured the fortress-city of Arras in Flanders, opening the way for an invasion of the Spanish Netherlands from the south. The French began to move against the Spanish line of communication and supply in the Netherlands, the famous Spanish Road. To face this threat, the Spanish moved an army to defend the area. In 1643, the French and Spanish met outside the tiny town of Rocroi in the Ardennes Forest.
Pike and Shot
To fight the battles of this era, the armies used a rather sophisticated system of tactics that combined many different kinds of weapons and troops together to create a army much more effective than the sum of its parts. At the heart of this system lay a pretty simple truth: a single cavalryman can defeat a single infantryman. However, a group of infantrymen can defeat a group of cavalrymen- if they stick together and have some help. The main anti-cavalry weapon was the pike, a spear about 15 to 20 feet long. While this weapon was unwieldy in single combat, a block of pikemen standing shoulder to shoulder and nuts to butts created a hedge of pikes that no horse would bother running into.
Pikes against horse
During the 1400s, the pike (re)emerged as a weapon to use against the knights of the Middle Ages. Pikes, as a weapon, have a number of advantages over, say, longbows. They're cheap as dirt, and they're very easy to use. Unlike longbows, which take years to master, pike drill takes a good afternoon. However, they have some disadvantages- deep pike formations cannot defend their flanks easily, and pikemen have a hard time fighting other pikemen- it's hard to fight someone 15 feet away who also has a really long stick.
To solve this problem, the Spanish added two different kinds of soldiers to their pike formations in the late 1400s: musketeers, and halberdiers. Musketeers went to the flanks of the pike blocks, forming a kind of sleeve on each side. Musketeers could protect the flanks of the block, and shoot into other pike formations to help break them up. The halberdiers could either use their long axes to chop up enemy pikes, or rush under them to attack enemy pikemen. To support these new troops, the Spanish changed the formation their pikemen used. Rather than march in a dense block, the pikemen formed hollow squares. Inside the square stood the halberdmen, and the musketeers could rush behind the pikes for protection, if they needed it. Once the pikes hit a point where they needed help, the halberdiers and musketeers could rush out of the hollowed square, and start fighting. The whole formation became known as the "bastioned square."
The 1500s saw some changes to the basic formula. The introduction of the rapier and smallswords made the halberds to bulky in comparison, and the halberdiers transitioned to sword and buckler men, who rushed out to fight in the no mans land between pike groups. Additionally, rapiers and smallswords and such are much better personal combat weapons, making these troops more flexible. The 1600s saw some experimentation in the formations themselves, creating rectangles of pikes rather than squares, and putting more musketeers along the front line than down the flank, to concentrate firepower forward. Gustavus Adolphus even made small cannon for his pikemen to use. In general, during the 1500s and 1600s, more and more field artillery, as opposed to siege artillery, began to enter the armies.
Cavalry did not disappear from the battlefield, however. Pike formations only worked so long as they held together. If they began to waver, a good cavalry charge could break them up, and that would induce a slaughter. The formations were vulnerable along their flanks, and so, cavalry units would look to get along the flanks or rears of infantry formations. Therefore, cavalry forces went to the flanks for the armies, to protect their own infantry formations and to attack the flanks and rear of the enemy. Cavalry fights on the flanks became important factors in battle in the era. During the 1500s and 1600s, cavalry also began carry pistols, allowing them to fire into enemy formations to try to break them up before engaging them with swords. Cavalry also served as the reserve for the last push in a battle.
By the 1600s, the whole system was pretty sophisitcated and worked out. This clip, from the Spanish move Alatriste, shows it pretty well.
The Battle of Rocroi:
In 1643, a Spanish army under Fransisco de Mela marched on the fortress-town of Rocroi in the Ardennes Forest. de Mela hoped to open a route of attack into north-eastern France, which would open a new flank in French strategic lines. The invasion came at a delicate time, since King Louis XIII of France had died earlier in the year, leaving the child king Louis XIV on the throne. To counter this move, a French army under the Duc d'Enghein marched to relieve Rocroi and throw the Spanish back.
The Spanish tried, but failed, to block the French in a defile along their route of march. The Duc 'Enghein- all of 21 years old- also knew there was a large body of reinforcements coming to the Spanish, forcing him to make haste to Rocroi. On May 18th, Enghein's 17,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 16 cannon deployed to the hill southwest from Rocroi. de Melo pulled his 19,000 infantry, 8,000 horse and 18 cannon from the siegeworks to face the French.
Deployment at Rocroi.
On the morning of May 19th, Enghien ordered the attack. His infantry in the center advanced, as did his horse on the right. He wanted his horse on the left to hold position, but they attacked the Spanish anyway. The attacks on the left and center did not go well for the French, but the French cavalry on the right blew the Spanish left right off the field. Enghien reinforced this attack with his reserve. The French attacked into the flanks of the Spanish forces, but the infantry held. Enghien's horse then rode around the rear of the Spanish army, sweeping the rest of the Spanish cavalry off the field.
This just left the Spanish infantry on the field. Enghien launched several charges, but they held. So, he called up his cannon and began to blow them right of the field with cannon fire. The withering bombardment drove the German and Walloon contingents of the Spanish army off the field, but the Spanish troops held the field. Enghien attacked again. The Spanish held. He bombarded them again. The Spanish held. He attacked again. The Spanish held.
At this point, Enghien called for a parley. He could probably drive the Spanish down, but he didn't have the time to wait for that to happen, and he wanted to preserve his troops. He offered de Melo a deal: the Spanish troops could march off the field in full honors, playing Spanish music, keeping their standards and their weapons, or he could take the time to kill them all. de Melo, hardly a fool, took the deal. He lost the day, but kept his, and his men's honor intact. On the field, they left behind 7,000 Spanish dead and 4,000 French dead.
The Significance of the Battle:
Unlike last week, where the Battle of Agincourt did not really matter in the long haul. Rocroi had an immediate impact on the 30 Years War, and a significant impact on our world. After the battle, Enghien marched to the cut the Spanish Road, Spain's route of supply into the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. Suddenly, the Spanish could not support their armies fighting in Northern Europe. The Dutch followed up Rocroi with an all-out offensive, driving the Spanish from the Republic. In 1644, Sweden invaded the eastern part of the Holy Roman Empire, forcing the Spanish to retreat. Meanwhile, in 1645, the nobles of France rebelled in the Fronde, while the Spanish nobles rebelled as well. Everyone began looking to get out of the war, and the diplomats met in the area of the Empire known as Westphalia, away from the fighting, to settle the war.
The Treaty of Westphalia created what's known today as the Westphalian System, the very basis for international relations today. Westphalia recognized the idea that states were sovereign in their own territory. Whatever happened in that territory was the business of that government. Governments were also responsible for the acts of their subjects, if they committed acts of war against other countries. Westphalia also recognized that religion was a matter for each state to decide, and that kings could not invade other countries to protect their co-religionists, marking the end of the Wars of Religion in Europe. Of course, many of these things are more observed in the breech than anything else, the very basic idea of sovereign states comes from Westphalia.
Westphalia also granted the Dutch Republic its full, official independence. What's today Belgium, the Spanish held on to, however. France and Sweden also gained some land. However, Westphalia, and the 30 Years War in general, ended the Holy Roman Empire as a going concern. The Princes of the Holy Roman Empire became, for all intents and purposes, independent. They held some duty to the Emperor, but there was no way to punish them for failing to fulfill it. The Hapsburgs left the central part of the Empire, returning to their (extensive) holdings in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Italy, eventually creating the Austrian Empire, a major player from 1648 until 1918.
Rocroi marked a changing of the guard in Continental Europe. The French, recovering from a tough 1500s, would emerge from the 30 Years War as the premiere military power. The victory gave Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's successor as Prime Minister of France, the prestige to rally a large number of loyal nobles to fight for the child King Louis XIV, crushing the Fronde. When Louis would take command for himself, he stood at the head of a united, centralized kingdom, with the nobility crushed, a powerful army and navy, and a tax system that made him fantastically wealthy. Meanwhile, in Spain, the war drained what was left of the Spanish treasury. throughout the 1500s, money rushed through Spain like a river through a gorge, leaving the Spanish often bankrupt. The 30 Years War was something of a gamble for the long term health of Spain. Recovering their Dutch and German possessions in a united Empire would create a rich, revitalized Hapsburg Empire. Without it, they were just dead broke. By 1700, France and Austria would fight a war to determine who would be King of Spain, but no one cared what the Spanish thought about it.
Well, looking back, that's a lot. But, I hope some of it's informative.
