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The beginnings of early modern warfare corresponds to the use of gunpowder and development of suitable weapons to utilize the explosive. It lasts, in Europe and the Middle East, from the mid-fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.
Gunpowder weapons had been used in China since the 10th century mostly in the form of rockets. Cannon appeared several centuries later in Europe. For a long time gunpowder weapons were large, unwieldy and difficult to deploy and mainly used for attacking castles and other defences, a task that was equally well suited to undermining or non-explosive weapons.
The development of siege cannon did have an important effect quickly making medieval castles obsolete. For several decades warfare greatly favoured to attacker, but in soon new forms of fortification were developed. Using sloping walls, to deflect cannon shots, these edifices brought the siege back to being one of the central aspects of warfare during this era.
The first early modern war would not really start until gunpowder weapons became portable. The harquebus was one of the first firearms that were relatively light (they still required a stand to balance them) and could be operated by one person. One of these weapons were first recorded as being used in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, which despite that was very much a medieval battle but the weapon had started to develop.
Unlike bows and arrows muskets were expensive and required significant infrastructure to produce. For the first time the wealth and industrial capacity of a nation became one of the central determinants of military success, as the trading nations of Western Europe grew in power compared to the still agricultural ones of the west.
This was also the time of the beginning of exploration and colonial expansion and the lack of any significant intermediary period of early modern warfare proved decisive. Peoples in The Americas and Africa fighting with medieval or even ancient warfare techniques meeting the musket were at a great disadvantage and the ease with which these lands were taken displayed the gap between the two eras and their technology.
This spread of European power was also closely tied to naval developments in this period. The caravel for the first time made unruly seas like the Atlantic open to exploration, trade, and military activities. While in all previous eras navies had been largely confined to operations in coastal waters, and were generally used in a support role to land based forces, this changed with the new vessels and the increasing importance of international waterborne trade. The new caravels were large enough and powerful enough to be armed with cannons with which they could bombard both the shore and other vessels.
Navies, like muskets, were also very expensive. As nations became increasingly dependent of taxes, rather than feudal obligations, to fight wars, European society saw a transformation as the feudal aristocracy declined in power and influence and the middle class of merchants and professionals grew in power. This lead to events such as the English Civil War and the French Revolution as the newly powerful bourgeoisie demanded political power to match their economic contributions.
The rise of gunpowder reduced the importance of cavalry, but it was still preserved among officers for symbolic reasons and for among scouting forces for the advantage of speed. However, the power of the solely cavalry army was at an end. For the first time in millennia the settled people the agricultural regions could defeat the horse people's of the steppe in open combat. The power of the Mongols was broken in Russia and no longer threatened from the east that region began to assert itself as a major force in European affairs. Never again would nomads from the east threaten to overrun Europe on the Middle East.
The one partial exception to this was the Ottoman Empire, founded by Turkish horsemen, but integrated with the organization of the Byzantine Empire and the technological achievements of the Arab Middle East. Arguably the world's greatest power for almost the entirety of the early modern period the Ottoman's were some of the first to embrace gunpowder weapons and integrated them into their already formidable fighting abilities.
Unlike archers, and mounted warriors musketeers needed far less strength or training. Almost any man could be given a musket and with only minutes of instruction be able to be an able solider. Since the weapons themselves were extremely inaccurate marksmanship was also not useful. This ease of finding combat ready individuals led to a rapid swelling of the size of armies as more and more men could be used in combat. For the first time huge masses of the population could enter combat, rather than just the highly skilled professionals. This quickly made the mercenary forces of the Renaissance and Middle Ages obsolete. This also made conflicts such as the Thirty Years War ones of unprecedented devastation. Eventually the levée en masse and conscription would become the defining paradigm of modern warfare.
The drawing of men from across the nation into an organized corps help breed national unity and patriotism., and during this period the modern notion of the nation state was born. These nationalistic sentiments reinforced the popular army as men enlisted due to patriotic fervour and loyalty to the crown, rather than for money or allegiance to a particular lord as before.
Weaponry is often placed at the forefront of technological advancement and the invention of the harquebus soon began an arms race. The useful but still unwieldy weapon was refined and reduced in size through many rapid developments culminating in the smoothbore musket. These small, portable, personal weapons, which could fire projectiles over rapidly increasing distances with greater accuracy, heralded the growth of modern warfare. This is what makes the period of early modern warfare so short lived, there was almost a direct leap from the medieval to the modern. Early modern history may mark a gradual change in peoples ideas of art, society, philosophy and technology but the one place these changes were not slow is warfare.
See also
References
- Keegan, John. The face of battle : a study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. London : Barrie & Jenkins, 1988.
- Paret, Peter. Gordon A. Craig. Felix Gilbert. ed. Makers of modern strategy : from Machiavelli to the nuclear age. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1986.
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