GIANT OF THE GRAND SIECLE: French Army 1610-1715

2-46850

Examination of the army in depth: recruitment, composition, discipline, motivation, leadership, logistics, weaponry, tactics, field warfare, and siegecraft, with biblio and index.

An 'invisible giant,' the 17th C French army was the largest and hungriest institution of the Bourbon monarchy, yet it has received incomplete treatment and is poorly understood. Combining social and cultural emphases with more traditional institutional and operational concerns, this book examines the army in depth, studying recruitment, composition, discipline, motivation, selection of officers, leadership, administration, logistics, weaponry, tactics, field warfare, and siegecraft. The portrait that emerges differs from what current scholarship might have predicted. Instead of claiming that a 'military revolution' transformed warfare, Lynn stresses evolutionary change. Questioning widely-held assumptions about state formation and coercion, he argues that this standing army was primarily devoted to border defense, and only rarely to internal repression.