In Europe, Medieval castles were replaced by the "Italian style" fortresses, known for low, thick, sloping walls and star-shaped designs with bastions. However, by the mid-18th century, polygonal forts emerged to counter the power of explosive shells.
Fortifications The period from 1501 to 1800 saw a rapid advance in techniques of fortification in Europe. Whereas medieval castles had relied on high walls to keep out attackers, early modern fortifications had to withstand artillery bombardments. To do this, engineers developed a style of fortress known as the "Italian style" or
trace Italienne. These had low, thick, sloping walls, that would either absorb or deflect cannon fire. In addition, they were shaped like stars, with bastions protruding at sharp angles. This was to ensure that every bastion could be supported with fire from an adjacent bastion, leaving no dead ground for an attacker to take cover in. These new fortifications quickly negated the advantages cannon had offered to besiegers. In response to the vulnerabilities of star forts,
military engineers evolved a much simpler but more robust style of fortification. A polygonal fort is a
fortification in the style that evolved around the middle of the 18th century, in response to the development of
explosive shells. The complex and sophisticated designs of
star forts that preceded them were highly effective against cannon assault, but proved much less effective against the more accurate fire of
rifled guns and the destructive power of explosive shells. The polygonal style of fortification is also described as a "flankless fort". Many such forts were built in the
United Kingdom and
British Empire during the government of
Lord Palmerston, and so they are also often referred to as
Palmerston forts.
Fort Tas-Silġ is an example of a British polygonal fort.
Firearms in 1525.
Heavy cavalry and
Landsknecht mercenaries armed with
arquebuses. The power of aristocracies
vis à vis states diminished throughout Western Europe during this period. Aristocrats' 200- to 400-year-old ancestral castles no longer provided useful defences against artillery. The nobility's importance in warfare also eroded as medieval heavy cavalry lost its central role in battle. The heavy cavalry—made up of armoured knights—had begun to fade in importance in the Late Middle Ages. The English
longbow and the Swiss
pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces of mounted knights. However, the proper use of the longbow required the user to be extremely strong, making it impossible to amass very large forces of archers. The proper use of the pike required complex operations in formation and a great deal of fortitude and cohesion by the pikemen, again making amassing large forces difficult. Starting in the early 14th century, armourers added plate-armour pieces to the traditional protective linked mail armour of knights and men-at-arms to guard against the arrows of the
longbow and
crossbow. By 1415, some infantrymen began deploying the first "hand cannons", and the earliest small-bore
arquebuses, with burning "match locks", appeared on the battlefield in the later 15th century.
Decline of plate armour In virtually all major European battles during a period of 200 years (1400 to 1600), many soldiers wore extensive plate armour; this includes infantrymen (usually pikemen) and almost all mounted troops. Plate armour was expected to deflect edged weapons and to stop an arquebus or pistol ball fired from a distance, and it usually did. The use of plate armour as a remedy to firearms tended to work as long as the velocity and weight of the ball remained quite low, but over time the increasing power and effectiveness of firearms overtook the development of defenses to counteract them, such that
flintlock muskets (entering use after 1650) could kill an armoured man at a distance of even 100 yards (though with limited accuracy). Thus the amount of armour necessary to protect against this threat would have been heavy and unwieldy. However, the initial abandonment of plate armor was driven more by financial constraints than by practicality. Prior to the emergence of state-funded armies in the latter half of the 17th century, most early modern forces relied heavily on paid mercenaries. As armies expanded in size and became increasingly centralized, the cost of equipping every soldier with armor, often the most expensive component of their kit, became prohibitive. By the 17th century, most infantry armed with firearms, as well as many
pikemen, fought without armor due to these monetary limitations. Despite the expense of outfitting thousands of soldiers in full plate, cavalry units largely retained their armor during this period. This persistence can be attributed to several factors, including their higher socio-economic status, mobility advantages conferred by horses, and the continued importance of close-quarters fighting. Melee brawls remained a defining feature of cavalry combat well into the mid-19th century, preserving the value of plate armor within cavalry ranks long after it had disappeared from infantry use. The flintlock musket, carried by most infantrymen other than pikemen after 1650, fired a heavier charge and ball than the
matchlock arquebus. A recruit could be trained to use a musket in a matter of weeks. Operating a musket did not require the great physical strength of a pikeman or a longbowman or the fairly rare skills of a horseman. Since a firearm requires little training to operate, a peasant with a gun could now undermine the order and respect maintained by mounted cavalry in Europe and their Eastern equivalents. Although well-smithed armour could still prevent the penetration of gunpowder-weapons, plate armour as a whole was no longer a feasible solution to flintlock firearms. By the end of the 17th century, soldiers in the infantry and most cavalry units alike preferred the higher mobility of being completely unarmoured to the increased protection, but greatly lessened mobility, offered by donning the heavy plate armour of the period.
Transition to flintlock muskets The arquebus, in use from 1410, was one of the first handheld firearms that were relatively light (it still required a stand to balance on) and a single person could operate one. One of these weapons was first recorded as being used in the
Battle of Agincourt in 1415, although this was still very much a medieval battle. The term
musket originally applied to a heavier form of the arquebus, which fired a shot that could pierce plate armour, though only at close range. In the 16th century it still had to be mounted on a support stick to keep it steady. The
caliver was the lighter form of the arquebus. By 1600, armies phased out these firearms in favour of a new lighter matchlock musket. Throughout the 16th century and up until 1690, muskets used the matchlock design. However, the matchlock design was superseded in the 1690s by the flintlock musket, which was less prone to misfires and had a faster reloading rate. By this time, only light-cavalry scouting units, "the eyes of the army", continued to wear front and back armour plates to protect themselves from distant or undisciplined musket-equipped troops. While soldiers armed with firearms could inflict great damage on cavalry at a moderate distance, at close quarters the cavalry could slaughter the musket-armed infantry if they could break their formation and close to engage in melee combat. For many years infantry formations included a mix of troops armed with both firearms to provide striking power and pikes to allow for the defence of the arquebusiers or musketeers from a cavalry charge. The invention of the
bayonet allowed the combining of these two weapons into one in the 1690s, which transformed the infantry into the most important branch of the early modern military—one that uniformly used flintlock muskets tipped with bayonets.
Nature of war , 1704 This period saw the size and scale of warfare greatly increase. The number of combatants involved escalated steadily from the mid 16th century and dramatically expanded after the 1660s. For example,
Henry II of France, even in the dawn of
religious unrest and inevitable violence, could amass an impressive 20,000 men in total for
his 1550 decade of war against Habsburg Spain, but
Louis XIV, Sun King with the highest population in the
Kingdom of France and by extension
Western Europe could deploy up to 500,000 men into the field by 1700 in the
War of the Spanish Succession with
more at stake. Moreover, wars and subsequent battles became increasingly deadly and pyrrhic in this period. The
Battle of Fontenoy with advanced presence of
Louis XV saw over 100,000 men deployed on both sides ending 20,000 lives, almost half of which were French, and despite a French victory, France herself did not keep Dutch territory gained as
peace was desired for the bankrupt kingdom, a layman translation meaning almost 10,000 deaths were rendered obsolete by
said king who witnessed the horrors from afar just 3 years later with
very few battles left in the Austrian conflict. Cities that took months to
siege could fall in mere days. European monarchs with bitter rivalries would invest many resources into intense warfare which often resulted in mass death and destruction of innocent populations, such as the
Sack of Rome where the
Supreme Pontiff's life was endangered, a symbolic attack against God and Christendom. The
Italian Wars alone would
threaten Europe's very existence. This may in part be attributed to improvements in weapons technology and in the techniques of using it (for example infantry
volley fire). However, the main reason was that armies were now much bigger, but logistical support for them was inadequate. This meant that armies tended to devastate civilian areas in an effort to feed themselves, causing famines and population displacement. This was exacerbated by the increasing length of conflicts, such as the
Thirty Years' War and
Eighty Years' War, when this period saw the size and scale of warfare greatly increase. The number of combatants involved escalated steadily from the mid 16th century and they fought over areas subjected to repeated devastation. For this reason, the wars of this era were among the most lethal before the modern period. by
John George I, Elector of Saxony, in September 1620 For example, the
Thirty Years' War and the contemporary
Wars of the Three Kingdoms, were the bloodiest conflicts in the history of Germany and Britain respectively before
World War I. Another factor adding to bloodshed in war was the lack of a clear set of rules concerning the treatment of prisoners and non-combatants. While prisoners were usually ransomed for money or other prisoners, they were sometimes slaughtered out of hand—as at the
Battle of Dungans Hill in 1647. One of the reasons for warfare's increased impact was its indecisiveness. Armies were slow moving in an era before good roads and canals. Battles were relatively rare as armies could manoeuvre for months, with no direct conflict. In addition, battles were often made irrelevant by the proliferation of advanced, bastioned fortifications. To control an area, armies had to take fortified towns, regardless of whether they defeated their enemies' field armies. As a result, by far the most common battles of the era were
sieges, hugely time-consuming and expensive affairs. Storming a fortified city could result in massive casualties and cities which did not surrender before an assault were usually brutally sacked -for example
Magdeburg in 1631 or
Drogheda in 1649. In addition, both garrisons and besiegers often suffered heavily from disease. in 1601–1604 The indecisive nature of conflict meant wars were long and endemic. Conflicts stretched on for decades and many states spent more years at war than they did at peace. The Spanish attempt to reconquer the Netherlands after the
Dutch Revolt became bogged down in endless siege warfare. The expense caused the Spanish monarchy to declare bankruptcy several times, beginning in 1577. The changes in warfare eventually made the
mercenary forces of the
Renaissance and Middle Ages obsolete. However this was a gradual change. As late as the
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), most troops were mercenaries. However, after this conflict, most states invested in better disciplined and more ideologically inspired troops. For a time mercenaries became important as trainers and administrators, but soon these tasks were also taken by the state. The massive size of these armies required a large supporting force of administrators. The newly centralized states were forced to set up vast organized bureaucracies to manage these armies, which some historians argue is the basis of the modern bureaucratic state. The combination of increased taxes and increased centralisation of government functions caused a series of revolts across Europe such as the
English Civil War and the
Fronde in France. In many countries, the resolution of this conflict was the rise of
monarchical absolutism. Only in England and the Netherlands did representative government evolve as an alternative. From the late 17th century, states started financing wars through long term low interest loans from national banking institutions like the
Bank of England. The first state to take full advantage of this process was the
Dutch Republic. in 1568, showing the deployment of artillery, cavalry and infantry bearing pikes and muskets This transformation in the armies of Europe had great social impact.
J. F. C. Fuller famously stated that "the musket made the infantryman and the infantryman made the democrat". This argument states that the defence of the state now rested on the common man, not on the aristocrats. Revolts by the underclass, that had routinely been defeated in the Middle Ages, could now conceivably threaten the power of the state. However, aristocrats continued to monopolise the officer corps of almost all early modern armies, including their high command. Moreover, popular revolts almost always failed unless they had the support and patronage of the noble or gentry classes. The new armies, because of their vast expense, were also dependent on taxation and the commercial classes who also began to demand a greater role in society. The great commercial powers of the Dutch and English matched much larger states in military might. As any man could be quickly trained in the use of a musket, it became far easier to form massive armies. The inaccuracy of the weapons necessitated large groups of massed soldiers. This led to a rapid swelling of the size of armies. For the first time huge masses of the population could enter combat, rather than just the highly skilled professionals. It has been argued that the drawing of men from across the nation into an organized corps helped breed national unity and patriotism, and during this period the modern notion of the
nation state was born. However, this would only become apparent after the
French Revolutionary Wars. At this time, the
levée en masse and
conscription would become the defining paradigm of
modern warfare. Before then, however, most national armies were in fact composed of many nationalities. For example, although the Swedish Army under
Gustavus Adolphus was originally recruited by a kind of national conscription, the losses of the
Thirty Years' War meant that by 1648 over 80% of its troops were foreign mercenaries. In Spain, armies were recruited from all the Spanish European territories including Spain, Italy, Wallonia and Germany. The French recruited soldiers from Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere as well as from France. Britain recruited
Hessian troops until the late 18th century. Irish Catholics made careers for themselves in the armies of many European states (See the
Flight of the Wild Geese).
Infantry Column – This formation was typically used while marching, although with sufficient will and mass it was effective at breaking through line formations, albeit with heavy casualties.
Line – A simple two- or three-rank deep line formation allowed most muskets to be brought to bear and was the most commonly used battle formation. Often the first rank would kneel after firing to allow the second rank to fire.
Skirmishers – Skirmishers were not a common infantry unit until late in the 18th century. Light infantry would advance and be the first to fire to draw the enemy to attack, while also probing the flanks. In later eras, sharpshooters would not only target common soldiers, but also officers so that the men were without leadership.
Square – This formation was used against cavalry. Bayonets would be fixed, the first line would kneel with their muskets angled upward (much like a pike.) The second and third lines would fire at the cavalry when it came close. This formation was very ineffective when faced with combined cavalry and infantry, or artillery fire in the case of plain squares.
Cavalry in Saxony during the
Seven Years' War The rise of gunpowder reduced the importance of the once dominant heavy cavalry, but it remained effective in a new role into the 19th century. Cavalry charges using swords on undisciplined infantry could still be quite decisive, but a frontal charge against well-ordered musketeers and pikemen was all but futile. The cavalry, along with the infantry, became more professional in this period but it retained its greater social and military prestige than the infantry. In the beginning of the early modern era, heavy cavalry was still dominated by lance wielding
men-at-arms, before they were gradually replaced by pistol-armed
reiters and
cuirassiers, the latter of which continued to see use until
World War I. Light cavalry was introduced for skirmishing and scouting because of its advantage in speed and mobility. The new types of cavalry units introduced in this period were the dragoons or mounted infantry.
Dragoons were originally intended to travel on horseback but fight on foot and were armed with carbines, pikes, and pistols. Starting in the late 18th century, dragoons gradually lost their role as mounted infantry, serving instead as
line cavalry. Even orthodox cavalry carried firearms, especially the pistol, which sometimes they used in a tactic known as the caracole. Cavalry units, from the 16th century on, were more likely to charge other cavalry on the flanks of an infantry formation and try to work their way behind the enemy infantry. When they achieved this and pursued a fleeing enemy, heavy cavalry could still destroy an enemy army. Only specialised cavalry units like
winged hussars armed with long lances could break pikemen lines, but this was rather an exception. By the 1630s, the strategies of military commanders such as
Gustavus Adolphus saw the full re-integration of charging into cavalry tactics. The cavalry charge remained an important part of battle tactics for the rest of 17th century and until the modern area, and its shock value could be decisive when implemented properly like during the
Battle of Lützen and the
Battle of Vienna (1683). , 1790 However, European powers would never again field armies dominated by cavalry. For the first time in millennia, the settled people of the agricultural regions could defeat the horse peoples of the steppe in open combat. The power of the Mongols was broken in Russia and, no longer threatened from the east, Russia began to assert itself as a major force in European affairs. Never again would nomads from the east threaten to overrun Europe or the Middle East. In the Siege of Kazan (1552), Russia had employed artillery, sappers, cavalry and infantry armed with arquebus (
Streltsy), while the Khanate of Kazan had only employed cavalry. The one exception to this was the Ottoman Empire, which had been founded by Turkish horsemen. The Ottomans were some of the first to embrace gunpowder and integrate it into their army. This investment into gunpowder weaponry allowed the Ottoman Empire to rapidly expand in size and influence. By the 18th century, European infantry became well armed and disciplined enough to regularly defeat larger Ottoman forces during the
Great Turkish War and
Austro-Turkish War.
Naval warfare The Age of Sail (usually dated as 1571–1862) was a period roughly corresponding to the
early modern period in which
international trade and
naval warfare were dominated by
sailing ships and
gunpowder warfare, lasting from the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries. The spread of European power around the world was closely tied to naval developments in this period. The
caravel for the first time made unruly seas like the
Atlantic Ocean open to exploration, trade, and military conquest. While in all previous eras, European navies had been largely confined to operations in coastal waters, and were generally used only in a support role for land-based forces, this changed with the introduction of the new vessels like the
caravel,
carrack, and
galleon, and the increasing importance of international waterborne trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The new caravels were large enough and powerful enough to be armed with cannons with which they could bombard both shoreline defenses and other vessels. File:The Battle of Pavia, 1525 (by Rupert Heller) - Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.jpg|The
1525 Battle of Pavia in Northern Italy. File:Gustave Adolphe at Breitenfeld-Johann Walter-f3706497.jpg|King
Gustavus II Adolphus, a great military innovator of the era File:Schlacht am Weißen Berg C-K 063.jpg|The
Battle of White Mountain in
Bohemia (1620), one of the decisive battles of the
Thirty Years War File:Orłowski Husaria's attack.jpg|Winged Hussar File:Death of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden at the Battle of Lützen (Carl Wahlbom) - Nationalmuseum - 18031.tif|The death of King Gustavus II Adolphus in cavalry melee on 16 November 1632 at the
Battle of Lützen File:Battle of Vigo bay october 23 1702.jpg|The
Battle of Vigo Bay of 1702, part the
War of the Spanish Succession (anonymous contemporary painting). ==Africa==