The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659

The publication of The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road in 1972 marked the birth of the ‘new military history’, which emphasised military organization – mobilization, pay, supply, morale and, above all, logistics – rather than military ‘events’ such as sieges and battles. Geoffrey Parker studies one of the great logistical feats of early modern Europe: how Habsburg Spain managed to maintain and mobilise the largest army in Europe in an 80-year effort to suppress the Dutch Revolt, 700 miles away. Using a unique combination of surviving records, he presents strikingly the logistical problems of fighting wars in early modern Europe, and demonstrates why Spain failed to suppress the Dutch Revolt. The book has been constantly cited since its first publication in English (with translations into Spanish and Dutch). This revised second edition includes some new sources and updates some references but otherwise remains faithful to the original version.

GEOFFREY PARKER is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History, The Ohio State University, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is one of the world’s most prolific and distinguished historians of early modern Europe.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY

Edited by Professor Sir John Elliott, University of Oxford
Professor Olwen Hufton, University of Oxford
Professor H. G. Koenigsberger, University of London
Professor H. M. Scott, University of St Andrews

The idea of an ‘early modern’ period of European history from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century is now widely accepted among historians. The purpose of Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History is to publish monographs and studies which will illuminate the character of the period as a whole, and in particular focus attention on a dominant theme within it, the interplay of continuity and change as they are presented by the continuity of medieval ideas, political and social organisation, and by the impact of new ideas, new methods, and new demands on the traditional structure.

For a list of titles published in the series, please see the end of the book.

The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659

The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars

Second Edition

GEOFFREY PARKER

Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History
The Ohio State University

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Geoffrey Parker 1972, 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1972
Second edition 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Ehrhardt 10/12 pt.   System LATEX 2_e   [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

ISBN 0 521 83600 X hardback
ISBN 0 521 54392 4 paperback

For Angela

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: ‘What makes it move?’ The peasant answers, ‘’Tis the devil moves it.’ Another man says the locomotive moves because its wheels are going round. A third maintains that the cause of the motion lies in the smoke being carried away by the wind . . .

The only conception capable of explaining the movement of the locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed. The only conception capable of explaining the movement of peoples is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians assume forces of entirely different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the peasant sees the devil in the steam-engine; others, as a force resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the wheels; others again, as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that is blown away.¹

Tolstoy’s derogatory description of the three main schools of history contains a measure of truth, whether the ‘locomotive’ happens to be the long war between Spain and the Dutch or Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. Many historians of both these events have considered only the devils and the smoke, the heroes and the intellectual influences. The present writer belongs in Tolstoy’s second category and feels that, at least in the case of Spain and the Dutch Revolt, the ‘wheels’, the mechanics of the conflict, have been unjustly neglected.

   This study deals with a basic question of historical mechanics: how Habsburg Spain, the richest and most powerful state in Europe, failed to suppress the Dutch Revolt. What were Spain’s aims and policies in the Netherlands after 1567? How did it seek to implement them? Why did it fail?

   Historians have tended to avoid these questions. Most accounts of the historical evolution of the Netherlands in the century 1550–1650 concentrate upon the internal dynamics of the Revolt, on the character of the opposition to Spain, on the leading events and personalities in the struggle – in other words, on why the Dutch won. Few writers at the time (and even fewer since) considered the Revolt from the other side, from the point of view of Spain faced with a long-running revolt in a distant province of her empire. This one-sidedness is easily explained. Spanish historians have not been attracted to study a war that caused the prolonged sacrifice of men, money and prestige, and produced only humiliation, impoverishment and defeat. Likewise, the Eighty Years’ War brought so little political gain or economic profit to the Spanish Netherlands that ‘Belgian’ historians since the 1580s have concentrated almost exclusively on the religious aspects of the struggle, on how their country became the ‘Catholic Netherlands’. The Dutch, for their part, have treated the Eighty Years’ War as an essentially domestic affair, thus ensuring that the native policies and personalities of their country dominate the story. Spain has ignored the Netherlands, and the Netherlands have ignored Spain.

   If the neglect of political historians is thus readily explicable, the lack of interest among military historians in the conduct of the Eighty Years’ War is at first sight more surprising. The haughty dismissal of Major-General Fuller, a prominent military historian of the twentieth century, is typical: ‘Militarily, little is to be learnt from the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598). And not much either from the Revolt of the Netherlands (1568–1607).’²

   The professional soldier likes wars that are clean, short and decisive; the Low Countries’ Wars were the antithesis of this tidy pattern. The ‘Military Participation Ratio’, as so often in a civil war, was extremely high, and therefore the distinction between poorly armed, reluctant soldiers and militant, determined civilians, between regular and guerilla warfare, was often difficult to determine. The Hauptschlachten, the ‘big battles’ beloved of military historians, were few, while the messy, indecisive conflict provided little scope for the emergence of a ‘military genius’. Those who ascribe historical importance to Bruce’s spider or Cleopatra’s nose will find the history of the Eighty Years’ War a profound disappointment: personal initiatives and good luck were quickly neutralized by the stultifying conditions of warfare. The war continued for over eighty years before the loser conceded defeat. Small wonder, then, that those reared on Clausewitz and the Führereigenschaft should dismiss the clumsy military marathon in the Netherlands as an uninteresting aberration.

   Those who witnessed the long struggle for the mastery of the Low Countries thought differently. The wars, which began in earnest in 1572 and continued with only one break until 1659, formed the seminary in which generations of military commanders in hostilities elsewhere (including the Thirty Years’ War, the Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland, even the colonial conflicts in America) learnt their profession. The armies fighting in the Netherlands provided a mirror in which other forces of the day adjusted their techniques and a yardstick by which they measured their military effectiveness.³

   We can still see today why the Spanish army, at least, proved so influential. Thanks to the abundance and variety of its surviving archives we can establish with precision the methods used to mobilize and maintain the largest army of its day; and we can reconstruct the life of the common soldiers through their wills, their wage-sheets and their writings. This wealth of information enables close observation of the rich tapestry of military life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and offers a greater understanding of the technical, economic and fiscal problems that faced every early modern government seeking victory in war.

   Yet the Army of Flanders, however influential and interesting, must not be considered in isolation. Military history has been treated for too long as a self-contained compartment. The suitability of the Army to the war it fought and to the empire it defended requires discussion and analysis; so does the question of why Spain persisted for eighty years in fighting a war that it could not win. These issues possess a general relevance because Habsburg Spain was by no means the last imperial power to ruin itself by waging a war abroad which it could not manage to win but could not bear to abandon. Nor was it the last empire to delude itself that the best troops, armed with the latest equipment and backed by the resources of the greatest state in the world, could overcome every military or political challenge.

   In part, Spain’s undoing stemmed from a failure to adapt to change. Military organization and strategy in Western Europe changed radically in the years around 1500. The Spanish Habsburgs coped well with this challenge at a technical level: the size, armament and equipment of their forces far exceeded anything the Middle Ages had known. At a theoretical level, however, little changed: the political principles and assumptions that underlay the deployment of the new armies still belonged to the world of chivalry and the crusades. War remained to a certain extent the ‘sport of kings’, fought for personal reasons – honour and vanity, greed and spite, religious zeal and the fear of humiliation. Spain’s reaction to the Dutch Revolt thus epitomized the interplay between medieval and modern, between continuity and change, with which the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History series is especially concerned.

   One contemporary writer who attempted to explain and understand the perplexing oscillations of fortune in the Low Countries’ Wars, Michael von Aitzing, inventor of the Leo Belgicus design on the cover of this book, could only make sense of the conflict by invoking astrology. For him, history moved in a circle governed by the movements of the heavens, so that the various changes of fortune in the duel between Spain and the Dutch reflected primarily the influence of the stars.⁴ This engaging but extravagant determinism saved Aitzing from a pitfall that has claimed almost every subsequent writer: partiality for one side or the other. Even today it is hard to avoid becoming a partisan – of Spain or the Dutch, of the Catholics or the Calvinists, of Philip Ⅱ or William of Orange. Although my own historical prejudices will inevitably have coloured this account of Spain’s sustained but unsuccessful attempt to suppress the Dutch Revolt, if I have avoided the sin of one-sidedness it will perhaps justify the loosing of an English bull in an essentially Spanish and Netherlands china shop.

Preface to the second edition

I completed the typescript of The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road in June 1971. Since then it has gone through several English impressions (the last in 1990), and appeared in Dutch as well as Spanish translations. It is a source of great pleasure and pride to me that Cambridge University Press has decided to publish a revised version.

   When I carried out the research for this book, between 1965 and 1971, the conflict in Vietnam had made war an unfashionable subject and academics who perversely continued to study it therefore tended to devote less space to weaponry and fighting and more to logistics, organization and morale. Nevertheless armies exist to fight, and their effectiveness in doing so usually (though not always) determines the outcome of wars: to downplay or discount this distorts the picture. I first realized this shortcoming of ‘the new military history’ in general, and of my book in particular, while reading the brilliant analysis of ‘combat effectiveness’ in John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France (Urbana, 1984). A similar work illuminates changes in the fighting potential of the Army of Flanders (and much else): Fernando González de León, ‘The Road to Rocroi: The Duke of Alba, the Count–Duke of Olivares, and the High Command of the Spanish Army of Flanders in the Eighty Years’ War, 1567–1659’ (Johns Hopkins University PhD Thesis, 1991, soon to be published). Had I been writing for the first time now, I too would have included far more on ‘combat effectiveness’.

   Since 1971, two books have supplied much additional information about the Spaniards who fought in the Netherlands for their king: Raffael Puddu, Il soldato gentilhuomo. Autoritratto d’una società guerriera: la Spagna del ’500 (Bologna, 1982), and René Quatrefages, Los tercios (2nd edn, Madrid, 1983). Both authors, however, concentrated on the early years of the Army of Flanders and both relied heavily on printed accounts written by veterans rather than upon archival sources. By contrast, Robert A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668 (Cambridge, 1992), provides a magnificent study of the naval defence of the Spanish Netherlands that covers the entire period and uses manuscript as well as printed sources.

   Other recent works have illuminated various aspects of the subject of this book. On the Army of Flanders itself, Hugo O’Donnell y Duque de Estrada, La fuerza de desembarco de la Gran Armada contra Inglaterra (1588). Su orígen, organización y vicisitudes (Madrid, 1989), studies the various units assembled in Flanders for the assault on England in conjunction with the Armada of 1588. He shows how the troops were raised, how they reached the Netherlands and how they survived there. The early chapters of Juan Roco de Campofrío, España en Flandes. Trece años de gobierno del Archiduque Alberto (Madrid, 1973), provide a first-hand account of a march along the Spanish Road in 1596. A. Gráinne Henry, The Irish Military Community in Spanish Flanders, 1586–1621 (Dublin, 1992), examines the Irish troops who settled with their families in and around Brussels. Paul C. Allen, Philip Ⅲ and the Pax Hispanica, 1598–1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy (New Haven and London, 2000), offers a brilliant consideration of Spain’s military and diplomatic efforts in northern Europe between the death of Philip Ⅱ and the Twelve Years’ Truce. J. J. Ruiz Ibañez, Las dos caras de Jano. Monarquía, ciudad e individuo. Murcia, 1588–1648 (Murcia, 1995), and R. F. Mackay, The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile (Cambridge, 1999), provide new material on recruiting (not only for the Low Countries’ Wars) in Habsburg Spain. Two admirable syntheses have also appeared: J. Albi de la Cuesta, De Pavia a Rocroi. Los tercios de infantería española en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1999), and (with a host of illustrations) J. F. Giménez Martín, Tercios de Flandes (2nd edn, Madrid 2000). Above all, Jonathan Israel has illuminated numerous important developments in the first half of the seventeenth century in his monograph The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, 1606–61 (Oxford, 1982), and in two of his collections of essays, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713 (London, 1990), and Conflicts of Empires: Spain, the Low Countries and the Struggle for World Supremacy, 1585–1713 (London, 1997).

   I, too, have revisited some of the topics covered in this book. The Dutch Revolt (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1985), offers a narrative and analytical account of the Eighty Years’ War; Spain and the Netherlands 1559–1659: Ten Studies (2nd edn, London, 1990), examines certain aspects of the ‘special relationship’ between the two countries (including a closer look at the mutinies of the Army of Flanders, at corruption in the Army’s bureaucracy, and at the ‘costs’ of the war). The first two chapters of The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (3rd edn, Cambridge, 2001), place the logistical challenges posed by the Low Countries’ Wars in a broader perspective; and The Grand Strategy of Philip Ⅱ (2nd edn, New Haven and London, 2000) situates the Prudent King’s policies in the Netherlands within his overall strategic goals and priorities.

   If I had known in 1971 the contents of all the works noted above, I would have written a very different (and, no doubt, better) book. To revise the structure and interpretation now, however, would be perverse and misleading. Every book reflects the period when it was conceived and written: no amount of tinkering can alter that.

   I have therefore limited the changes in this edition to:

• revising the introduction,

• correcting errors,

• providing publication details for a thesis or a work ‘forthcoming’ when I wrote that has since appeared in print,

• including data from subsequent studies that illuminate a point made in the text, and

• consolidating the items cited in the footnotes into a bibliography.

   In other respects, with all its faults, the work now published is essentially the same as the first edition printed by Cambridge University Press three decades ago. Researching the book allowed me to travel along the ‘Spanish Road’ twice as well as to live in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. I hope that some of the excitement and fun that I experienced then survives in the book before you now.

Columbus, Ohio, September 2003

Acknowledgements

Collecting the evidence for this study involved extensive travel and research in western Europe and I thank the benefactors, public and private, whose generous financial assistance made it possible. The Department of Education and Science awarded me a State Studentship for 1965–8 while the Twenty-Seven Foundation of the Institute of Historical Research made a handsome award to support my research in 1969 and another towards the cost of publishing this book in 1971. The British Academy and the Houblon-Norman Fund of the Bank of England supported further study abroad in 1970; and the Leverhulme Research Awards Committee elected me to a European Studentship for 1970–1 which permitted me to complete my foreign research. In addition I received generous aid from the Ellen McArthur Fund of the University of Cambridge and from the French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique. Above all I thank the Master and Fellows of Christ’s College, Cambridge, for awarding me the A. H. Lloyd Research Scholarship for 1965–7 and the Bottomley Travelling Scholarship in 1967, and for electing me to a four-year Research Fellowship in 1968 which provided me with unique facilities for study and travel. I hope that all these benefactors will deem this book an acceptable monument to their generosity.

   I first became interested in Spain and the ‘Spanish Road’ when, as an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1964–5, I attended Sir John Elliott’s stimulating lectures on early modern Europe. Since then his patient and wise counsel, generously given, has been of the greatest help to me. Helmut G. Koenigsberger, co-editor of the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern Europe series, read the entire work in typescript and suggested many improvements, especially to chapter 5. I also recall with gratitude the encouragement, assistance and advice of the late Fernand Braudel, the late Sir John Plumb and the late Charles Wilson.

   A number of other scholars and friends have kindly suggested corrections and improvements to my text and drawn additional sources to my attention. I thank Peter Burke, Alastair Duke, Norman Gash, Jan Lechner, Jane Ohlmeyer, Jamel Ostwald, John M. Stapleton, John Stoye, I. A. A. Thompson, Edward Wilson and, above all, Fernando González de León. I am also grateful to all those at Cambridge University Press who helped to produce this book, especially Christine Linehan and Patricia Williams with the first edition and, ever since, William Davies. I also thank Matthew Keith for invaluable assistance in preparing this edition for the Press.

   Angela Chapman was present when this book was conceived, researched and written. From the first, she helped me to develop many of the ideas; she accompanied me as often as she could while I carried out the research; and she read and critiqued every page of text. Perhaps because she had trained as an archaeologist rather than as a historian (and perhaps because she had heard it all so many times before) I had to work a little harder to gain and retain her interest (or so it seemed at the time) and this undoubtedly improved the book. Three decades later, it still bears her strong imprint and I therefore dedicate this revised edition to her, with gratitude and affection.

Notes on spelling and currency

Where a recognized English version of a foreign place-name exists (Venice, The Hague, Brussels), I have used it; otherwise, I have preferred the style used in the place itself (thus ’s Hertogenbosch and Aachen, not Bois-le-Duc or Aix-la-Chapelle). I have followed the same guideline with personal names. Where an established English usage exists (William of Orange, Don John of Austria, Philip Ⅱ) I have adopted it; in all other cases the style and title employed by the person has been used.

   To avoid unnecessary confusion and to make comparisons possible, all sums of money mentioned in the text have been converted into florins of 20 pattards, the principal money of account used in the Netherlands at the time. Ten florins equalled one pound sterling (also a unit of account then). For most of the sixteenth century, the commonest coins used by the Army of Flanders were the gold escudos of Spain, Italy and France. Each had a slightly different weight and therefore a slightly differently value. In the period 1585–90, for example, the escudo of Italy was worth 57 pattards, the escudo of Spain 59 and the escudo of France 60. To add to the confusion, the Army also used the escudo as a money of account and its value also changed: its accountants kept their records in escudos of 39 pattards from 1560 until 1578, rising in stages to escudos of 57 pattards by 1585. From 1590 they started to use a new unit of account: the escudo of ten reales, based on silver instead of gold and worth, for most of the seventeenth century, 50 pattards (for each real was worth 5 pattards).

Glossary

List of abbreviations