Military Revolution 1560–1660’, in Essays in Swedish History, London 1967, pp. 195–225 – a basic text; Gustavus Adolphus. A History of Sweden 1611–1632, London 1958, Vol. II, pp. 169–89. Roberts perhaps slightly overestimates the quantitative growth of armies in this epoch.
23. Victor Kiernan, ‘Foreign Mercenaries and Absolute Monarchy’, Past and Present, No. 11, April 1957, pp. 66–86, reprinted in T. Aston (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1560–1660, London 1965, pp. 117–40, is a peerless survey of the mercenary phenomenon, to which little has since been added.
24. Jean Bodin, Les Six Livres de la République, Paris 1578, p. 669.
25. Walter Dorn, Competition for Empire, New York 1940, p. 83.
26. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe e Discorsi, Milan 1960, p. 62.
27. J. Vicens Vives, ‘Estructura Administrativa Estatal en los Siglos XVI y XVII’, Xle Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Rapports IV, Göteborg 1960; now reprinted in Vicens Vives, Cojuntura Económicaly Reformismo Burgués, Barcelona 1968, p. 116.
28. R. Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, Jena 1922, I, p. 13.
29. G. N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century, London 1947, p. 98. Ehrenberg, with a slightly different definition, gives a somewhat lower estimate, 21 years.
30. The best overview of this international phenomenon is K. W. Swart, Sale of Offices in the Seventeenth Century, The Hague 1949; the most comprehensive national study is Roland Mousnier, La Vénalité des Offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, Rouen (n.d.).
31. Federico Chabod, Scritti sul Rinascimento, Turin 1967, p. 617. The Milanese functionaries refused the demand of their governor: but their homologues elsewhere might not have been so resolute.
32. Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Mediaeval West, p. 333.
33. B. F. Porshnev, Les Soulèvements Populaires en France de 1623 à 1648, Paris 1965, pp. 395–6.
34. Hecksher argued that the object of mercantilism was to increase the ‘power of the State’ rather than the ‘wealth of nations’, and that this meant a subordination, in Bacon’s words, of ‘considerations of plenty’ to ‘considerations of power’ (Bacon praised Henry VII for having restricted wine imports to English ships on these grounds). Viner, in an effective reply, had no difficulty in showing that most mercantilist writers on the contrary gave equal emphasis to both, and believed the two to be compatible. Tower versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, World Politics, I, No. I, 1948, now reprinted in D. C. Coleman (ed.), Revisions in Mercantilism, London 1969, pp. 61–91. At the same time, Viner plainly underestimated the difference between mercantilist theory and practice, and those of the laissez-faire which followed it. In fact, both Hecksher and Viner in different ways miss the essential point, which is the indistinction of economy and polity in the transitional epoch which produced mercantilist theories. Dispute as to whether either of the two had ‘primacy’ over the other is an anachronism, because there was no such rigid separation of them in practice until the advent of laissez-faire.
35. E. Silberner, La Guerre dans La Pensée Economique du XVIe au XVIIIe Siècle, Paris 1939, pp. 7–122.
36. Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV et Vingt Millions de Français, Paris 1966, p. 95.
37. B. F. Porshnev, ‘Les Rapports Politiques de l’Europe Occidentale et de l’Europe Orientale a l’Epoque de la Guerre de Trente Ans’, XIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, Uppsala 1960, p. 161: an extremely speculative foray into the Thirty Years War, that is a good example of Porshnev’s strengths and weaknesses. Contrary to the intimations of his Western colleagues, it is not a rigid ‘dogmatism’ that is his major failing, but an over-fertile ‘ingenuity’ not always adequately restrained by the discipline of evidence; yet the same trait is in another respect what makes him an original and imaginative historian. The brief suggestions at the end of his essay on the concept of ‘an international state system’ are well-taken.
38. Engels liked to cite the example of Burgundy: ‘Charles the Bold, for example, was the feoffee of the Emperor for a part of his lands, and the feoffee of the French king for another part of them; on the other hand, the King of France, his feoffor, was at the same time the feoffee of Charles the Bold, his own vassal, for certain regions’. See his important manuscript, posthumously entitled Uber den Verfall des Feudalismus und das Aufkommen der Bourgeoisie, in Werke, Bd 21, p. 396.
39. For this whole development of the new diplomacy in early modern Europe, see Garrett Mattingly’s great work, Renaissance Diplomacy, London 1955, passim. The quotation from Barbaro is cited on p. 109.
40. The rural and urban masses themselves, of course, evinced spontaneous forms of xenophobia: but this traditional negative reaction to alien communities was quite distinct from the positive national identification that started to emerge within literate bourgeois milieux in the early modern epoch. The fusion of the two could, in crisis situations, produce patriotic outbursts from below of an uncontrolled and seditious character: the Comuneros in Spain or the League in France.
41. Cited by Gerald Graham, The Politics of Naval Supremacy, Cambridge 1965, p. 17.
Class and State: Problems of Periodization
The typical institutional complex of the Absolutist State in the West has now been outlined. It remains to sketch very briefly some aspects of the trajectory of this historical form, which naturally underwent significant modifications in the three or more centuries of its existence. At the same time, it is necessary to give some account of the relationship between the noble class and Absolutism, because nothing could be less justified than to assume that this was an unproblematic one of natural harmony from the start. On the contrary, it may be argued that the real periodization of Absolutism in the West is at bottom to be found precisely in the changing rapport between the nobility and the monarchy, and the multiple attendant political shifts which were correlated with it. At any rate, a provisional periodization of the State and an attempt to trace the relationship of the dominant class to it, will be proposed below.
The mediaeval monarchies, as we have seen, were an unstable amalgam of feudal suzerains and anointed kings. The extraordinary regalian rights of the latter function were, of course, a necessary counterweight against the structural weakness and limitations of the former: the contradiction between these two alternate principles of royalty was the central tension of the feudal State in the Middle Ages. The role of the feudal suzerain at the summit of a vassal hierarchy was ultimately the dominant component of this monarchical model, as the retrospective light shed on it by the contrasting structure of Absolutism was to show. This role dictated very narrow limits to the economic base of monarchy in the early mediaeval period. In effect, the feudal ruler of this epoch had to raise his revenues primarily from his own estates, in his capacity as a particular landlord. The dues from his demesne would initially be delivered in kind, and then increasingly in cash.1 In addition to this income, he would normally enjoy certain financial privileges from his territorial lordship: above all, feudal ‘incidences’ and special ‘aids’ from his vassals, tied to investiture in their fiefs, plus seigneurial tolls exacted on markets or trade-routes, plus emergency levies from the Church, plus the profits of royal justice in the forms of fines and confiscations. Naturally, these fragmented and restricted forms
