17th century - French Military

[Franconicus]

What do you know about French military (strength, tactics, battles, leaders ...) in the 17th century?

[cegorach]

God, I could write a book about it... After all several major wars were started by France at that time.

Check Osprey about armies of Louis the XIVth and online historical resource links in this section of the forum.

It takes 'a while' to make such research, though.

[GodWillsIt]

I am currently reading the bio of Peter The Great, and it mentions alot about The Sun King, the book claims he could field an army of 400,000

[Watchman]

17th century, ergo 1600s. Ergo Thirty Years' War, pike-and-shot plus artillery and gun-toting cavalrymen. The French were pretty late in getting openly involved in the TYW (being long content with simply subsidizing others to fight the Habsburgs for them), and when they did found out the hard way they were a bit behind the times as far as tactics went as for the most part they'd just fought each other for a while. Some hurried reforms and suchlike later they pretty much knocked the Spanish out of the conflict and went on to cause happy major havoc in Germany with their assorted comrades-in-arms-if-not-in-faith - I find it mildly ironic that Alsace-Lothringen seems to have had the dubious honour of being a hotly contested borderland even back then.

Odds are thet when the burgeoning proto-diplomats finally got the Treaty of Westphalia signed the French military apparatus did not in general terms greatly differ from its peers, although no doubt there were many peculiarities in the details.

[SwordsMaster]

Speaking of military, what made spanish Tercio organisation obsolete? Cannons? I cannot see how a regimental formation is advantageos compared to 'mangas' of musketeers...

[Rodion Romanovich]

Speaking of military, what made spanish Tercio organisation obsolete? Cannons? I cannot see how a regimental formation is advantageos compared to 'mangas' of musketeers...

Yes, indeed cannons. More accurate and mobile artillery peaces meant that the following tactics could be employed against the tercio in a systematic way:

(lines and the "v" indicating the cannon shot direction, slashes being the tercio, dots are empty space)

|
|
V
///////////////
// . . . . . . //
// . . . . . . //
// . . . . . . //
// . . . . . . //
///////////////

Firing the cannon at such spots would inflict much more casualties than firing it towards a line (even when double lines where used to counter flanking moves from enemies), thus the linear based tactics armies gained an advantage in all artillery duelling. They also had more mobility which allowed them a looser and more narrow line at many points whenever it didn't mean a disadvantage in flank protection. The end result was that an equal number of artillery pieces on both sides meant an artillery advantage for the linear tactics army, which started to show when competing armies got hold of more effective artillery and - in place of artillery numbers - could simulate it through mobile pieces and fire power concentration.

A generally higher quality on muskets too made the tercio obsolete. The linear formations were generally more mobile and could concentrate musket fire better against the enemy, even though this had less effect than the actual artillery factor, plus the square formation of the tercio must have granted a higher morale than a line it would be fighting. Since the tercio troops were of high quality and over the years replaced much of their pike with muskets, the formation adapted well in response to the early developments towards better gunpowder weaponry, but eventually the technical development and the professionalism of the tercio soldiers was outmatched by the technology. In the battle of Rocroi the French charged a single Spanish tercio that was left on the battlefield three times, but were repelled every time despite outnumbering the tercio heavily. Then the French altered their tactics, just staying back while moving their cannons into position to concentrate the firepower towards the most vulnerable points of the tercio. This settled the outcome of the battle despite the high quality and morale of each component of the tercio.

[rotorgun]

There is not a great amount I could find about the French Military of the 17th century. The following is from the Wikipiedia article from the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years_War

In pursuit of his new aggressive policy in Germany, Louis sent his troops into that country in the autumn of 1688. Some of their raiding parties plundered the country as far south as Augsburg, for the political intent of their advance suggested terrorism rather than conciliation as the best method. The League of Augsburg at once took up the challenge, and the addition of new members by the Treaty of Vienna in May 1689 converted it into the Grand Alliance of Spain, Holland, Sweden, Savoy and certain Italian states, Great Britain, the Emperor, and Brandenburg.

The Marquis de Louvois, the French Minister of War, had completed the work of organizing the French army on a regular and permanent basis, and had made it not merely the best, but also by far the most numerous in Europe, for Louis disposed in 1688 of no fewer than 375,000 soldiers and 60,000 sailors. The infantry was uniformed and drilled, and the socket bayonet and the flintlock musket had been introduced. The only relic of the old armament was the pike, which was retained for one-quarter of the foot, though it had been discarded by the Imperialists in the course of the Turkish wars described below. The first artillery regiment was created in 1684, to replace the former semi-civilian organization by a body of artillerymen susceptible of uniform training and amenable to discipline and orders.

The main strengths of the French Military at this time was it's immense size for one, and the fact that it was the first truly "nationalist" army in French history. France was arguably the strongest European nation at the time. Her navy was actually able to defeat the Anglo/Dutch combined navies at the Battle of Beachy Head. Of course, this large military kept France in a perpetual state of bankruptcy, which in the end contributed to the downfall of the Ancien Regime during the French Revolution.

Another intersting subject to study from this period is how the art of siegecraft was advanced by Marshall Vauban of France. Here is another Wikipedia link about him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauban

I hope these are helpful.

Regards,

[nokhor]

What do you know about French military (strength, tactics, battles, leaders ...) in the 17th century?

napoleon considered turenne [who was from this time period], one of the greatest if not the greatest general ever [apart from napoleon himself of course.]

and turenne basically emphasized elite, high mobility troops if i remember correctly.

[Watchman]

Tercio-style "deep" formations were really rewarding targets for artillery (recall that in Napoleonic times infantry really hated having to adopt the rather similar hollow square to ward off cavalry if there was enemy cannon that could fire on them), especially the heavier pieces whose balls could plow through rank after rank of men. At Breitenfeld, 1631, Tilly's Imperial army still deployed its pike in the old-style deep formations (Wiki says ten ranks, but I've read there was already a noted if slow slide towards thinner and wider formations amongst the belligerents in Germany by that time so even on paper it might've been less); eyewitness accounts of the battle describe the heavier Swedish field guns tearing bloody corpse-strewn "streets and alleys" through them, and what the light 3-pounder regimental close-support guns may have lacked in sheer power they made up in volume of fire and straight numbers. Moreover, when the Imperial pike finally got to grips with its thinner-deployed and thus less artillery-vulnerable Swedish counterparts (Wiki gives five as the nominal rank depth; the Swedes were using an early and experimental form of the later standard "pike and sleeves of shot" arrangement at the time), it found out whatever was left of its extra depth did not give it any noticeable advantage in the clash.

Moreover, as the Swedish deployement made more effective use of troop numbers - the thinner units meant they had several times the number of separate brigades as the Imperials - they were able to deploy reserve lines, which as it turned out saved their bacon when the allied Saxon army to their left fled wholesale pretty much at first contact with Tilly's veterans. The Imperials then, naturally enough, tried to turn and roll up the Swedish flank, but found the reserve lines hastily redeployed in the way.

The Swedes won the resultant struggle eventually. By the battle of Lützen the next year the Imperials had taken the hint and summarily copied the doctrines they found useful, and that one was a Swedish victory (instead of a bloody draw) mainly because the Imperial army was quicker in effecting its retreat afterwards, leaving the somewhat surprised Protestants (who were about to leave too) in control of the field and thereby nominal victors by default.

By the end of the Thirty Years' War infantry deployed in relatively thin rectangles with (if at all possible) organic artillery support in the form of light, mobile 2- and 3-pounder regimental guns had pretty much became the international norm, especially amongst all the active participants. The English Civil War was waged along those lines too, although they seem to have been bereft of the regimental artillery bit - likely due to dearth of suitable cannon (and cannon in general) in Britain.