Storrs on Parker, 'The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659: the Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars'

H-German Storrs on Parker, 'The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars'

Review published on Monday, August 1, 2005

Geoffrey Parker. The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xxix + 291 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-83600-5; $36.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-54392-7.

Reviewed by Christopher Storrs (Department of History, University of Dundee)Published on H- German (August, 2005)

Welcome Reissue of a Modern Classic

It is almost a commonplace of historical writing that the power of sixteenth-century Spain was founded on its armed forces. Chief among these was the so-called Army of Flanders, created when in 1567 the Duke of Alba led nearly 9,000 troops from Spanish Italy to Flanders to quell the incipient Dutch revolt against the rule of Philip II of Spain. The continuing fame of that force owes much to its leading contemporary historian, Geoffrey Parker, who in 1974 published what has become a modern classic, the first edition of the book under review. Parker's study of the Army of Flanders was of enormous importance, on various levels. Parker greatly advanced our knowledge and understanding of the Spanish way of war in this period by first seeking--drawing on the rich sources in the Archivo General de Simancas (and many more local archives outside Spain)--to explain how Spain managed for almost a century to put large numbers of men into the field (or into garrison) in Flanders, 700 miles distant from Spain itself, and how these men were provided for and paid. Among Parker's achievements in this respect was, second, the identification of the military route(s), or corridor(s) along which troops in the Spanish king's service moved from Italy to Flanders, what we now know as the "Spanish Road," and the identification of various medical, religious, welfare, and other services that successive Spanish monarchs provided to their troops in Flanders, blazing a trail in military organization for others to follow. Third, Parker rescued the armies of the Spanish monarchs in this period from the oblivion to which they had been consigned by those for whom the armies of the Dutch Republic and (in the Thirty Years War) of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden were the more modern, more successful, and more deserving of study. Fourth, Parker emphasized the impact of the so-called trace italienne, the bastion-style fortifications pioneered in Italy in the fifteenth century but which soon spread throughout to Flanders and other parts of Europe and which required substantial men in garrison to defend and/or large besieging armies to capture. This idea represented an important modification of the "Military Revolution" thesis, conceptualized by Michael Roberts (a champion of the quality of the Swedish army) twenty years before, and which Parker would go on to develop elsewhere, notably in his book-length study of the Military Revolution.[1] Parker's book was thus an important contribution to what has become known as the "New Military History"--one which focused not on fighting, on "drums and trumpets," but on the logistics of warfare--in late-sixteenth- and early- seventeenth-century Europe.

Germany and its people could not be indifferent to Spain's Army of Flanders in this period. On

That part of the Spanish Road which lay within the Empire was sometimes used by the many Germans who served in Spain's Army of Flanders. These Germans were not--initially at least--rated as highly as the Spaniards in that force. However, they proved reliable and supplied a substantial proportion of the Army of Flanders for most of its existence, usually outnumbering the Spaniards and second only to the local Walloons: in 1572 and again in 1640 Germans comprised one-third of the infantry of the Army of Flanders. Indeed, it could be argued that in terms of composition (rather than direction) the Army of Flanders was more a "German" than a Spanish army. In contrast with the system of recruitment by commission, successive Spanish monarchs (or Captains-General in Flanders) obtained soldiers from Germany for the Army of Flanders by means of deals with independent contractors: in 1568 the Duke of Alba took on again (to fight the prince of Orange) German troops hired to oppose the iconoclasts of 1566 and which had been dismissed once that threat had been dealt with. But Germans were not always available, particularly when alternative military employment could be had, as during the Austro-Turk war of 1593-1606. Parker also identified changes in the geographical origins of German recruits for the Army of Flanders. After 1621, more men were supplied from the territories of the Catholic princes nearest to Flanders (including for example Cologne, Munster, and Trier), although Lutherans were apparently being recruited in Hamburg in the late 1640s. Among the attractions for the Spanish king and his commanders of German troops was the fact that (in the late 1570s at least) they were the only units not to mutiny when money ran out. On the other hand, some Germans defected to the Dutch (as happened for example in 1607). Demobilization was perhaps the occasion when German units suffered most at the hands of their Spanish paymasters, sometimes having to wait years for what was due them: the infantry regiment of count Berlaymont, demobilized in 1580 were promised their arrears within two years but received their last payment--which did not settle the debt--only in 1598. But not all Germans were dismissed from the Spanish service. For some, the end of fighting in the Low Countries was followed by their removal to Spain itself: as in the 1630s and 1640s, in the 1660s (when the Army of Flanders was reduced following the peace of the Pyrenees of 1659), many of the Germans serving in the Army of Flanders were dispatched to Spain, for the (abortive as it turned out) reconquest of Portugal. Germans continued to play a large part in the defense of the Spanish monarchy well after 1665 (although this is not Parker's subject).

Parker has taken the opportunity of this second edition to update the first. He incorporates some of the findings--published and unpublished--of a number of more recent works on the armies of early- seventeenth-century Spain, including the scholarship of Ruth McKay and Fernando Gonzalez de Leon. Occasionally, this incorporation leads Parker to modify his text; he mentions, for example, Gonzalez de Leon's argument that senior commanders may have played a larger (if covert) role in the mutinies

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Storrs on Parker, 'The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars'. H-German. 09-30-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/44320/storrs-parker-army-flanders-and-spanish-road-1567-1659-logistics Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-German of their men than Parker allowed in the first edition. Some of the terminology has changed. Logistics, for example, has been rebranded Grand Strategy; the chapter originally titled "The Army of Flanders and logistics" is now renamed "The Army of Flanders and Grand Strategy." More significantly, Parker himself declares that if he was to do the book from scratch, he would want to include something on combat effectiveness, reflecting a greater sympathy on the part of historians of war for battle, for "drums and trumpets," than when the book was published thirty years ago. It is to be regretted that Parker did not take the opportunity--perhaps his publishers did not allow it--to add a chapter revealing the Army of Flanders in action, and demonstrating its combat effectiveness (or otherwise). In fact Parker's book is fundamentally the same as originally published, complete with extremely useful maps and other illustrations, graphs, and a wealth of tabulated data (on army size, march times, remittances of funds for the Army of Flanders from Spain) in the many appendices. Indeed, the most substantial rewrite, of the introduction, is effected in order to restate Parker's interpretation of the crucial role of thetrace italienne and the artillery fortress in transforming warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He does so not least because this is an argument which has attracted critical comment on the part of some other historians.[2] Nevertheless, the debate about the trace italienne does not intrude unduly in a monograph which has worn well, which remains a major contribution to our understanding of Spain's armies in the era of Spanish hegemony in Europe, and whose reappearance is therefore greatly to be welcomed.

Notes

[1]. G. Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; 2nd ed., 1996).

[2]. Those who wish to immerse themselves in this debate should look at M.S. Kingra, "The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution during the Eighty Years War, 1567-1648,"Journal of Military History 57 (1993), pp. 431-46; and the various contributions to C.J. Rogers, ed.,The Military Revolution Debate (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); and Parker's afterword in the second edition of his Military Revolution, pp. 155-175 (esp. p. 163-72).

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Citation: Christopher Storrs. Review of Parker, Geoffrey, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars. H-German, H-Net Reviews. August, 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11108

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