Sunday 13 July 2014
Many people seem to be interested in how the Europeans were so successful militarily. They reach simplistic erroneous conclusions such as that the Europeans all had guns and everybody else did not.
While there were certainly other factors at play, such as sophisticated use of sea power and siegecraft, and early attempts to develop military theory, there was one factor that contributed more than any other.
It is important to bear in mind that the primary weapon of an army is and always has been organisation.
Weapons and tactics are less important in the grand scheme of things. Even inferior weapons can get the job done, and minor tactics can be adapted quickly, indeed can be invented on the spot, by armies with sufficient cohesion.
The great advantage European armies possessed in the early modern age was discipline. It is worthwhile to briefly describe this phenomenon.
European armies consistently bested those of the Middle-East and India even when in inferior numbers, following the Thirty Years' War.
This was not because European weapons or tactics were intrinsically superior, it was because Europeans moved and acted as a unit. And they were drilled to the point of being able to accept significant casualties without breaking.
As other Europeans quickly adopted these systems during and after the Thirty Years' War, which saw the rise of permanent standing armies in Europe, it was less dramatic in contests between European states. The Prussians under Frederick appeared to have achieved little, but that was because their opponents were other Europeans, primarily Austrians. In reality the Prussian Army could have annihilated any state outside of Europe with ridiculous ease, if they had ever fought.
Following the Thirty Years' War the first effects of the new European system were to be witnessed in battles against the Turks. During the Austro-Turkish War of 1663-1664, the Austrians bested the Turks, including most famously at St. Gotthard. This was a prelude to the complete subordination of the Turkish system during the Great Turkish War of 1683-1699.
So why did the Austrians win? Prior to the Thirty Years' War the Austrians fought roughly the same way the Turks had. Both raised temporary levies or mercenaries who would engage haphazardly in a ferocious melée and then be disbanded at the end of campaigning season because the bureaucracy wasn't able to afford permanent establishments.
This changed with Austrian participation in the Thirty Years' War. During that conflict Albrecht von Wallenstein created a permanent standing Austrian Army which was never to be disbanded again until the empire's dissolution in 1918.
This army was drilled to perfection, or near to it anyway. And the Austrians were to apply its advantages in the east.
The Turks continued to fight using undisciplined irregulars for the most part, with the Janissaries in the vanguard. The Turkish victories prior to 1663 were dependent upon the training and fury of the Janissary in individual combat, and augmented by sheer numbers.
European forces, usually outnumbered, lacked the cohesion to withstand charging Turkish forces. So the Turks frequently broke holes in European lines and filtered through like a rushing torrent to surround and destroy European armies piecemeal.
Starting with Montecuccoli and the Austrian Army, this was no longer sufficient, or at least it could be countered.
Montecuccoli recognised that Austrian cavalry and skirmishers were inferior to their Turkish counterparts, so these were deployed within the infantry. The infantry was formed in deep formation protected by long pikes and chevaux de frise against cavalry.
Whereas the Austrians would often adopt looser formations against Western opponents, to take advantage of their Hungarian light cavalry, and their famous light infantry like Pandours, Grenzers, and Jägers, against the Turks they fought in very tight formations.
This erased the only advantage the Turks had. The Austrians were now disciplined enough to withstand charges by the Turks, and the Turks could no longer infiltrate through gaps in the Austrian lines. They could swarm around the Austrian body, but so long as this held the Turkish mass could be itself struck down in detail.
Unable to coordinate effectively, Austrian generals were consistently able to concentrate against one or other Turkish wing and annihilate it. Once one flank was destroyed the Austrians were able to concentrate on the other to drive that off too.
In such a way were battles like Slankamen and Zenta won. Austrian discipline allowed them to concentrate quickly in one spot, the inability of the Turks to retain effective command over their undisciplined masses meant that Turkish commanders were unable to oppose this overwhelming concentration at the critical point and were helpless to prevent their armies being defeated one segment at a time.
These tactics were copied by the Russians, who improved upon them by forming square, such as at Kagul. Forming square also allowed Napoleon to win at the Embabeh, where the outnumbered French absolutely annihilated their Egyptian opponents.
Prince Eugene had advised that the tight formation be maintained even in pursuit of the enemy. The Turks scored a few successes by feigning retreat which caused the Austrians to foolishing break ranks, allowing the Turks to get between their units. To avoid this, Eugene specified that the Turks were to be pursued by cavalry only, for if these were routed they could always fall back on the infantry. If the infantry were routed the battle was lost.
The Turks as individual soldiers remained fearsome, as they always had been. They had no shortage of bravery or resolution. Indeed they were oftentimes described at fanatic. Their weapons remained good, especially their artillery. Their engineering and fortifications were fantastic, Montecuccoli noted that their fortified camps were much the superior of the Austrian counterparts.
But they failed to work as a collective. The Turks, especially the Janissaries, would not form column or line. They would not hold formation, and they would not obey commands for more complicated manoeuvres. Once battle was joined there was no controlling them.
Turkish sultans were not unaware of this fact, and repeated attempts were made to reform the army along European lines, but the resistance of the Janissaries was too great. These attempts at restructuring weren't helped by occasional success against incompetent opponents.
For example Wilhelm Neipperg allowed his formation to become too loose at Grocka, the far superior numbers of Turks broke through his ranks and threw the Austrians off the field in disarray. Peter the Great very unwisely crossed the Pruth into Moldavia while leaving the Turks free in the Dobrudzha. With their left flank protected by the curve of the Danube, the Turks were able to cross the Danube to the north between Dobrudzha and Bessarabia, and thereby cut Peter's communications with Russia. Trapped on the right (west) bank of the Pruth, unable to recross into Bessarabia or move forward over the Danube or Sareth, Peter was compelled to capitulate his entire army.
While the enormous numbers of Turkish irregulars in these instances proved useful and showed that the Turks could still win using their own methods, the reality was they could only do so in exceptional circumstances and usually only when their opponent made a serious misstep. A general like Traun or Khevenhüller would not have lost at Grocka as Neipperg had. Russian generals like Potemkin and Rumyantsev learned from Peter to always secure their communications and prevent the Turks from crossing the Danube behind them.
After the Russo-Turkish War of 1735-1739, therefore, the Turks scored very few successes. By 1806 the primary defence of the Ottoman Empire, as British Colonel Francis Chesney noted, was its territories' own lack of provisions south of the Danube. The Russians were prevented from marching over the Balkans not because of Turkish resistance but because their logistics were insufficient to feed them this far away from home with such inadequate roads.
This was changed by 1828 with the existence of the Russian Black Sea fleet and its ability to escort provisions to Varna and Burgas by sea.
By that time the sultans had already been frantically reforming the Ottoman military structure that finally culminated with the destruction and disbanding of the Janissaries forever in 1826.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that up to that time the Turks were losing because they were too few or because their weapons were inferior. Turkish soldiers remained competent, Turkish generals learned to use their resources cleverly, such as in 1788 against Joseph II. Austrian and Russian generals were much impressed by their individual qualities. But their inability to create a true professional standing army frustrated their efforts.
This same factor affected the Indians against the British. Indian armies were often very large, often had more cannons than the British, but they nonetheless were consistently defeated by superior British discipline. What's striking here is that the East India Company quickly created its own standing army funded by taxes taken from the administration of an ever growing territory and manned by native Indians. Though officered and commanded by British, the Indian Army was Indian in rank and file, but they were able to crush their co-nationals due to superior organisation.
So the idea that Europeans showed up with guns and killed all the peaceful sword wielding natives is a myth. This was true, to an extent, in the Americas, at least in the early stages. But in the east it was definitely not the case. The sophisticated Muslim states had long been using gunpowder, even longer than the Europeans had been using it. The Janissaries were using primitive muskets as early as the fifteenth century when Europeans were still charging with knights. And the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans also had advanced gunpowder weapons.
So when one looks for why Europeans succeeded, it was not because of just guns. It was because of their institutions. European bureaucracies emerged from the Thirty Years' War as institutions to create and maintain permanent standing armies. This was not the case anywhere else. There were no career soldiers, besides officers. Troops were raised for campaign and then sent home afterwards to save the treasury the expense of feeding them and to harvest crops to increase tax yields.
Sophisticated European fiscal structures allowed them to pay for trained armies in perpetuity, and to continuously drill and train them even in peacetime. And this was Europe's advantage over all other peoples.
Undisciplined Turkish forces were defeated by the Austrians as a result of the total military revolution during the Thirty Years' War, and Peter the Great was perceptive enough to realise the advantage of the German system, which he had the Germans teach to his soldiers. Henceforth the Austrians and Russians were far the superiors of the Turks and consistently defeated them until the Nizam-i Cedid in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Turks were themselves more resilient than many, and where they suffered setbacks, other less advanced opponents succumbed to the Europeans entirely.
These same factors favoured the Romans in their wars against the barbarians, and favoured the Macedonians under Alexander in their wars against the Persians. Indeed the Europeans after the fall of Rome relied upon a system of contractual service in order to save money, as knights were obliged to appear on the field when summoned, and bring some of their peasants too.
While this saved the king money, for the knights paid for their own equipment, it made for poor cohesion. The Turks were initially invincible because the knights had no discipline, and examples abound, like Nicopolis in 1396, where impetuous knights took it upon themselves to charge the Turks without support, and were cut down by overwhelming numbers.
Gradually this was replaced by a system of mercenaries, who were much better, but extremely expensive and very unreliable. Mercenaries frequently switched sides if bribed, and oftentimes refused to fight if their pay was in arrears.
So even as late as the Long War which ended in 1606, the Austrians did not dare face the Turks in the open field.
But very quickly, in the space of less than fifty years, the Turks went from being unstoppable to being incapable of securing hardly any victory at all, which is quite shocking in retrospect.
Thereafter one is struck by the number of victories gained against the Turks despite the much greater numbers of the latter. At Peterwardein the Austrians defeated 150,000 Turks with 60,000 of their own men. On the River Larga the Russian defeated the Turks numbering over 80,000 with less than 40,000 men. This could not possibly have been due to the Russians having guns and cannons, for the Turks had them too.
Instead it was due to their organisation. The fanatic Turkish assault was like a wave crashing against rocks, submerging them, but not damaging them. The Russians stood their ground and smashed sections of the Turkish forces until the latter panicked and ran away.
Pictured is the assault on the Turkish fortress of Ochakov by the Russians under Grigori Potemkin in December of 1788.
- Kaiser
PS - It should also be noted that the Russians used the bayonet more than they used the musket in these later conflicts. Exemplary Russian generals like Suvorov and Rumyantsev even advised closing with the bayonet as the Russians had the advantage in close combat. If the Russians had superiority in firearms, that was a strange way of showing it.
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