1. For a discussion of the characteristics of standing armies and an analysis of the general conditions that provoked their establishment, see Mears, John A., “The Emergence of the Standing Professional Army in Seventeenth-Century Europe,” Social Science Quarterly 50 (1969): 106–15.Google Scholar

2. Frauenholz, Eugen von, Deutsche Kriegs- und Heeresgeschichte (Munich, 1927), 98.Google Scholar

3. Meier-Welcker, Hans, Deutsches Heereswesen in Wandel der Zeit (Frankfurt a.M., 1956), 9.Google Scholar

4. Delbrück, Hans, Geschichte der Kriegkunst in Rahmen der politischen Geschichte, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1920), 4: 262, 271Google Scholar. Particular credit for French advances belongs to Michel Le Tellier. See André, Louis, Michel Le Tellier et l'organisation de l'armée monarchique (Paris, 1906).Google Scholar

5. Walton, Colonel Clifford, History of the British Standing Army, A.D. 1660–1700 (London, 1896), 1–14.Google Scholar

6. Fay, Sidney B., “The Beginning of the Standing Army in Prussia,” American Historical Review 22 (1917): 768–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. The standard work on the Prussian army is Jany, Curt, Geschichte der königlichen preussischen Armee, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1928–1933).Google Scholar

8. An analysis of efforts to organize standing armies in Württemberg, Hesse, Saxony, and Bavaria can be found in Carsten, F. L., Princes and Parliaments in Germany from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), 74–99, 182–83, 239–40, 397–403, 409–10Google Scholar.

9. While few projects have been completed or are even being planned on the Austrian military establishment prior to the reign of Maria Theresa, a number of informative monographs and journal articles have been written by Thomas M. Barker. See his Double Eagle and Crescent: Vienna's Second Turkish Siege in Its Historical Setting (Albany, N.Y., 1967)Google Scholar, which contains a basic description of the Austrian army in the late seventeenth century; and Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy: Essays on War, Society and Government in Austria, 1618–1780 (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

10. Holborn, Hajo, A History of Modern Germany, 3 vols. (New York, 1959–1969), 2: 47.Google Scholar

11. Evans, R. J. W., The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), 447Google Scholar. Evans concedes that the army is “a neglected subject,” but nonetheless mentions it only briefly in his effort to explain the rise of the Habsburg monarchy. See vii–viii, 149.

12. A three-stage schema—the establishment of basic institutions (1522–1625), the development of the standing army (1625–1743), the era of reform (1744–1815)—has been proposed by Rothenberg, Gunther E., The Army of Francis Joseph (Lafayette, Ind., 1976), 1.Google Scholar

13. Hummelberger, Walter, “Der Dreissigjährige Krieg und die Entstehung des Kaiserlichen Heeres,” in Unser Heer: 300 jahre Österreichisches Soldatentum in Krieg und Frieden (Vienna, 1963), 1, 28, 34Google Scholar. When referring to 300 years, Hummelberger had in mind the period 1618–1918.

14. Heischmann, Eugen, Die Anfänge des stehenden Heeres in Österreich (Vienna, 1925), 222–23.Google Scholar

15. Regele, Oskar, Der österreichische Hofkriegsrat, 1556–1848 (Vienna, 1949), 17.Google Scholar

16. Wrede, Major Alphons Freiherrn von, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht, 5 vols. (Vienna, 1898–1905). 1: 30Google Scholar. The Wrede volumes contain a great deal of information about the early history of the Austrian army, although much of it is presented in an undigested form.

17. Heischmann, 222.

18. Zimmermann, Jürg, Mililärverwaltung und Heeresaufbringung in Österreich bis 1806, vol. 3 of Handbuch zur Deutschen Militärgeschichte, 1648–1939 (Frankfurt a. M., 1965), 47.Google Scholar

19. Wrede, 1: 30; and Meynert, Hermann, Geschichte der k. k. österreichischen Armee, 4 vols. (Vienna, 1854), 3: 77.Google Scholar

20. Redlich, Fritz, The German Military Enterpriser and His Work Force, Beiheft no. 47 and no. 48 of Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1964–1965), 47: 317–18.Google Scholar

21. Meynert, 3: 77.

22. Wrede, 3: 107; and Heischmann, 9, 222. Heischmann stresses the continuity of the k. k. army from 1618 onward.

23. Fellner, Thomas and Kretschmayr, Heinrich, Die Österreichische Zentralverwaltung, 2 parts (Vienna, 1907), pt. 1, vol. 1: 252Google Scholar; and Wrede, 1: 13.

24. Hellbling, E. C., Österreichische Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte (Vienna, 1956), 246–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kann, Robert A., A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1523–1918 (Berkeley, 1974), 132–33.Google Scholar

25. For a representative sample of opinions, see Rothenberg, 1; Hummelberger, 3; Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 4; Alten, George v., Handbuch für Heer und Floote, 10 vols. (Berlin, 1914), 6: 922Google Scholar; and Fedrigotti, Anton Graf Bossi, Österreichs Blutweg (Berlin, 1939), 11.Google Scholar

26. Consult Professor Trevor-Roper's article with that title in Past and Present 16 (1959): 31–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Overall Crisis of the European Economy in the Seventeenth Century,” Past and Present 5 (1954): 33–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the initial formulation of this concept. A convenient collection of seminal essays is contained in Aston, Trevor, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (London, 1965)Google Scholar. To this volume there is a sequel: Parker, Geoffrey and Smith, Lesley M., eds., The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1978)Google Scholar. While spirited debate has encouraged specialists to formulate a variety of provocative theories about the meaning of the seventeenth century, recurring discussion has remained largely inconclusive, sustaining the observations of Elliott, J. H. in “Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 42 (1969): 35–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Rabb, Theodore K., The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. An excellent summary of the historiography related to the “general crisis” controversy can be found in chapters 2 and 3. Representative reviews of Rabb's book have been written by Koenigsberger, H. G. in The Times Literary Supplement, 27 08. 1976, 1057Google Scholar; and by Parker, Geoffrey in History 62 (1977): 316–17Google Scholar. Rabb's discussion of art has received noticeably heavy criticism. See the reaction of Haskell, Francis in the New York Review of Books 24, no. 4 (17 03. 1977): 8–10Google Scholar. Professor Koenigsberger argued that the Rabb volume is weak in answering the question of how the “crisis” ended, but he nonetheless saw Rabb's approach as “the most ambitious attempt yet made to see the seventeenth century as a whole.”

28. Rabb, 35–37. Here Rabb's assessments dovetail with those of William H. McNeill, who, in his relentless search for broad patterns, stressed the importance of the decades on either side of 1500 as a fundamental dividing point in European history. See The Shape of European History (New York, 1974), 122–27.Google Scholar

29. Rabb, 3–4, 32–34, 71–72. The notion of an abrupt shift in direction around the middle of the seventeenth century has been a part of the “crisis” thesis from the very outset. Consider the comments in Trevor-Roper, 31–36. More recently, Lewis W. Spitz, in constructing a case for the internal unity and cohesion of the period 1300–1650, found support in Rabb's formulations for his contention that the mid-seventeenth century stood as the terminus ad quern for the age of Renaissance and Reformation. See “Periodization in History: Renaissance and Reformation,” in Delzell, Charles F., ed., The Future of History (Nashville, 1977), 209.Google Scholar

30. The “struggle for stability” theme parallels William H. McNeill's insightful overview of the seventeenth century. McNeill has depicted the years around 1650 as marking the start of a new era, when “institutions and ideas settled toward an effective equilibrium” through a series of tacit compromises that softened, disguised, or repressed the disruptive conflicts of the Reformation era. See The Rise of the West (Chicago, 1963), 654–55, 674–93.Google Scholar

31. Here Rabb has relied heavily upon ideas summarized in Roberts, Michael, “The Military Revolution, 1560–1660,” in Essays in Swedish History (Minneapolis, 1967), 195–225.Google Scholar

32. Rabb, 35, 60–61, 71. The essential element in this process of interaction was the incorporation of the army into the state as a lasting institution which, if it was composed for the most part of foreign mercenaries, nonetheless should be linked firmly to the prince whom it served. The connection between political and military forms was especially close in Brandenburg-Prussia where the needs of the army determined in large part “the institutional framework, economic activity and even social organization,” and where, as has often been said, the army made the state. See Craig, Gordon, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (New York, 1964), xiv, 14Google Scholar. But the relationship between the two existed throughout western and Central Europe in the seventeenth century.

33. Rabb, 75–77, 119–21, 124, 145. This hypothesis, when considered by itself, does not seem entirely persuasive, at least as Rabb has presented it in his disappointingly brief concluding observations.

34. For a more extended consideration of this theme, consult Howard, Michael, War in European History (New York, 1976), 49–55Google Scholar. Also see McNeill, The Shape of European History, 145–49.

35. Rabb, 121–24, 148–49.

36. Wiesflecker, Hermann, Kaiser Maximilian I, 5 vols. (Munich, 1971–1986), 2: 175–201Google Scholar; 3: 228–54.

37. Instructive questions about this problem are raised by Hans Sturmberger, especially in his penetrating synthesis entitled Kaiser Ferdinand II und das Problem des Absolutismus in Österreich (Vienna, 1957).Google Scholar

38. Professor Bireley presented this view in an unpublished paper entitled “Ideology and Politics in the Thirty Years' War: The Importance of the Peace of Prague (1635),” which he read at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Dallas, Texas (December 1977).

39. Redlich, 228–29.

40. Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250; Zimmermann, 50.

41. Schwarz, Harry, The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1943), 28.Google Scholar

42. For an extensive treatment of the strife in Upper Austria, consult Sturmberger, Hans, Adam Graff Herberstorff: Herrschaft und Freiheit im konfessionallen Zeitalter (Vienna, 1976), chaps. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

43. Pribram, A. F., “Die niederösterreichische Stände und die Krone in Zeit Kaiser Leopold I.,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 14 (1893): 595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 249.

45. Hellbling, 245.

46. Meynert, 3: 42.

47. Quoted in both Zimmermann, 50, and Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250.

48. Hellbling, 245; Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250–51.

49. Redlich, 226–27. Discussion of the problem of mercenaries and the growth of the modern state can be found in Kiernan, V. G., “Foreign Mercenaries and Absolute Monarchy,” in Aston, 140–49.Google Scholar

50. Pirchegger, Hans, Geschichte und Kulturleben Deutschösterreichs, 3 vols. (Vienna, 1931), 2: 141Google Scholar; and Grindley, Anton, “Waldsteins Vertrag mit dem Kaiser bei der Übernahme des Zweiten Generalats,” Abhandlung der Böhmische Geschichtsverein der Wissenschaft 7 (1889): 9–10Google Scholar. See also Ritter, Moriz, “Das Kontributionssystem Wallensteins,” Hisstorische Zeitschrift 90 (1903): 193–249Google Scholar; and Loewe, V., Die Organisation und Verwaltung der Wallensteinischen Heere (Freiburg i. Br., 1895).Google Scholar

51. For a detailed description of colonels as the proprietors of regiments, see Redlich, 211–21.

52. Meynert, 3: 76–77.

53. Grindley, 264; and Barker, Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy, 82.

54. Hellbling, 245; and Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 167.

55. Broucek, Peter, “Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm und der Oberbefehl über das kaiserliche Heer im Jahre 1645,” in Aus Drei Jahrhunderten: Beiträge zur österreichischen Heeres- und Kriegsgeschichte, in Schriften des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien (MilitärwissenschafiHches Institut), no. 4 (Vienna, 1969), 9.Google Scholar

56. Wrede, 1: 30.

57. Zimmermann, 50.

58. Wrede, 1: 60; and Redlich, 289–90. Motivated by the intensity of the Thirty Years' War in its final stages to place their soldiers on a permanent war footing and subordinate field commanders to centralized direction, princely governments throughout Europe implemented similar regulations after 1634.

59. Wrede, 3: 107.

60. Hummelberger, 37; Meynert, 3: 70, 75–77; and Mann, Golo, Wallenstein: His Life, trans. Kessler, Charles (New York, 1976), 586, 592.Google Scholar

61. The best description of the equipoise that emerged within the Habsburg power cluster following the Thirty Years' War can be found in Evans, vii, 109, 169, 447, For brief overviews, see McNeill, William H., Europe's Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 1964), 72–75, 126–27, 159–61Google Scholar; and Barker, Thomas, “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism: Habsburg Models,” Journal of European Studies 4 (1974): 29–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This perspective is generally reinforced by Bérenger, Jean, Finances et absolutisme autrichien dans le second moitié du XVII^e siècle (Pans, 1975).Google Scholar

62. Hellbling, 244; and Hintze, Otto, “Der österreichische und der preussische Beamtenstaat im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Historiche Zeitschrift 86 (1901): 406–7.Google Scholar

63. Most authorities underscore the impact of outside pressure, especially the threat of Turkish invasion, rather than internal forces of cohesion, in determining the political pattern of the monarchy and the distinctive character of its army. For an insightful treatment of the seminal connections between military defense and state building in the Inner Austrian duchies, where the threat of Ottoman attack was almost constant, read Winfried Schulze, Landesdejension und Staatsbildung: Studien zum Kriegswesen des innerösterreichischen Territorialstaates (1564–1619), in Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Neure Geschichte Österreichs, vol. 60 (Vienna, 1973).Google Scholar

64. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 207–8.

65. My understanding of these particular questions has been substantially enhanced by Reynold S. Koppel's unpublished essay entitled “Centralization and Reform Efforts in the Austrian Lands under Leopold I.”

66. Professor Barker has demonstrated that of the identifiable colonels who owned regiments in 1683, twenty-six percent stemmed from foreign mercenaries and favorites of the pre-1648 period, twenty-five percent represented large landowning families that had remained loyal to the dynasty during the Thirty Years' War, fourteen percent came from European princely houses, and thirty-five percent were individuals who had entered the Habsburg service following the Westphalian settlement. See “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism,” 36–37. The presence of so many foreigners undercut the capacity of the army to function as a centripetal force within the monarchy, despite its long-term importance in this regard. See the judgements of Jászi, Oscar, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1960), 491–92Google Scholar; and Zeman, Z.A.B., The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire (London, 1961), 39.Google Scholar

67. The riches to be derived from the traffic in military positions is illustrated by Franz Josef Graf Sereni, who paid 50,000 Rhinish Gulden to Philipp Jacob de la Porte for his dragoon regiment in 1693. One Venetian diplomat suggested that a generalship in the Austrian army had the equivalent value of an Italian duchy. Fiedler, Joseph, ed., “Die Relationen der Botschafter Venedigs über Deutschland und Österreich im Siebzehnten Jahrhundert,” Fontes rerum austriacarum (Zweite Abtheilung) 27 (1867): 188.Google Scholar

68. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 175; and Zimmermann, 50–51. Given the opportunities for promotion offered by the Inhaber system, Leopold's army facilitated economic and social advancement during the decades that coincide with Professor Rabb's period of quieting down and settlement, but military service seldom brought with it political influence at the Vienna court. Barker, Thomas M., “Václav Eusebius z Lobkovic (1609–1677): Military Entrepreneurship, Patronage and Grace,” Austrian History Yearbook 14 (1978): 45–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. Zimmermann, 50–51, 131–32. As a “subject that would repay further investigation,” Professor Rabb has pointed to “the mechanism whereby the aristocracy throughout Europe was transformed from an autonomous pressure group, demonstrating its power through its ability to withstand a prince or a sovereign, into a force for general control, closely linked with the central authority.” Military entrepreneurship, as it has been examined by Thomas Barker, was obviously an integral though by no means dominant part of this process in the Habsburg monarchy; and while “the realignment is usually seen from the center,” it involved much more than simply “a series of policies promulgated … by Leopold I.…” Rabb, 148–49.

70. Hoyos, Phillip, “Die Kaiserliche Armee 1648–1650,” in Der Dreissigjährige Krieg: Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte, in Schrifien des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien (Militärwissenschaftiliches Institut), no. 7 (Vienna, 1976), 171.Google Scholar

71. Quoted in Hoyos, 214.

72. These figures have been accepted by most authorities, including Meynert, 3: 165; Frauenholz, 114; and Hummelberger, , “Die Turkenkriege und Prinz Eugen,” in Unser Heer, 70Google Scholar. For somewhat lower estimates, see Hoyos, 210–11.

73. Hoyos, 170–83, 190–209, 214. Dr. Hoyos makes a case for the imperial Generalkriegskommissär, Ernst von Traun, as the key figure in all questions of army organization at the Vienna court in the immediate aftermath of the Thirty Years' War.

74. Effective state control over the new standing armies evoked administrative reform throughout western Europe. This problem is discussed by Roberts, 204–8.

75. Regele, 19; Zimmermann, 51.

76. Hellbling, 246.

77. In Professor Barker's view, Montecuccoli provides a “slightly variant” example of “the peculating, foreign-born professional soldier [who] was an indispensable person in the early absolutist state, which could scarcely have developed without the help of the standing army.” Consult “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism,” 41.

78. Convenient assessments of Montecuccoli's career, less familiar than those of Wallenstein and Prince Eugene, can be found in Barker, Thomas, The Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimondo Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years' War (Albany, 1975)Google Scholar, Parts One and Two; and Mears, John A., “Count Raimondo Montecuccoli: Servant of a Dynasty,” The Historian 32 (1970): 392–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79. See Feld's, M. D. discussion in “Review Essay: The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” Armed Forces and Society 6 (1980): 666–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “The aristocracy's almost universal domination of politics, society and culture in the late seventeenth century, a continent-wide ascent symbolized by the career of Eugene” is mentioned by Rabb, 118. For a thoughtful treatment of changes in the composition of the Bohemian nobility, which brought to the fore “generals and colonels in the Imperial army, military purveyors and entrepreneurs,” see Polisensky, J. V., War and Society in Europe, 1618–1648 (Cambridge, 1979), chap. 9.Google Scholar

80. Kann, 85. In the War of the Spanish Succession, and again in the first Turkish war of Charles VI's reign, distinguished imperial commanders won spectacular victories of continental import—battlefield triumphs that remained unsurpassed in the annals of Austrian history. Besides the conquests of distinguished generals like Margrave Louis of Baden and Count Guido Starhemberg, these include Eugene's own successes at Luzzara (1702) and Turin (1706) as well as his joint victories with Marlborough at Blenheim (1704), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709).

81. Craig, Gordon A., “Command and Staff Problems in the Austrian Army, 1740–1866,” in Howard, Michael, ed., The Theory and Practice of War (New York, 1965), 47, 53.Google Scholar

82. Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 2: 25. Similar claims have been made on behalf of Montecuccoli and Prince Eugene. For expressions of such claims from a variety of perspectives, see Barker, The Military Intellectual and Battle, 1; Jászi, 141; Zimmermann, 65; McNeill, Europe's Steppe Frontier, 160; and Hummelberger, , “Die Türkenkriege und Prinz Eugen,” in Unser Heer, 68Google Scholar. These disparities in the judgements of leading scholars can be explained by the seventy-five year gap between the decades of the Thirty Years' War, when permanent military establishments began to coalesce throughout western and Central Europe, and the opening decades of the eighteenth century, when the new discipline and uniformity finally gave European armies something approaching a modern character. See Wolf, John B., The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685–1715 (New York, 1951), 8.Google Scholar

83. Broucek, Peter, “Feldmarschall Bucquoy als Armeekommandant 1618–1620,” Der Dreissigjährige Krieg, 25.Google Scholar

84. Rabb, 34, 71–72. See also Barker, Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy, 82.