CENTRAL ORGANISATION

One of the most striking developments in late medieval European society proved to be the ability, found at least among the monarchies of England, France, and Spain, to make military power more effective through proper organisation. The demands of long periods of war, while requiring some response, also provided opportunities. All over Europe, in Italy and in Iberia, in France as well as in England, armies, answering the demands made of them by increasingly powerful masters who controlled the purse strings, grew to meet the needs of the times. In Italy, Florence and Venice were, by the fourteenth century, dictating terms and conditions of service and pay to the condottieri, who brought their private bands to serve them. In such circumstances, continuity of organisation was essential; it had to exist in peace time as in war. It needed structures of personnel; it needed, too, continuity among decision-makers who had themselves to be servants of the state, which alone had the right to decide its military policy in the light of its wider interests. Although they did it in different ways, both Florence and Venice acted together in the essential task of making the pursuit of war a matter of state, which became, in these and in other instances, the paymaster.

Among the monarchies of Europe, much the same story can be told; the differences are mainly ones of degree. In Spain, it was the crown which provided the essential continuity required to pursue the long war of reconquest against the Moors.