8 - The pressures and temptations of service

Summary

It has already been argued that the regimental officers were provided by the king with an administrative system which, despite mistakes in policy, improved considerably in the years around the War of Devolution, in the aftermath of the Dutch War, and again in the first years of the Nine Years War, but that did not mean life was easy. In fact to a young man who had never experienced the military misery of Mazarin's years, service to the king in the Dutch War and Nine Years War could seem very arduous. The difficulties of service were only compounded by the persistence of a self-regulating noble and officer culture which the crown found particularly hard to control. King and ministers knew full well that disciplinary problems persisted, and the degree of licence was linked both to standards of social behaviour accepted and internalised by the officers, and to financial problems – indeed the two might be linked, for social codes and expectations often brought about financial difficulties for officers which had little to do with specifically military considerations. All the same, membership of the nobility and of a brotherhood of officers could bring its own compensations: to cope with the strain of military life and to sustain their wider family interests, officers developed a complex variety of self-help and mutual assistance mechanisms, which were but half-constrained by changing notions of gentlemanly conduct encouraged by the crown.