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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2010
THE MILITARY LEGACY
The royal army was not created de novo for the purpose of fighting the civil wars. On the contrary, there were important aspects of the army as it existed at mid-century that could not and would not be modified as the wars unfolded. Some of these inherited aspects would make the royal army a formidable fighting force and contribute in large measure to its successes. But, as we shall see, some of these same continuities as well as other inherited features represented weaknesses and rigidities that, exacerbated by civil war, would significantly limit the army's effectiveness and contribute to its failures.
Weakness and limitations were probably not, however, on the mind of King Henry II of France as he and his retinue arrived at the village of Pierrepont, in Picardy, to review the royal army, on August 8, 1558 — near the midpoint of the last of the Hapsburg—Valois wars that had disturbed Europe's international affairs for more than half a century. According to François de Rabutin, the future historian of those wars, and one of the men-at-arms present at the review,
The king came to Pierrepont to see his army arrayed and ordered in battle formation, the place being, as I have said, convenient for the assembly of one of the finest and most complete armies ever put in the field by a king of France.
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