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III. The Character of the Nine Years War, 1688–97

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

George Clark
George Clark
Affiliation:
Provost of Oriel College, Oxford
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Extract

In a book published twenty years ago, the present writer expressed the following opinion on the European wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: ‘It was not that the wars of that period meant less in expense and suffering than those of later times. Armies and navies were smaller, and even smaller in proportion to the number of the peoples; but they were as large as the poorer and simpler societies of those days could afford. In every great war there was some state that fought until it came within sight of revolution at home.’ The purpose of the present article is to consider, for the special case of the Nine Years War, whether this opinion may still be maintained or ought to be modified in the light of the many relevant publications of the intervening twenty years. The words quoted above relate to the social and economic aspects of the wars, but these, of course, cannot be entirely detached from the military aspects, and it will be well to begin by stating an assumption as to these military aspects. This assumption is that those who directed the fighting, whether on land or on sea, apart from such exceptions as the weaknesses of human nature must always occasion, fought to win and fought as hard as they could. For the present purpose this will be assumed, but it is not accepted as true by all historians. Some of them have applied to this period a famous sentence of Gibbon: ‘in War the European forces are exercised by temperate and undecisive contests’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , 1954 , pp. 168 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1954

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References

1 The Later Stuarts (1934), p. 405.

2 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xviii. DrToynbee, A. J. in quoting this sentence in his Study of History, iv (1939), p. 148Google Scholar, places it before a passage which it follows and does not indicate that the two are separated by some intervening paragraphs.

3 Boswell in Holland (1952), pp. 38, 165. Rose was a Scottish gentleman afterwards in Anglican or Scottish orders.

4 Huizinga, J., ‘Homo Ludens’ (1940), in Verzamelde Werken, v (1950), pp. 117–33.Google Scholar

5 Marlborough, ii (1934), p. 114.Google Scholar

6 L'éducation militaire de Napoléon (1901), pp. 1–28; L'infanterie au XVIIIe siècle (1907), pp. 2, 23, 30; Les transformations de la guerre (1911), pp. 162, 169–72. The last named is a popular book and restates the theses of the others, sometimes in the same words but sometimes less guardedly.

7 Voltaire (1872), p. 163.

8 The late André, L., Louis XIV et l'Europe (1950), especially pp. 244, 272Google Scholar. This is a volume in M. Henri Berr's series ‘L'évolution de l'humanité’. The second edition of the Louis XIV in the series ‘Peuples et civilisations’ by P. Sagnac and A. de Saint-Léger was published in the preceding year; it supports the same conclusion.

9 Krieg und Kapitalismus (1913); Moderne Kapitalismus, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (1916–28).

10 (1940), p. 231.

11 The partial exception of the schemes for perpetual peace, for instance that in Rachel, S., De Jure Naturae et Gentium Dissertationes (1676)Google Scholar, does not invalidate this generalization

12 Commons' Journals, xii, p. 71.

13 Ibid, xii, pp. 432ff.

14 These words occur in the Supplément au détail de la France, not, as is stated by Silberner, E. (La guerre dans la pensée économique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (1939), p. 50)Google Scholar in the Détail itself. The Supplément was published in or after 1707: Cadet, F., Pierre de Boisguillebert (1871), pp. 74, 423–4Google Scholar, correcting pp. 158, 167, 263, 267 of Daire, E., Économistes financiers du XVIIIe siècle (1843)Google Scholar, in which the two works are reprinted. Although incautiously worded, the passages in question meant, reasonably enough, that fiscal reform need not wait for the peace, and they represent Boisguillebert's original view of 1697.

15 This subject was treated in a book by the present writer: The Dutch Alliance and the War against French Trade (1924). For corrections to be made in this book, particularly in the light of later research, see the Appendix to the present article, p. 180 below.

16 Treaty of Nijmegen, 1678, articles 15 and 19; Marine Treaty of 10 August 1678, article 39.

17 For the legal aspect of this decree see van Bijnkershoek, C., Quaestiones Juris Publici (1737)Google Scholar, lib. i, c. 2. The Dutch States General retaliated with decrees of 2 and 29 October 1690 forbidding enemy subjects to commence personal actions in courts of law.

18 A brief account of this is given in Clark, G. N., ‘Anglo-Dutch relations of Commercial Policy and the Nine Years War’ in Verslag van de algernene vergadering van het Historisch Genootschap (1932).Google Scholar

19 For this provision and for earlier examples of prohibitions of all trade with an enemy, see Jessup, P. C. and Deák, F., Neutrality, i (1935), ch. iv, especially p. 113.Google Scholar

20 Law and Custom of the Sea, ed. R. G. Marsden (Navy Records Society, 1916), ii, pp. 132ff.

21 The commissioners in 1694 were or included the dukes of Leeds and Shrewsbury, the earl of Bridgewater, Viscount Dursley and Sir Henry Goodricke (Cal. Treasury Books, 1693–6, x, ii (1935), p. 636.

22 For a discussion of the origin and nature of these laws or customs see Bernard, M., ‘The Growth of Laws and Usages of War’ in Oxford Essays (1856)Google Scholar. I have not found any important discussion of them earlier than the 18th, 20th and 22nd chapters of Moser's, J. J.Versuch des neuesten Europäischen Völker-Rechts (1779)Google Scholar, the plan of which precludes references to the period before 1740.

23 See the names in the cartels printed in Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, vii, pts. 1 and ii. These are scarcely more than a chance collection: Du Mont printed those already included in collections of documents and those which happened to be available in feuilles volantes (see pt. i, p. 292, pt. ii, p. 270.) A wider collection or calendar would be useful.

24 The text is in Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, vii, ii, p. 310. It may be noted that the Circles of Swabia, Bavaria and Franconia had made a treaty of alliance in consequence of the danger to them from the south if France and Savoy were to make peace (Mont, Du, Lettres historiques (1692), p. 336)Google Scholar; for the text of this see Corps diplomatique, VII, ii, p. 289.

25 Since shells and chain-shot had long been used as ammunition for artillery, the whole passage presumably refers to projectiles fired from muskets, and this part of it to projectiles of other than spherical shape, perhaps including wire used in some way for this purpose.

26 Ehrman, J., The Navy in the War of William III (1953), p. 137.Google Scholar

27 For observations on these in their social setting see Beloff, M., Public Order and Popular Disturbances, 1660–1714 (1938), pp. 43, 113–14Google Scholar.

28 This matter is fully treated by Mr Ehrman, op. cit.

29 See King, J. E., Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV (1949)Google Scholar.

30 The best brief account of this major occurrence is probably still that of Martin, H., Histoire de France, xiv (1865), pp. 104–6.Google Scholar

31 Macaulay, , The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, ed. Firth, v (1914), pp. 2526, 2534–6Google Scholar, tells the story, but says that the two garrisons were sent as prisoners to France. The point was that in breach of a cartel some of them had been induced to take service in the French army; see Klopp, O., Der Fall des Houses Stuart, vii (1879), p. 99.Google Scholar

32 Lee, R., Treatise of Captures in War (1759), p. 245Google Scholar, citing The Dutch Mercury (1690), P. 245.

33 Correspondent van Willem III en Bentinck, ed. N. Japikse, ii, iii (1937), p. 235.

34 Res. stat. gen. 24 February 1696, in Groot Placcaet Boek 1. 1. 17. 5; see Bijnkershoek, bk. 1, ch. 3, where it is explained as a survival of the right to kill the vanquished, ch. 17, and where ‘Groningani’ are stated to have acted on this decree on 14 March 1696.

35 ‘het welwezen van gansch Europa’ to Heinsius 1689/90 in Archives de la maison d'Orange-Nassau, 3rd ser., 1 (1907), p. 45.

36 Ibid. p. 78.

37 Treaty between Louis XIV and the States General, in Vast, H., Les grands traités du règne de Louis XIV, ii (1898), p. 190.Google Scholar

38 Treaties of Louis XIV with Spain and the Emperor, ibid. pp. 214, 230.

39 It does not appear that the direct casualties of the war were of importance from the demographic point of view. Bodart, G., Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)Google Scholar, estimates the total French killed and wounded at 160,000, and those of the opponents of France at more than 200,000, but does not show how he reaches these figures.

40 The locus classicus is the relazione of the Venetian Venier quoted by Ranke, , Französische Geschichte in Sämmtliche Werke, 3rd ed., xii (1877), p. 319.Google Scholar

41 The Rev. Oliver Heywood, his Autobiography, Diaries, etc., ed. Turner, J. H., iv (1885), p. 174Google Scholar, under the date 16 March 1697. It may be noted that Professor J. A. van Houtte in a recent and careful estimate of the degree of economic prosperity in the Spanish Netherlands in the seventeenth century, confirms the accepted view: Mededeelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamsche Akademie, Klasse der letteren, Jaarg. xv (1953), no. 8, pp. 20–1.

42 For this see von Srbik, H. Ritter, Die staatliche Exporthandel Österreichs (1907), pt. iv.Google Scholar