Giant of the Grand Si Cle

An invisible giant the seventeeth-century French army was the largest and hungriest institution of the Bourbon monarchy; yet it has received incomplete treatment and is poorly understood. Combining social and cultural emphases with more traditional institutional and operational concerns this book examines the army in depth studying recruitment composition discipline motivation selection of officers leadership administration logistics weaponry tactics field warfare and siegecraft. The portrait that emerges differs from what current scholarship might have predicted. Instead of claiming that a military revolution transformed warfare Lynn stresses evolutionary change. Questioning widely-held assumptions about state formation and coercion he argues that this standing army was primarily devoted to border defense and only rarely to internal repression.