Conclusion

Abstract

This work has sought to show the relationship between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the one hand and the eighteenth on the other, periods all too often studied in isolation, and in particular to argue that it is unhelpful to place too much weight on a mid-seventeenth-century division. The notion of a military revolution in the early modern period has been challenged and it has been argued that the changes commonly stressed in the period 1560–1660 can be qualified both by considering the claims that have been advanced and by ranging more widely to consider the situation throughout Europe. A concentration on warfare in the last decades of the period suggests that the notion of a revolution is inappropriate. In so far as a military revolution occurred in the early modern period it could be dated more appropriately to the hundred years, especially the first fifty, after the period highlighted by Roberts. This is equally the case whether attention is devoted to weaponry and tactics, where the introduction of the bayonet and the phasing-out of the pike were of considerable importance, or to the position in a number of crucial states — France, Austria, Russia, Prussia and Britain — which emerged as the European great powers in this period and retained that position until 1918 [141, 149].