Dutch States Army

Raising funds

Although the financing of a military force is usually seen as "derivative", in the case of the States Army it played an important formative role, and also influenced the peculiarities of the organisation. Though 16th-century armies were usually preponderantly mercenary, there often were elements of feudal levies and of volunteers. These were lacking in the States Army (the civic militia or Schutterij was not part of the army). Apparently it never occurred to the authorities in the Republic to organize a volunteer or conscript army; mercenaries were the only feasible option. This had already been the case under the Habsburg rulers, when the States of the several provinces were asked to pay for the raising of the Habsburg armies, and played a role in their financial administration, like mustering. The authorities of the rebel provinces continued where they had left off in this respect.^[2] They were, however, content to limit their role to financial administration and the raising of the necessary money via the financing of a fiscal-military state (see the financial history of the Dutch Republic). The latter already formed a considerable burden on the public finances of the provinces in the time of Charles V, and contributed to the formation of early-modern institutions for the management of the public debt, in which the Dutch had a pioneering role.^[6]

These financial institutions helped the Dutch Republic to "punch above its weight" in military matters. Without the international "open market" for professional soldiers, the Republic, with its population of about 1.5 million in the 17th century, would simply have lacked the manpower base to compete with countries like Spain (10 million inhabitants at the time) and France (20 million).

Strength

By the end of 1579, the belligerents were at a stalemate, as neither Parma nor Orange had sufficient troops and materiel to field an army capable of conducting a major offensive.^[7] Having withdrawn his Spanish and Italian troops as required by the Union of Arras, Parma had replaced his foreign personnel with German or 'native' (Low Countries) soldiers for a total of 93 infantry companies, 57 of which were necessary for garrisoning strategic points.^[7] The remaining 36 companies (c. 5,400–7,200 men) were available for attack.^[7] The combined forces of the rebel States-General were twice as large on paper, with Orange's war budget of December 1579 listing 96 defensive companies on garrison duty plus 101 companies available for field action.^[7] But in practice he could field far fewer, as the provinces were customarily hesitant to agree to deploy their troops beyond their own borders.^[7] In part, this was because irregular payment for out-of-province soldiers was a known systemic problem, which could cause mutiny when unpaid soldiers could not feed themselves and resorted to force against civilians, desertion, or defection to the enemy.^[7] Examples include 'trouble' caused by Edward Norreys's four English companies stationed in the frontier city of Tournai, because the States of Flanders had failed to pay their wages, and the key border outpost of Bouchain fell to Parma's troops in September 1580 in part because the Union of Utrecht had 'too much to do' within its own borders to send any money.^[7]

The following table gives the strengths of the Dutch States Army, the Army of Flanders and the French army at pivotal years in their respective conflicts.^[8]

Reforms after 1588

Mercenary armies leveled the playing field. But they were very expensive to maintain. For instance, the cost of fielding the States Army before 1609 (the year of the Twelve Years' Truce) was about 600,000 guilders annually. In the period between 1621 and 1629 (when the Republic was on the defensive against Spain) the cost rose to between 800,000 and 1 million guilders annually. After 1629 (when the Republic went on the offensive and increased the size of the army) the cost rose again to between 1.5 and 2 million guilders annually, with a peak of 3 million in 1632 (when Frederick Henry made his sweep of fortresses in the Meuse valley). These costs contributed to the heavy burden the Dutch tax payer had to bear: Holland alone contributed 9.3 million guilders in 1630; 11 million in 1634; 12.3 million in 1635; and in 1640 10.2 million to the war budget. These sums exceeded the ordinary revenues of the province. The difference had to be borrowed from investors. In 1634 the Southern Quarter of the province alone already owed 44.4 million guilders.^[15] Still, the Republic, and especially the province of Holland, generated so many savings that needed profitable investment opportunities, that the Dutch capital market had little trouble in generating the necessary public loans. The credit of the States was excellent, because the system of public finance, with its revenue streams dedicated to the service of the public debt (unique at the time in Europe, though England would copy it after 1689) attracted the confidence of investors. (See Economic history of the Netherlands (1500–1815)).This system of mobilization of financial resources made the Republic one of the first fiscal-military states.^[16]

After 1588 the financing of the war expenditures of the Republic was put on a new organizational footing. In the Union-of-Utrecht treaty defense of the Union was indicated as one of the main functions of the federal republic. Though every participating province retained certain prerogatives (like reserving the supreme command of its forces for its own stadtholder), in practice they agreed to pool their resources and pay a fixed quota of the cost of the army establishment. This establishment was enumerated in the so-called Staat van Oorlog (probably best translated as "statement of war") that "repartitioned"^[17] the cost of regiments and companies to the several provinces. This statement was drawn up periodically by the Council of State (not to be confused with the present-day Dutch Council of State, though it was a predecessor of the latter), an advisory organ of the States-General that was charged with a number of military-administrative functions. It is often mistaken for the annual "war budget" of the Republic, but this function was actually performed by the "General Petition," also drawn up by the Council of State on the basis of the Staat van Oorlog, and presented to the States of the individual provinces after being approved by the States-General. The provinces ideally remitted their contributions to the paymasters of the army, but in practice especially the inland provinces were tardy in this respect, which often forced Holland (already burdened with paying a share of 58%) to advance even these payments.^[18]

Though the allocation of a regiment to a certain province did not imply that that unit was a private army of that province, there were often close ties between such a unit and the paying province, especially as far as the appointment of commissioned officers was concerned. Though such appointments were usually made by the captain-general of the army (except when there was no such functionary, as during the First Stadtholderless Period), the States of the provinces usually presented him with a list of three nominees to choose from. In other respects (garrisoning of fortresses, provisioning of troops, even movement of troops) there often were tensions between the provinces and the central army command over the "repartitioned" units.^[19]

The provinces were keen to ensure that their money was well spent. From Habsburg times they therefore had claimed a role in combating the fraud that was endemic in the mercenary-army system. Every province therefore had the right to muster the troops that it paid for (and if these were garrisoned together with the troops that were paid for by other provinces, those other troops also, because otherwise the fraudulent interchange of troops would be too difficult to prevent).^[20]

Another consequence of the desire to ensure that money was well-spent in military matters was the institution of field deputies. These functionaries were delegated by the States of the provinces to be near the High Command during campaigns, where they were empowered to make urgent political decisions on behalf of the States-General. Unfortunately, these deputies often interfered with operational decisions and were generally considered more of a hindrance than a boon by the top commanders. The Duke of Marlborough was especially caustic about them, when he commanded the States Army during the War of Spanish Succession, but a deputy like Sicco van Goslinga sometimes rendered useful services during that campaign.^[21]

Though in principle all troops were allocated to a particular province, in later years the States-General was sometimes forced to raise troops that individual provinces refused to pay for. These "unrepartitioned" troops had to be paid for from the limited revenues of the States-General itself, mostly the taxes it raised in the Generality Lands. As these troops became a severe burden to the "Generality," they were generally the first to be let go at the periodic army reductions, and generally not well cared for.^[22]

Top command

From the days of the Habsburg rulers the States Army inherited the structure of its top command. The commander-in-chief of the provincial military forces had traditionally been the royal stadtholder, who acted as the Captain-General. He had a deputy (in Habsburg days known as the maréchal de l'ost) who received the title of Field-Marshal.^[23] This arrangement was taken over by the Republic, even though the provincial forces were now merged into a unified federal force. As most provinces selected the same person (a member of the House of Orange-Nassau after 1586) as their stadtholder this did not lead to a divided command in practice, even though a potential conflict was present, because the province of Friesland always had a different stadtholder (and captain-general), until William IV received the appointment in all provinces in 1747.

The first two stadtholders who nominally shared the captaincy-general, Maurice and William Louis, shared the responsibilities amicably on an equal footing. Maurice's successor, Frederick Henry, was the first to be appointed as Captain-General (and Admiral) of the Union in 1625, in which capacity he outranked his Frisian colleagues. The Frisian stadtholder William Frederick did not even receive a separate command during Frederick Henry's lifetime.^[24]

Things became awkward during the periods when a number of provinces refused to appoint a stadtholder (Friesland always had a stadtholder during these periods). During the First Stadtholderless Period the function of captain-general of the union was simply left vacant until the very end, in 1672, when William III was appointed, at a moment when he was not yet a stadtholder. In this period the supreme command of the army was first entrusted to the Field-Marshal who was in office at the death of William II in 1650, Johan Wolfert van Brederode. But after his death in 1655 even this function was left vacant, because it was politically awkward for the States of Holland to appoint either of the candidates for the function, the Frisian stadtholder William Frederick, or John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen. Henceforth the States Army usually had two Field-Marshals, and after 1689 for a short time even three (when Henry Casimir II, Prince of Nassau-Dietz was appointed to the function; he resigned, however, when he did not receive the appointment of first Field-Marshal after the death of Waldeck in 1692).

After the death of William III and the beginning of the Second Stadtholderless Period the States-General appointed the Duke of Marlborough as Captain-General of the States Army (though they pointedly gave him the title of lieutenant-captain-general to avoid hurting sensibilities in Orangist circles). After the British government dismissed the Duke of Marlborough and concluded a separate armistice with France, in 1712, Prince Eugene of Savoy was appointed lieutenant-captain-general of the Union for the remainder of the War of the Spanish Succession. The function again remained vacant afterward, until the appointment of William IV, Prince of Orange to stadtholder of all the provinces. After his early death Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg held the position during the minority of William V. In this entire period the position of Field-Marshal was occupied by a succession of sometimes foreign generals of the States Army, of proven competence, like the already mentioned Waldeck, Nassau-Ouwerkerk, and the Earl of Athlone. The Duke of Brunswick was field-marshal before and after his tenure of the captaincy-general.

Below the top command there were a few top positions in the first years of the existence of the army that differed from the later organisation, though they later evolved into the more familiar positions, like the generaal van de vivres (quarter-master general), and the master-general of the artillery,^[25] and the general of the cavalry.^[26] The other field officers already had their modern titles.

Organisational structure

The basic unit of the States Army was the company of foot (called a vendel^[27]) or of horse (called a vaan). This was commanded by a Captain (Ritmeester in a cavalry company), who was assisted by a Lieutenant and an Ensign (infantry) or Cornet (cavalry) as commissioned officers. The infantry company was generally divided in four sections, called esquadres or corporaalschappen, under command of a corporal assisted by a lanspassaat (lance corporal). These functions and titles differed from the usual Landsknecht-organisation. They were introduced by William the Silent in his reforms after 1572. In this organisation the weifels of the Landsknecht organisation were replaced by two Sergeants, who were in charge of drilling the troops in fighting techniques.^[28]

Other non-commissioned officers at the company level were a quarter-master, two drummers, a clerk and a surgeon. A cavalry company had beside the three commissioned officers a quarter-master, two trumpeters, a clerk and a blacksmith. The size of the infantry company varied: at different times it had 200, 113 or 89 men. Larger companies often had their own Provost Marshal.^[29] The size of the cavalry companies also varied, between 80 and 150 horse.

The companies were often formed as part of regiments when the troops were first raised. But these regiments did not play an important organisational role. Instead, the companies were combined into "battalions" as fighting formations, in contradistinction to the Tercio of the Spanish Army of Flanders. The battalion was smaller than a tercio, but had a proportionally larger complement of firearms and used different tactics as a consequence of the tactical reforms of Maurice.^[30]

Recruitment

As in other mercenary armies of the day the raising of new troops was usually contracted out to military entrepreneurs. The States-General usually concluded a so-called Capitulatie with such a businessman, setting out the details, like the number of troops to be raised, the pay rates to be offered, the muster place, and the so-called Artikelbrief (the Articles of War governing the conduct of the troops). The entrepreneur usually took a commission himself as Colonel of the "regiment" to be raised (although the term "regiment is used loosely here, as it did not yet connote a military formation of a fixed size). Subsequently the colonel sent out recruiters to the areas where the recruiting was to take place. These advertised the opportunity to enroll by having drummers attract attention in public places. The recruiters then signed up the new recruits (sometimes offering a signing bonus, though this was risky, because many who received this absconded before entering service). The recruits were then marched off to the agreed place of first muster. During this transport they were housed and fed for the account of the company captains, who received a fixed loopgeld (literally: "marching money") for the infantry or the equivalent Anrittgelt for the cavalry.^[31]

The new recruits were concentrated at the muster place, where they were registered by the muster commissioner, a functionary of the States-General. The registration encompassed the noting down of a number of particulars about the individual recruits in the muster roll, so as to give a possibility of checking identities at future musters. After the muster the recruits swore to obey the articles of war. They then received their weapons (and in later years also their uniforms) for which they had to reimburse their captains by a deduction of their wages.

Only after this first muster the first installment of the wages was made available to the captain, who was responsible for disbursement to the men. In other words, though the States-General would have preferred direct payment to the men (and often decreed that this should take place) in practice the payment always took place through the intermediary of the captain.^[32] This may be explained by the fact that the captain also was a small businessman, who "owned" the company as a profit-making concern, but who ran large financial risks. To protect his financial interests he therefore had to make sure that the money streams to his company passed through his hands, if only because he often advanced the irregularly paid monthly wages on a daily basis in the form of "loans" to his men. This was a necessity, because the wages were often in arrears. They were supposed to be paid with a periodicity of 42 days (the so-called heremaand), but often payment was deferred and the captain had to advance the money, thereby extending credit to his paymasters. At first this financial risk made the possession of capital an informal prerequisite for becoming a captain, but later the provision of capital was taken over by so-called solliciteurs-militair ("military solicitors"), private ^[33] Through this expedient the men received some pay regularly, which appreciably reduced the frequency of mutinies, certainly in comparison with the Army of Flanders.

Because the manpower potential of the Republic's territory was so limited, the States-General had to look beyond Dutch borders for a large part of the recruits. Fortunately, in those days foreign authorities did often not object to recruitment efforts within their territories (at least before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War when recruitment possibilities in Germany became more limited). The Republic therefore was able to obtain large numbers of recruits from Scotland, England, the Holy Roman Empire, France, and later also the Protestant Swiss Cantons (with whom special treaties were made for this purpose). Other than the Army of Flanders the Dutch States Army kept these foreign contingents separate in their own regiments. This had the advantage that in case of threatened mutiny one contingent could be checked by the others. The army leadership also often exploited the rivalry between these "Nations" to extract extra efforts, for instance by organizing "races" between contingents of sappers of different nationality for the first trench to reach the ditch of a besieged fortress, as happened during the Siege of Breda (1637). The downside of this policy was that sometimes epic brawls erupted between the contingents.^[34]

This recruitment policy implied that usually half of the States Army consisted of foreign troops, and in times of expansion of the army even more. The army had a Scots Brigade during its entire existence. The English regiments were paid off after they refused to swear allegiance just before the start of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1663. The French regiments disappeared during the wars with France at the end of the century, but were replaced with Swiss regiments for the remainder of the existence of the army. Though it is often maintained that the Republic only recruited Protestants in reality this was not a condition of employment. It was true that only Protestant chaplains had access to the army, but Catholics were allowed to enroll, and some did.^[35]

Besides this regular method of direct recruitment, the Republic occasionally used extraordinary methods. In times of emergency the army could be augmented by mobilizing the civic militias (as happened during the emergencies of 1629 and 1672), or more usefully (as the civic militia had a limited military value) by mobilizing the so-called waardgelders. These were troops hired on temporary contracts (in contradistinction with regular troops, who were hired for the duration) to perform guard duties in garrisoned cities when the regular troops were away on campaign during the summer months. But in time of emergency they sometimes were sent to the mobile army.^[36]

The Republic usually used military entrepreneurs only on the level of regiments, not entire armies, if only to keep control of the drilling of the soldiers and the high command of the troops. Still, there were a few instances in which entire armies were hired "off the shelf" so to speak. The best-known example is the engagement of the troops of Ernst von Mansfeld in the early 1620s,^[37] but the augmentation of the army in 1688 with Prussian troops to replace the invasion forces that the Republic sent to England to bring about the Glorious Revolution in that country may count as another (as also the employment of Danish troops in the Battle of the Boyne, though technically these were in the employ of William III as king of England).

Most curious was the employment on a temporary basis of a tercio of Spanish mutineers, who provisionally entered the service of the States-General in 1602–1604, pending the resolution of their dispute with the government in Brussels. The mutineers formally remained in Spanish service as a coherent military formation, and they did not consider themselves "defectors," but they arrived at a convenient arrangement with the Dutch during which they defended themselves against attempts by the Spanish high command to return them to obedience by force, at the same time preventing the capture of a few Dutch fortresses by the Spaniards.^[38]

Finally, in this context a form of more regular "re-recruitment" should be mentioned that in practice had some quantitative importance: the ransoming of prisoners of war. Though in the first stages of the Eighty Years' War both parties had mercilessly executed prisoners of war (a practice that continued for a long time in the war on sea), this practice was soon recognized as a waste of money, as prisoners were often ready and able to offer large sums of money to regain their freedom. The practice of ransoming had long been customary in medieval wars and there was no reason to forgo its pecuniary advantages in this conflict. Informal ransoming was soon formalized in a so-called Cartel between the high commands of the two belligerents, first in 1599, and more definitely in 1602. This cartel was a formal treaty that enumerated the rates of exchange for different grades of prisoners and other conditions of treatment (and compensation for housing and feeding). The advantage for the commanders of both armies was that the losses due to the taking of prisoners could be replenished relatively cheaply and speedily. The cartel with Spain remained in force for the remainder of the war. Similar cartels were concluded in later wars.^[39]

Fraud and mustering

As in other early-modern mercenary armies muster fraud was endemic in the States Army. This was due to the difficult position of the captains as entrepreneurs. They were paid according to the effective strength of their companies as established at the regular musters that the provinces held for the units on their repartitie. That effective strength was usually far below the nominal strength of the company due to processes of attrition, like losses due to sickness, desertion, battle casualties, including prisoners of war and missing, and "poaching" by other captains of personnel. There was little the captains could do to prevent this natural attrition process, yet they were held responsible for replenishing the ranks, generally without compensation for the extra costs. These could be substantial as the captains had to organize their own regular recruitment drives. On the other hand, the captains had little incentive to keep their units at fighting strength, because they (and their men) had little intention of actually fighting, if they could help it, so they did not see a personal advantage in keeping their units at optimum readiness. This dilemma understandably motivated them to make it appear to the muster commissioners that their units were up to strength.^[40]

The methods of fraud were well-known, due to extensive use, and received specific names in the military business. One trick was to include so-called passe-volants (the French term for this practice; in English they were called "faggots"): civilians that passed themselves of as soldiers during the muster in exchange for a small bribe. A variant of this was to "borrow" soldiers from other units for the duration of the muster, or even to poach soldiers permanently from other units. The latter subterfuge of course represented fraud on the part of the soldier also, and seemingly increased the rate of desertion at the other unit; it was called "debauchery."^[41]

To combat this fraud the authorities at first resorted to deterrence (severe punishments were threatened, though seldom imposed) and frequent inspection in the form of musters (that in principle were conducted in the same way as the original muster) to combat these abuses. But frequent musters had their own downside. In principle after every muster the troops should be paid their arrears, which was not always possible; failure to pay would present a risk of mutiny. Furthermore, the reduction of the effective strength and payments after a muster could lead to further reduction of the effective strength, because captains then often dismissed their best-paid soldiers to remain ahead in the financial game.^[42]

A better approach seemed to be to offer carrots instead of sticks. In the first place captains were given some leeway by allowing them a certain percentage of missing troops, without consequences for their payment. Also, in some cases the nominal strength of companies was lowered intentionally, at the same time keeping the amount of payments constant, thereby giving the troops a pay rise in the bargain. But the best approach would be to have the government take over the entrepreneurial risks of the captain. However, this did only happen in the Republic in the reforms of William III after 1672.^[43]