During this period-with the notable exceptions of England
and the United Provinces-monarchs in Europe increasingly took direct control of
military affairs away from powerful noble military families and mercenary captains.
As they did, better-supervised and more-professional officer corps slowly took
shape on land and at sea. The progress of professionalization displacing mere
class origin in selection and advancement of officers varied in terminology
employed and historical timing in different kingdoms. In general, however, by
the mid-17th century, men holding a commission signed by a king were known as
“commission-officers.” By the early 18th century, this terminology
shifted slightly to commissioned officers. That referred to any officer
appointed by the crown-or the Admiralty in the case of the Royal Navy or one of
five states’ admiralties of the Dutch Navy. At sea, commissioned officers
included captains, commanders, and lieutenants. On land, this status comprised all
ranks of field marshal and general as well as colonels in command of regiments.
Below commissioned officers were warrant officers, who held rank by virtue of a
warrant rather than a royal commission. These were staff or administrative
appointments made by a regiment’s colonel or a ship’s captain. An exception was
the small Prussian Army, wherein the “Great Elector”
Friedrich-Wilhelm insisted on a veto of all officer choices made by his
colonels. Warrant officer rank was most frequently awarded to Army chaplains
and surgeons, and sometimes also to corporals and sergeants. Naval warrant
officers included the master, quartermaster, boatswain, purser, and master
carpenter. Holders of these four offices were also known as standing officers.
Royal Navy warrants were issued by one of the naval boards.
The French Navy always found it difficult to recruit
officers with seafaring skills. Service at sea was resisted by the aristocratic
classes, who sought instead to serve in view of the king in the senior arm, the
French Army. The Navy thus had only a small permanent officer corps, numbering
fewer than 1,000 even if one counts the more than 600 ensigns. Most French sea
officers in this period were either “roturiers” (of non-noble social
origin) or “anoblis” (recently ennobled), or their sons. They learned
seacraft in merchant ships or as privateers. Officers of more noble social
origin acquired seamanship by serving on Mediterranean galleys of the Knights
of Malta before commanding French galleys that remained part of the fleet based
at Toulon. Some later rose to high rank and command of ships of sail. From the
1670s, French ensigns were trained in companies of Gardes marine set up by
Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Many French sea officers switched over, or back, to
privateering from 1695 as the Navy abandoned guerre d’escadre in favor of
guerre de course. The Navy as a whole was nominally commanded by the
“Admiral of France,” an ancient office that was revived in 1669 and
given to a succession of the king’s illegitimate sons. Real operational command
lay with activeduty admirals and two vice-admirals, one residing in Brest and
the other based in Toulon. Below them were “lieutenants-general of the
navy” and “chefs d’escadre,” roughly equivalent to the British
rank of “commodore.”
From the time of Friedrich-Wilhelm, serfs laboring on
Hohenzollern lands were recruited equally into the Prussian Army, while
socially and economically privileged Junkers formed the bulk of the officer
corps. Rigid social order found expression in a Junker’s desire to serve as an
officer, which marked him off as socially superior to all others, and thereby
reinforced rather than eroded his noble status. For a half century before 1700,
Russian officers were mostly foreigners. This began to change even before Peter
I imposed intense and fundamental Army reforms after ruthlessly suppressing the
strel’sty. By 1675 there were many experienced Russian officers already serving
in the Army; by 1695 Russians served in large numbers at all levels in
new-formation units. In 1708 the majority of officers in all the tsar’s
regiments were ethnic Russians or came from other of his subjects. Peter
insisted on this, but also that no fewer than one third of his officers during
the Great Northern War (1700-1721) must be experienced foreigners. Russian
officers, too, were by then experienced in war, and were well trained in modern
weapons and the new methods of warfare which Peter imported from Great Britain,
France, Germany, and the United Provinces. In contrast, 15% of all Polish
officers in 1650 were foreign. This number was important, however, since most
Polish officers in the “National Contingent” army served a maximum of
10 years, and many did fewer than that. The Austrian Hofkriegsrat faced a much
different problem, that of inherited officer commissions. It made some progress
in professionalizing the officer corps when it abolished the sale of officer
commissions early in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), during the
presidency of Prince Eugene of Savoy.
Hereditary promotions and sales of at least some commissions
were standard for many middle-ranking officers and for most senior positions in
most European armies of this era. Commissions were treated, and traded, as
military investments. Some British Army officer commissions remained for sale
well into the 19th century, until after the Crimean War. This probably
reflected the position and prolonged influence of the Duke of Wellington, a man
both rich and talented, who purchased a commission as lieutenant-colonel at age
23. The other problem in England, resolved only by the Glorious Revolution and
complete military triumph of Protestantism across all Three Kingdoms in 1691,
was the tendency of Charles II and his brother James II to appoint officers
from a narrow slice of the population solely on the basis of Catholic loyalties
rather than military competence. By 1688 about 10% of English officers were
Catholics. Virtually all officers in Ireland under James were Catholic,
following a purge of the Irish establishment by the Earl of Tyrconnel. Many
Protestant officers deeply resented this assault on the property rights of
their purchased commissions and deserted to William III within hours or days of
his landing in England. The new king did not readily trust such men, however,
and for years afterward, continued to rely on fellow Dutchmen or on German and
other mercenaries. He truly trusted only those English and Scots officers who
had previously served him in the Anglo-Dutch Brigade. For instance, Marlborough
came under deep suspicion of divided loyalty and was imprisoned for a time.
This situation changed slowly during the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697). In 1706 a
“Board of General Officers” was established to impose penalties or
hear courts-martial of delinquent officers. This introduced a fresh element of
professionalism to the British Army, even for gentlemen-officers.
The process of professionalization of the officer corps was
much further and earlier advanced in France under Louvois and Louis XIV than in
any other country of the time. The traditional independence of noble officers
in France was severely eroded after the failure of their effort to retain
privileges of their class, and the active treason of several senior commanders
during the rebellion of the Fronde. Fresh standards were then imposed on even
the most senior officers. The most important reform was to partly open the
French officer “corps” (the word did not actually yet apply in its
modern sense) to entry by men of low birth but real ability, though an old
refusal of French nobles to serve under or to obey men who were regarded as
social inferiors, even if they were also of noble birth, was slowly overcome.
In 1675 Louis issued an “ordre de tableau” setting up a seniority
list for French maréchals (of whom 51 were created between 1643 and 1715) to
eliminate conflicts of command authority based on social rather than military
rank.
This was part of a larger professionalization and reform
undertaken by Louis and Louvois that established the modern system of ranks.
Nobles still dominated the top commands: only 1 out of every 15 French generals
who served under Louis XIV was of non-noble birth. The upper-class origin of
most senior officers and many middle ranks was reflected in an aristocratic
code of values and conduct that required displays of conspicuous courage under
fire, and encouraged frequent dueling in peacetime, a practice that survived
multiple royal bans. At its height, the French Army under Louis XIV had over
20,000 officers. Most were drawn from roughly 50,000 noble families of France.
Others came from recently ennobled bourgeoisie, who eagerly served in the many
new line regiments Louis raised during his long wars. These men paid to equip
and support a new regiment in return for the privilege of its colonelcy. This
led to extensive patronage networks organized around colonelcies. That trend
was reinforced by the king’s insistence on state service by the old nobility,
who built their own client networks in the regiments. Even among aristocratic
officers, by the end of this period, an emerging professionalism ensured higher
levels of political loyalty to the king than in past wars. Enhanced professionalism
also cut back on otherwise endemic officer quarrels, dueling, and absenteeism.
Louvois found a way around purchased commissions by
introducing two new, non-purchasable appointments (officially, these were not
yet considered ranks): major and lieutenant-colonel. Even so, independent
wealth remained key to an officer’s rise in station since he was expected to
partly equip and maintain his company or regiment. To recover these costs, a
colonel or captain fully expected to milk his regiment through creative
accounts. Commissions from royal agents were issued to raise, command, and
supply troops, partly replacing the system of purchase of companies and
regiments by noblemen, though success in this regard was largely confined to
the elite Gardes du Corps.
A young officer’s education also changed markedly in this
era in France. Before the reforms made by Louvois, all training was received
on-the-job, in active duty with one’s regiment. Louvois changed this in several
ways. He designated certain musketeer units as training locales for young
officers, especially for future staff officers. Thus, in 1679, when an
artillery school was founded, it was attached to the “Fusiliers du
Roi,” originally a musketeer regiment that was renamed the
“Royal-Artillerie” in 1693. This change in the artillery was a vast
improvement on civilian contractors hired by the French Army until 1672 to
handle the big guns. Contractors had been paid for each cannon they brought
into action on a battlefield or during a siege, which was no proper basis for
sustaining a professional corps of cannoneers. In 1682 Louvois set up nine
training companies for officer-cadets in various frontier towns. These trained
young men in arms, drill, and riding, as well as in dancing, fencing, and other
social skills deemed crucial (in most armies, into the early 20th century) to
officer status. Cadets also studied mathematics, geography, and map reading,
and those who chose to do so indulged art, music, and literature. The next
year, officers in training for whom very high expectations were held were
attached to the Régiment du Roi, and from 1684 to other regiments of Louis’
household (“Maison du Roi”) regiments. Similarly, a
“Ritterakademie” was established for officers of the Prussian Army,
though its curriculum was not as advanced in this era as in the French
academies.
