ABSTRACT
War powerfully contributed to a mental world dominated by chance and a frequently malign fate. It encouraged a providentialism in which the world appeared outside human control. War was presented as one of the curses or plagues of life, and, indeed, as one of the four deadly horsemen of the Apocalypse.1 This forms an ironic counterpoint to the scholarly emphasis on a growing bureaucratisation of war in early modern Europe.The gap between intention and impact is common to war, but it is worth considering how far the bureaucratisation has been exaggerated. John Nolan’s description of the ‘militarization of the Elizabeth state’ in terms of a ‘centralized administration of local resources, supplemented by entrepreneurial enterprise’ is not really one of military revolution. In England and elsewhere,‘most of the innovations were created by elaborating or modifying traditional institutions’.2 It is necessary to stress that this was done by societies whose ethos, social assumptions and political practice were conservative, certainly in so far as emphasis on lineage and social prominence were concerned.
