ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Savoyard state more clearly within the debate about the nature and even the existence of the fiscal-military state. It considers the significance of those payments, not least in terms of how far they stimulated or retarded the achievement of a full fiscal-military structure in the Savoyard state. The Savoyard polity also benefited enormously from its crucial strategic position, controlling the routes across the Alps, in an age dominated by war between Bourbon and Habsburg. The extent to which the Savoyard fiscal-military state triggered a social transformation that benefited the 'non-noble bourgeoisie' is by no means clear; it may mistakenly apply inappropriate concepts, labels or social classifications of a later age to the eighteenth-century Savoyard state. In wartime Victor Amadeus II and his successors benefited from the subsidies made available by allies in order to sustain the Savoyard army and fund an increase in its strength.
