ABSTRACT
According to statistics taken from contemporary accounts of battles, a phenomenon of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the increase in numbers of men taking up arms. Even though quantification is difficult to come by, this 'dramatic increase'90 is generally explained by widespread adoption of modern technologies of warfare, though this does not account for the fantastical numbers dreamed up in the treatises and plays. The stratagems of war described as exemplary assume vast numbers of men for a variety of unspecified reasons, some of which I want now to unravel.
