ABSTRACT
War is one of the most enduring of human activities, and one with some of the most profound consequences for those waging it. The notion of the military revolution was framed in part to accommodate changes associated with the fact that the early modern era was one of almost constant warfare, inside and outside Europe. According to Mary Roberts the military revolution underpinned the transition from the medieval to the modern worlds. The social changes consequent on the military revolution included opportunities for the non-noble in both the new officer hierarchies and the new administrative cadres which organised and served them, although Roberts also acknowledges that the new standing armies often privileged nobles in the eighteenth century. The War of the Spanish Succession saw the apogee of military enterprise in France.
