ABSTRACT
State construction went hand in hand with the centralization and monopolization of the armed forces (Schmidt 1986). Permanent armies, as they came into being with the Thirty Years War, necessitated the setting up of a centralized administration in order to manage, equip and control them (Corvisier 1988: 8). The development of a centralized administration, which can be regarded as a nucleus of modern institutions, was the answer to the difficulties of directing and controlling these large standing armies. According to Charles Tilly’s famous formulation, ‘war made the state, and the state made war’ (Tilly 1975: 42). Even if recent historiography has tried to relegate this view (see Tallet 1992: 188-9), it remains nevertheless certain that military organization has been at least one of the determining factors of the modern state, and foremost for such distinctive features as administrative and fiscal centralization (Mousnier 1980: 616-17). It was the French monarchy that played the leading role in Europe in developing a military administration, but other European states, and especially Prussia, drew on the French example and managed to set up an effective system of control of military administration by civil officials (Muhlack 1986). The state thus progressively enforced its control over the armed forces, for the most part to the detriment of feudal aristocracy (Hintze 1967: 30-55). At the end of this process the role of the military aristocracy was limited to recruitment, administration and command of a regiment, whereas decision-making on higher levels became a prerogative of the state (Schmidt 1996).
