ABSTRACT
The social composition of the eighteenth-century officer corps to some extent militated against the development of professionalism. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars brought to a head a number of factors which had begun to put a premium on greater professionalism in the leadership of armed forces in peace and war. The historian of the Military Staff finds the origins of the modern general staff system in the organization of the Swedish Army in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. The Prussian Great General Staff was derived from the quartermaster-general's staff of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The foundation of the Staff College after the Crimean War testified to a re-awakening of interest in military education and professional competence. In Prussia the system of promotion only after examination, introduced by Scharnhorst among the military reforms following defeat in 1806, was not swept away in the reaction after 1815.
