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Gunpowder warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of Gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive. It began in Europe and the Middle East prior to the Fifteenth Century on a limited basis and lasted until the mid- Nineteenth Century , with its apex during the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1815 . An early advocate was English philosopher and cleric Roger Bacon who attributed the core discovery to the Chinese. The understanding of "gunpowder warfare", expressed here, comes from the works of Michael Roberts who argued that a military revolution occurred in the sixteenth century that forever changed warfare, and society in general. Since he wrote in the 1950s his narrative has been augmented and challenged by other scholars. When exactly the revolution occurred is debated, and whether it was revolution or a slow transformation is also discussed. CANNON Gunpowder, explosive weapons had been used in back to being one of the central aspects of warfare during this era. What this necessitated was the rebuilding of fortresses across Europe, generally a vast expense. Small states and local aristocrats rarely had the money to build these defences, and these groups lost power in favour of the centralized governments. The once mighty city states of Italy became parts of the French or Holy Roman Empires , while the small states of Germany were forced in vassalage to a greater power or coalitions. Weaponry is often placed at the forefront of technological advancement and the invention of the Arquebus soon began an Arms Race . The useful but still unwieldy weapon was refined and reduced in size through many rapid developments culminating in the Smoothbore Musket around 1600. These small, portable, personal weapons, which could fire projectiles over rapidly increasing distances with greater accuracy, heralded the growth of Modern Warfare . Gustavus Adolphus pioneered the use of lighter field artillery in the 1630s. In naval warfare, the cannon maintained its position of pre-eminence due to the fact that guns were aimed by positioning the angle of the ship more commonly than not. Small arms were never a fraction as important to naval gunpowder warfare as on land. BEGINNING OF POLYGONAL FORTIFICATIONS See Also: Polygonal fort The period from 1500-1800 saw a rapid advance in techniques of fortification in Europe. Whereas medieval castles had relied on high walls to keep out attackers, early modern fortifications had to withstand artillery bombardments. To do this, engineers developed a style of fortress known as the ''trace itallienne'' or "Italian style". These had low, thick, sloping walls, that would either absorb or glance off cannon fire. In addition, they were shaped like stars, with bastions protruding at sharp angles. The reason for was to ensure that every bastion could be supported with fire from an adjacent bastion, leaving no "dead ground" for an attacker to take cover in. These new fortifications quickly negated the advantages cannon had afforded to besiegers. refined siege warfare by designing fortresses to withstand attacks and planning attacks.]] A polygonal fort is a Fortification in the style that evolved around the middle of the Nineteenth Century , in response to the development of powerful Explosive Shells . The complex and sophisticated designs of Star Forts that preceded them were highly effective against cannon assault, but proved much less effective against the more accurate fire of Rifled guns and the destructive power of explosive shells. The polygonal style of fortification is also described as a "flankless fort". Many were built during the government of Lord Palmerston, and so they are also often referred to as Palmerston forts. Their low profile makes them easy to overlook. In response to the vulnerabilities of star forts, Military Engineers evolved a much simpler but more robust style of fortification. FIREARMS aboard the Frigate Grand Turk ]] The power of aristocracies fell throughout Western Europe during this period in relation to the state. Their 200-400 year old ancestral castles were no longer useful defences against artillery. Their role in war was also eroded as the Medieval cavalry lost its central role in warfare. The cavalry made up of the elite had been fading in importance in the late Middle Ages. The English Longbow and the Swiss Pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces. However the proper use of the longbow required a lifetime of training making it impossible to amass very large forces while the proper use of the pike required complex operations in formation and a great deal of fortitude and cohesion by the pikemen, again making amassing large forces impossible. Starting in the early 1300s, plate armour pieces were added to the protective linked mail armour to guard against the arrows of the long bow and cross-bow. By 1415 the first "hand canons" were deployed by mounted knights, and the earliest small bore arquebuses, with burning "match locks" appeared on the battlefield. Role of Plate Armour During an interval that lasted for 250 years (1400 to 1650), extensive plate armour was worn in virtually all major European battles, by some footsoldiers (usually pikemen) and mounted troops. Plate armour was expected to deflect edged weapons and to stop an arquebus or pistol ball fired from a distance, and it usually did. The threat (firearms) and remedy (armour) tended to work as long as the velocity and weight of the ball was quite low, but over time more effective firearms, (after 1650) could kill an armoured man at a distance of even 100 yards. The musket, carried by most infantrymen, other than pikemen, after 1650, fired a heavier charge and ball than the arqubus. A recruit could be trained to use a musket in a matter of weeks. Since the muskets themselves were extremely inaccurate, training in Marksmanship was of little benefit. A musket did not require the great physical strength of a pikeman, or the fairly rare skills of a horseman. Muskets could neutralize even the most heavily armoured cavalry forces. Since a firearm requires little training to operate, the order and respect maintained by mounted cavalry in Europe and their Eastern and equivalents could be undermined by a peasant with a gun. Plate armor by 1670 became no match for massed firearms in frontal attack. The arquebus phases into the musket over 150 years The Arquebus , from 1410, was one of the first Firearm s that were relatively light (they still required a stand to balance them) and could be operated by one person. One of these weapons were first recorded as being used in the Battle Of Agincourt in 1415 , which, despite that this was very much a medieval battle, but the firearm had started to develop. The Musket was originally a heavier form of the arquebus, which fired a shot that could pierce armour only at very close range. In the 1500s, it had to be mounted on a support stick to keep it steady. The Caliver was the lighter form of the aquebus. By 1600, or so, these firearms were phased out in favour of a new lighter Musket .The armour makers strove to improve the quality of the steel plate, which allowed armour to be useful until the mid 1600s. For most of the 1500s and 1600s, muskets were of the Matchlock design. However, this was superseded in the 1690s by the Flintlock musket, which was less prone to misfires and had a faster reloading time. By this time, only cavalry scouting units, "the eyes of the army" continued to wear front and back plates to protect themselves from distant or undisciplined musket equipped troops. While soldiers armed with firearms could inflict great damage on cavalry at a moderate distance, at close quarters the cavalry could slaughter the gun armed infantry if they could break their formation and close to hand to hand combat. For many years infantry weapons were a mix of firearms and pikes for defence. The invention of the Bayonet allowed these two weapons to be combined into one making the firearmed infantry the vast bulk of all forces. Unlike Bows And Arrows , muskets, the next development, were expensive and required significant infrastructure to produce. For the first time the industrial capacity (and wealth) of a nation became one of the central determinants of military success, conferring a significant advantage on the trading nations of Western Europe compared to more agricultural nations. Thus the agricultural nations were not able to raise armies capable of defending themselves, with more victories going to well-developed countries. NATURE OF WAR (situated in the Dutch province of Zeeland) by Frederick Henry. Sieges dominated warfare of this era]] This period saw the size and scale of warfare greatly increase. The number of combatants involved escalated steadily from the mid 1500s and dramatically expanded after the 1660s. For example, the King of France could field around 20,000 men in total for his wars against Spain in the 1550s, but could mobilize up to 500,000 men into the field by 1700 in the War Of Spanish Succession . Moreover, wars became increasingly deadly in this period. This may in part be attributed to improvements in weapons technology and in the techniques of using it (for example infantry volley fire). However the main reason was that armies were now much bigger, but logistical support for them was inadequate. This meant that armies tended to devastate civilian areas in an effort to feed themselves, causing famines and population displacement. This was exacerbated by the increasing length of conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War and Eighty Years' War , which subjected fought over areas to repeated devastation. For this reason, the wars of this era were among the most lethal before the modern period. For example, the Thirty Years' War and the contemporary Wars Of The Three Kingdoms , were the most bloody conflicts in the history of Germany and Britain respectively before the First World War . Another factor adding to bloodshed in war was the lack of a clear set of rules concerning the treatment of prisoners and non-combatants. While prisoners were usually ransomed for money or other prisoners, they were sometimes slaughtered out of hand - as at the Battle Of Dungans Hill in 1647. One of the reasons for warfare's increased impact was its indecisiveness. Armies were slow moving in an era before good roads and canals. Battles were relatively rare as armies could manoeuvre for months, with no direct conflict. In addition, battles were often made irrelevant by the proliferation of advanced, bastioned fortifications. To control an area, armies had to take fortified towns, regardless of whether they defeated their enemy's field armies. As a result, by far the most common battles of the era were Siege s, hugely time-consuming and expensive affairs. Storming a fortified city could result in massive casualties and cities which did not surrender before an assault were usually brutally sacked -for example Magdeburg in 1631 or Drogheda in 1649. In addition, both garrisons and besiegers often suffered heavily from disease. . Apolphus was perhaps the greatest military innovator of this era]] The indecisive nature of conflict meant wars were long and endemic. Conflicts stretched on for decades and many states spent more years at war than they did at peace. The Spanish attempt to reconquer the Netherlands after the Dutch Revolt became bogged down in endless siege warfare. The expense caused the Spanish monarchy to declare bankruptcy several times, beginning in 1577. The changes in warfare eventually made the Mercenary forces of the Renaissance and Middle Ages obsolete. However this was a gradual change. As late as the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), most troops were mercenaries. However, after this conflict, most states invested in better disciplined and more politically reliable permanent troops. For a time mercenaries became important as trainers and administrators, but soon these tasks were also taken by the state. The massive size of these armies required a large supporting force of administrators. The newly centralized states were forced to set up vast organized bureaucracies to manage these armies, which some historians argue is the basis of the modern bureaucratic state. The combination of increased taxes and increased centralisation of government functions caused a series of revolts across Europe such as the Fronde in France and the English Civil War . In many countries, the resolution of this conflict was the rise of monarchical Absolutism . Only in England and the Netherlands was representative government evolved as an alternative. From the late 1600s, states learned how to finance wars through long term low interest loans from national banking institutions like the Bank Of England . The first state to master this process was the Dutch Republic . This transformation in the armies of Europe had great social impact. J.F.C. Fuller famously stated that "the musket made the infantryman and the infantryman made the democrat." This argument states that the defence of the state now rested on the common man, not on the aristocrats, revolts by the underclass, that had been routinely been defeated in the Middle Ages, could now conceivably threaten the power of the state. However, aristocrats continued to monopolise the officer corps of almost all early modern armies, including their high command. Moreover, popular revolts almost always failed unless they had the support and patronage of the noble or gentry classes. The new armies, because of their vast expense, was also dependent on taxation and the commercial classes who also began to demand a greater role in society. The great commercial powers of the Dutch and English matched much larger states in military might. As almost any man could be given a musket and with only minutes of instruction be able to be a soldier it made it far easier to have massive armies. The inaccuracy of the weapons necessitated large groups of massed soldiers. This led to a rapid swelling of the size of armies. For the first time huge masses of the population could enter combat, rather than just the highly skilled professionals. It has been argued that the drawing of men from across the nation into an organized corps helped breed national unity and patriotism, and during this period the modern notion of the Nation State was born. However, this would only become apparent after the French Revolutionary Wars . At this time, the Levée En Masse and Conscription would become the defining paradigm of Modern Warfare . Before then, however, most national armies were in fact composed of many nationalities. For example, although the Swedish Army under Gustavus Adolphus was originally recruited by a kind of national conscription, the losses of the Thirty Years' War meant that by 1648 over 80% of its troops were foreign mercenaries. In Spain, armies were recruited from all the Spanish European territories including Spain, Italy, Wallonia and Germany. The French recruited soldiers from Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere as well as from France. Britain recruited Hessian troops until the late 18th century. Irish Catholics made careers for themselves in the armys of many European states (See the Flight Of The Wild Geese ). CAVALRY The rise of gunpowder reduced the importance of Cavalry , but it remained effective in a new role into the nineteenth century. The cavalry along with the infantry, became more professional in this period but it retained greater presige than the foot soldier. Light cavalry were introduced for skirmishing and among scouting forces for the advantage of speed and mobility. New types of horse soldiers introduced in this period were Dragoons or Mounted Infantry . Dragoons were intended to travel on horseback but fight on foot and were armed with Carbines and Pistols . Even orthodox cavalry carried firearms, especially the pistol, which they used in a tactic known as the Caracole . Cavalry charges with swords on undisciplined infantry could still be decisive, but a frontal charge against well ordered musketeers and pikemen was all but futile. Cavalry, from the 16th century on, were more likely to charge other cavalry on the flanks of an infantry formation and try to work their way behind enemy infantry. When they achieved this and pursued a fleeing enemy, cavalry could still destroy an enemy army. However, the power formerly wielded by a solely cavalry focused army was at an end. For the first time in millennia the settled people of the agricultural regions could defeat the horse peoples of the Steppe in open combat. The power of the Mongol s was broken in Russia and, no longer threatened from the east, that region began to assert itself as a major force in European affairs. Never again would nomads from the east threaten to overrun Europe or the Middle East. The one exception to this was the Ottoman Empire , founded by Turkish horsemen, but integrated with the organization of the Byzantine Empire and the technological achievements of the Arab Middle East . Arguably the world's greatest power for almost the entirety of the early modern period, the Ottoman's were some of the first to embrace gunpowder weapons and integrated them into their already formidable fighting abilities. However, as European infantry became better armed and disciplined, by about 1700, Ottoman forces began to be regularly defeated by Austrian Habsburg and other forces. OUTSIDE OF EUROPE The gunpowder era of warfare is largely confined to Europe. This was also the time of the beginning of European exploration and Colonial expansion and the lack of any significant intermediary period of gunpowder warfare proved decisive. Peoples in The Americas , Asia , and Africa fighting with medieval or even ancient warfare techniques were at a great disadvantage even if they were only a few years behind developments in Europe. Thus much of the world was annexed to European empires before gunpowder warfare could develop indigenously. In most areas not under European control gunpowder warfare did not develop for other reasons. As previously mentioned gunpowder and related technologies had been developed centuries earlier, and military engineers in China had developed more potent weapons than anywhere else in the world. The immense social impact of these weapons could have was noted by many. In Europe attempts were made to suppress this progress, for a time the use of firearms was considered a War Crime , and any captured fusilier was immediately put to death. In Europe it was impossible to enforce these rules, competition between the powers was far too intense and any state that failed to embrace new technologies would be wiped off the map. China faced no such mortal threats, its enemies were far smaller and poorer and had long been dispatched with conventional forces. The Chinese government thus systematically suppressed the development of gunpowder weapons systems. Ottoman Empire At the beginning of the early modern period the most powerful state in the world was arguably the Ottoman Empire . The empire had been one of the first states to effectively embrace gunpowder weapons and used them to great effect conquering much of the Middle East , North Africa , and the Balkans . In the seventeenth century the state began to stagnate as more modern technologies and strategies were not adopted. In part this was because the military elite had become a powerful force in the empire and change threatened their positions. The empire also faced few threats from more advanced enemies, its long time rivals in Persia and Russia had few gunpowder weapons. Japan In Japan the pattern was somewhat different. Soon after European contact firearms were adopted in the nation and an era of gunpowder warfare followed for several decades, culminating at the famous Battle Of Nagashino , where Volley Fire was introduced. However, once the islands were unified the Tokugawa Shogunate launched an unprecedented effort to "turn back the clock" and banned all firearms. For several centuries Japanese warfare remained medieval and the society feudal. NAVAL WARFARE The spread of European power around the world was closely tied to naval developments in this period. The Caravel for the first time made unruly seas like the Atlantic open to exploration, trade, and military activities. While in all previous eras, European navies had been largely confined to operations in coastal waters, and were generally used in a support role to land based forces, this changed with the new vessels and the increasing importance of international waterborne trade. The new caravels were large enough and powerful enough to be armed with cannons with which they could bombard both the shore and other vessels. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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