Recalculating French Army Growth During the Grand Siede, 1610-1715

Abstract

By the end of the seventeenth century, European warfare had become an affair of giants, as colossal armies battled against one another. France boasted the greatest of these Goliaths, a force which totaled as many as 400,000 soldiers, at least on paper. It was the largest and hungriest institution maintained by the state. That this Titan existed by 1700, no one denies; but the pattern and timing of its growth and its final dimensions remain matters of debate. This article presents a new and more rigorous calculation of French army expansion during the period 1610-1715. For over a century, historians divided French military expansion into two stages. First, in order to challenge Spain, Richelieu and Louis XIII assembled an army of unprecedented size in 1635. Totaling 150,000 or more, this force was at least twice as large as any previous wartime military maintained by the French monarchy. A second phase of growth followed the military and administrative reform associated with the first decades of the personal reign of Louis XIV. Troop strength reached 280,000 during the Dutch War (1672-78) and hit 400,000 in the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97), continuing at that level for the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). Since the mid-1950s, proponents of a Military Revolution in