"Military Establishment, by Nation?" Topic

I was wondering if there were online some sources which summarize various total national military establishments of the era? For instance the total number of and enrollment in French regiments in the WSS era or say, the total number of men-at-arms fielded by each nation at the commencement of the SYW? I find lots of historical discussion but I'm looking for lists and tables.

Cheers.

I think you'll be lucky to find that sort of data for the WSS era – and certainly not in any meaningful quantities. Even if such records were maintained (and not all armies would have done that in this period), it is unlikely they would have survived this long in bulk. Some British Army muster rolls go back to the SYW, in odd cases a little before, but even those of the most efficient regiments are not continuous and have annoying gaps (invariably including the very years you are looking for). In general, before the Napoleonic period it was hit-and-miss as to whether Horse Guards or even the individual regiments themselves kept them for long. Except for the Foot Guards, there were no official depots until the mid-1780s, so paper archives tended to be carried with the regiment wherever it went (as a consequence a lot were lost in shipwrecks, fires, etc). And of course many records from German/Eastern European states were destroyed in subsequent conflicts.

Supercilius Maximus:

Thanks. I just recently read about the regimental strongbox going on campaigns, so I understand what you're saying.

I read recently that, for instance Frederick the Great fielded about 50,000 men at one time in his largest engagements. Prussia had I can't remember how many casualties (300,000 military? 1.5 million civilian? I'm getting my histories mixed up). I remember reading that he bolstered the army with 1) forces that he beat (Saxony, iirc), 2) with foreigners as recruits (in large numbers), and 3) with "new" Prussians, both from the areas he conquered, and the foreigners (Germans and others) he invited to settle there.

Duffy has some other figures, for France and Britain, iirc. If I can gather some of the general SYW or mid-18th Century info, maybe I'll post it here.

It would be interesting to compare FtG's strategic and tactical decisions in light of some other evidence, eg casualty rate versus entire population versus force under arms versus extent of (unfriendly) border versus fragmentation of governed areas versus GDP versus military budget versus cost of equipping a single fusilier etc.

I guess I'll keep reading the Duffy and the Nosworthy. Cheers.

grommet37

Captain Lloyd's "List of the Forces of the Sovereigns of Europe" of 1761 contains lists for 1760.
I can't remember where I found a copy online.

Camcleod wrote:

Captain Lloyd's "List of the Forces of the Sovereigns of Europe" of 1761 contains lists for 1760.
I can't remember where I found a copy online.

Ordered a copy through my public library. Two libraries worldwide list it in their inter-library lending collections. It looks like it's available in print for a fair price, and as an internet resource as well. If the library can't get me a copy, I'll look into those options.

Very interesting title. Cheers.

Probably too far outside your period of interest to be of use to you, Alison's "History of Europe" covers the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in the kind of detail you are looking for in terms of socio-economic and military data by nation. I had the entire work – many, many volumes but yu can usually only find the reprinted atlas nowadays (though that itself is useful).

The Nafziger Collection orders-of-battle often have the full military establishment listed at the start of the war's OBs such as 1700 for the WSS for many of the combatants.

The list of OBs is in the PDF file at the top of the page here (called the Finding Aid) that you use to search for an OB's name and code number using the Adobe search function from the PDF Reader's pull-down menu:
link

The WSS (and GNW) OBs start with 700; and searching for "spanish succession" gets you in the right neighbourhood.

And the links for each of the OBs listed just by their code number that you access to get to the specific OB is here under the "Click here…" hot-link.
link

Addendum: I just noticed that the PDF Finding Guide has a direct link to the specific OB as part of its listing but when I tried accessing the direct links, it was taking too long to load so I closed the whole Finding Guide. So it is probably quicker to just use the Finding Guide to discover the code numbers you want and access the OBs directly (using ctrl-F to find it) from the direct "Click here…" list in the second link, above.