Carl von Clausewitz: Excerpts from On War (1832)

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(Book Eight) Chapter Three

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The end of the seventeenth century, the age of Louis XIV, may be regarded as that point in history when the standing army in the shape familiar to the eighteenth century reached maturity. This military organization was based on money and recruitment. The states of Europe had achieved complete internal unity. With their subjects' services converted into money payments, the strength of governments now lay entirely in their treasuries. Thanks to cultural developments and to a progressively more sophisticated administration, their power was very great compared with earlier days. France put several hundred thousand regular troops in the field, and other states could do likewise in proportion to their populations.

International relations had changed in other ways as well. Europe was now split between a dozen monarchies and a handful of republics. It was conceivable that two states could fight a major war without, as in former times, involving twenty others. The possible political alignments were still many and various; but they could be surveyed, and their probability at each given instant could be evaluated.

Domestically almost every state had been reduced to an absolute monarchy; the privileges and influence of the estates had gradually disappeared. The executive had become completely unified and represented the state in its foreign relations. Political and military institutions had developed into an effective instrument, with which an independent will at the center could now wage war in a form that matched its theoretical concept.

During this period, moreover, three new Alexanders appeared—Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII, and Frederick the Great. With relatively limited but highly efficient forces each sought to turn his small state into a large monarchy, and crush all opposition. Had they been dealing only with Asiatic empires they might have resembled Alexander more closely. But in terms of risks that they ran, they undeniably foreshadowed Bonaparte.

But, if war gained in power and effectiveness, it lost in other respects.