The military entrepreneur is a familiar figure to students of early modern warfare and politics. Before the emergence of the fiscal-military state later in the seventeenth century, European monarchies – mostly bereft of the wherewithal and the infrastructure necessary for raising and maintaining armies – relied heavily on the services of these professional soldiers cum venture capitalists. Many, if not most, of the principal army commanders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were military entrepreneurs; some, notably the Bohemian condottiere Wallenstein, achieved a level of influence that rivaled that of the princes they served.
In her new book, Suzanne Sutherland endeavors to highlight the importance, the mechanics, and the consequences of military entrepreneurship. The main title could be construed as misleading: Sutherland's book is clearly not about the “rise” of military entrepreneurship, a development that predates the subject of this work by many decades. Rather, it concerns the evolution of the phenomenon in the mid-to-late seventeenth century, a period of sweeping change in the practice and conduct of war and governance. The vehicle that Sutherland chooses for her study is the life and career of one of the most successful military entrepreneurs, the Italian-born general Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609-1680). A native of Modena, Montecuccoli was a lifelong career soldier, emerging into prominence in Imperial service in the last decade of the Thirty Years’ War. Ultimately, Montecuccoli would become the leading figure in the formulation of Habsburg military policy and grand strategy after Westphalia, particularly in Austria's wars against the Turks leading up to the siege of Vienna in 1683.
If Sutherland had intended The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur to be nothing more than a conventional biography of Montecuccoli, a soldier frequently (and unjustifiably) overshadowed by his contemporary Turenne, she would have made a noteworthy contribution to the English-language literature on early modern warfare. But Rise, deeply researched and clearly written, is much more than that. The book is also a detailed portrait of the military entrepreneurs who dominated the Habsburg high command in the seventeenth century, an analysis of the changing role of military entrepreneurs, a study of the role of war in the transformation of the European nobility, and an exploration of the ways in which military entrepreneurs – as professional soldiers and as men of letters – left their mark on the art of war. Sutherland shows how the Habsburg emperors (in this case, Ferdinand II, Ferdinand III, and Leopold I) drew on the considerable pool of military talent found within the lesser to middling Italian nobility, allowing them to create a viable officer corps whose main unifying attributes were their shared Catholic identity and their loyalty to the dynasty.
For Montecuccoli – as for Collalto, Colloredo, Piccolomini, Gallas, and the other Italian-born commanders who led Habsburg armies – a military career in the emperor's employ was a complicated endeavor. As Sutherland effectively demonstrates, it involved juggling commitments to family and loyalties to Italian territorial princes with the demands of service to the Habsburgs, and often these three things were in open conflict with one another – or made for difficult relationships with other Italian commanders. Still, with the right blend of military talent, perseverance, charm, managerial skills, political acumen, and sheer luck, an ambitious military entrepreneur could navigate these obstacles and do quite well for himself. Here Montecuccoli excelled. His track record as a leader and steward of the emperor's armies led to greater responsibilities and increasingly prestigious appointments, and eventually to high-level tasks that were not ordinarily assigned to professional soldiers. Hence Ferdinand III entrusting Montecuccoli with the role of special envoy to Queen Christina of Sweden on the eve of her abdication; hence, too, Leopold I's selection of the Modenese general as a key member of the delegation that greeted the emperor's Spanish bride-to-be, the Infanta Margarita Teresa, on her matrimonial progress from Madrid to Vienna. Despite Montecuccoli's constant fretting about his perceived lack of clout, by the final phase of his career he was among the most influential policymakers in Leopold I's inner circle, at a critical juncture in the history of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy. This, perhaps, is the “rise” to which Sutherland alludes in the book's title: the elevation of the military entrepreneur from army commander to royal counselor and career administrator.
Sutherland's book is not without flaws. Its greatest weakness lies in its discussion of Montecuccoli as a military intellectual and author, and of his contributions to what Sutherland claims (pp. 15–17) is a transition from “military art” to “military science.” Here the author seems to be venturing into unfamiliar territory. Nowhere does Sutherland lay out specifically what Montecuccoli's intellectual contributions actually were, except in the most cryptic of terms, or how those contributions fit within the growing body of printed military scholarship in the seventeenth century. The author does not elucidate what she means by “military science,” or even to establish that this alleged transition from “art” to “science” was a signal feature of military thought in Montecuccoli's lifetime. Historians of war might also take exception to Sutherland's characterization of Montecuccoli as a “warrior” rather than a “soldier,” a subtle but critical distinction in early modern military historiography. There are a few minor errors, mostly of usage (e.g., referring to the Swedish soldier-king Gustavus Adolphus as just “Adolphus”). But the absence of a solid, informed discussion of Montecuccoli's military thought is much more serious, given that Sutherland draws attention to this as a major component of her book.
Still, Rise is a valuable book, not only as a biography of Montecuccoli but as an addition to the established historiography in a number of fields. Suzanne Sutherland provides us with a succinct but effective group portrait of the Habsburg high command in the post-Wallenstein era; more important, Sutherland gives us a new take on the impact of war on political and social change in early modern Europe, and a significant addition to the growing literature on the business of war during the so-called military revolution. Students of early modern military history and of the post-1648 Habsburg Monarchy should pay close attention.
