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This takes a good deal of explaining. Ancient Greece is defined by fragmentation, so summarizing it tricky. What follows is very, very compressed and omits a lot of important details.The settingBefore talking about the politics its important to understand the physical parameters — looking a a modern map can give you a very misleading idea of what Greek politics was really about.With a handful of exceptions, the average Greek polity is what we today call a “city-state.” All that really means, however, is that most Greek states were tiny: too small to sustain more than a single serious urban center. Athens, the largest of the city-states, is usually said to have a population of about 300,000 — but it’s important to remember that this represents not the population of the urban area, but of the whole political unit. The urban core of Attica was more in the ballpark of 50,000, only twice headcount of the suburban bedroom community where I grew up. Athens’ territory was about a thousand square miles / 2500 square km— smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest American state. The very longest walk you could do in Attica was only about 60 miles / 100 km — you could easily traverse the whole place on foot in three days.Yet Athens was, by Greek standards, a superpower.Most other Greek city-states were much smaller; an urban core of 10,000 supported by a rural population of 50,000 would make you a regional power.Theses tiny states reflect they physical geography of Greece — the mainland is divided by many mountains and arms of the sea into dozens of micro-regions, while the Aegean and Ionian are dotted by small islands. Exerting political control over this fragmented landscape was extremely difficult — overland travel was usually funneled through well known, narrow passes and the numerous small islands were a breeding ground for pirates and smugglers.All of this adds up to the key fact about Greek politics. “Greece” was an abstraction. The only state which ever united the ancient Greek world under one political system was the Roman empire. Greece was a region, not a country: more like “Europe” or “The Arab World” than like “France” or “Saudi Arabia”.Political typesThe political fragmentation of the Greek world meant a great deal of diversity in political arrangements, which make it very difficult to answer the question in a simple summary fashion: there hundreds of distinct Greek political entities, including democracies, monarchies, republics, federations and a few more exotic arrangements. Describing them in detail would be a daunting task.However the Greeks themselves typically used three main categories when describing their political arrangements: rule by one person, rule by a minority, and rule by the majority. Each of these might be good or bad — you could have a virtuous king or a vicious tyrant, an enlightened self-governing democracy or fickle mob-rule. Traditionally these forms were seen as historically connected— each type having characteristic weaknesses which led to its downfall over time and replacement by another, a rotation which they called “the wheel” or cyclos. Philosophers differed about the order of rotation — did monarchy arise out of failed democracy or failed aristocracy? However that combination of contrast and relatedness makes a good starting point to generalize about the otherwise extraordinary variety of Greek political institutions.Naturally everything that follows is a broad brush picture — in total the Greek world was home to more than a thousand sovereign states but our sources tell us primarily about a tiny handful. It’s also heavily dependent on information recorded primarily by Aristotle, who of course had opinions and agendas of his own. So: let the reader beware.This graphic shows Aristotle’s division of the three main types of Greek state in both their positive and “degenerate” forms. Image: Mathieu Gaultier-PiloteThe FewBy far the most common political structure is a city-state republic, governed primarily by a privileged class but with limited forms of political participation for other free men (only — no Greek state enfranchised women).When describing this form of government positively, the Greeks called it aristokrateia, “rule by the best” — our word is aristocracy. When describing it negatively, they’d call it oligarcheia, “rule by a few”, which gives us oligarchy. The primary distinction between them is moral and emotional, not structural; if the republic is basically run exclusively for the benefit of the privileged it’s an oligarchy, if it’s run in the interest of the population at large, it’s an aristocracy. Naturally, few people tended to describe themselves and their friends as oligarchs.*The republican structure was oriented around two basic problems: defense against outside enemies and the maintenance of order at home. Most Greek states did not have anything like a “welfare state,” few even provided basic services like police or fire protection. Instead, their primary job was to keep outsiders at bay while making sure that factions at home did not endanger the collective.External defense was a collective enterprise, and it was the ultimate determinant of how the state was structured.These tiny states could not afford a standing professional army. Thus to be a citizen was to be a member of the laos, the city militia, and vice-versa. Politics and military preparedness were always inextricably linked in Greece. Thus, in most states, political rights came with a property qualification: but typically, the bar for full citizenship was the ability to afford the shield, spear, and helmet needed to take your place in the main line of battle. At the top of the social and political pyramid were the handful of wealthy men who could provide their own horses: a precious luxury in most of Greece where pasture land was scarce. In pretty much any Greek state, the social elite were known as the hippeis, the cavalry — though in a maritime city a similar role would be played by those wealthy enough to outfit their own warships. Below the wealthiest elite were a larger group who were able to provide the full “panoply”, the complete suit of armor and weapons that fitted you out to fight in the front lines of a Greek army. The less prosperous but still independent could provide only partial equipment (a helmet, a shield and a spear).The citizen militia was, thus, the epicenter of city-state politics. If you carried a weapon in the city’s defense you’d have some voice, albeit one that was usually muted by wealth and hereditary privilege. On the other hand if you had no place on the battlefield you were also excluded from formal politics. Women and slaves were excluded everywhere. Different cities offered different levels of participation to poor free men who might handle a sling or a spear in an emergency but were not part of the vital armored front lines. Sparta is an interesting illustration of the point: the ultimate rationale for Sparta’s unique way of life was a kind of class-leveling project within the class of heavy-infantry warriors — the true Spartans were a small, elite minority (no more than about one-seventh of the population) but they proudly referred to themselves as the homoioi, “The Equals.”The essence of Greek politics: the wealthy aristocrat (center), the citizen-soldier (right) and the traditional elder (left). When this was done (in 6th century BC Athens, before the democracy took hold) the class significance would have been obvious to any viewer: these men represent the three political classes of Solon’s constitution. There’s no representative of the fourth class, the landless thetes who could attend the assembly but could not hold office. Image: Wikimedia commonsInternal stability was the second job of politics.Endemic low-grade warfare meant that dissension at home was dangerous: a Greek city which gave in to civil conflict was vulnerable to its neighbors, so the city-state republics were designed to mitigate potential conflicts at home. Greek society was always extremely fractured, so conflict at home was almost as common as conflicts between neighboring states. The structure of the aristocratic republic evolved in large part to mediate these conflicts.Before the era of the city-states, Greek politics was tribal — noble clans battled each other for prestige and loot in the manner of Homer’s arrogant heroes. As settlements became more urban those aristocratic competitions frequently turned into civil war fought by tribal armies. The city state era’s great achievement was to funnel that endless aristocratic competition into the political arena: instead of cattle-raids and kidnappings, rival aristocrats competed for votes. The laos, the armed citizenry, acted as referee: even though an ordinary spearman might never be able to be a magistrate he could back one candidate over another, or approve a verdict in a politically charged trial.In most Greek states aristocrats retained important hereditary advantages. Sometimes these were based on tribal traditions, sometimes on religious sanctions, and sometimes simply by wealth. Generally speaking exposure to commerce tended to erode hereditary privilege and replace it with privilege based on wealth — but even in democratic, commercial Athens a genealogy which included a few gods and heroes was a significant social and political asset. Nevertheless, the combination of voting rights and and jury participation offered to the laos ensured that the rank-and-file of the vital infantry were at least somewhat included in community decision making. Typically the capstone of the political process was an assembly or ecclesia*, an open-air mass meeting where matters were debated in front of the citizenry. The assembly was typically convened for matters of broad communal importance: to debate matters of war and peace, to deal with emergencies, and (in places where magistracies were elective) to vote.The armed citizenry got to vote — but all voting was not necessarily equal. More oligarchical cities found a variety of ways to dilute the real power of the less privileged: gerrymandering by kinship group, by wealth, or by place of residence were common tricks to protect elite interests. Voting was usually public — which meant that a less wealthy citizen might be casting his vote under the eye of his landlord or his powerful neighbor. Mechanisms for secret ballots — which ranged from writing on potsherds to dropping colored beans in a jar — were a staple of progressive measures in Greek politics.Not everything, of course, works well in open meeting of several thousands. Administrative matters were typically handled by a smaller group, the council or “boule”. It’s job was to oversee routine matters and often to prepare the agenda for meetings of the full ecclesia. The boule (or sometimes, the gerousia, “the senior citizens”) might be hereditary, or it might be composed (like the Roman Senate) of current and former magistrates.The council typically doubled as the jury in a court of justice. Civil law — controlling inheritance and ownership of property — was a central focus of social conflict: in a society where agriculture was wealth but where agriculture was often very dicey, it was common for poorer citizens to fall victim to predatory lending practices and land grabs by the powerful. A fair court system, therefore, was regarded as one of the key markers of a just regime. In that connection, one of the key achievement of the city-state was the creation of written law codes: the laws were rarely egalitarian but the mere fact that they were literally set in stone was an important check on the power of the aristocrats. Over time, as populations grew and litigation became more common and more complex, most cities ended up with separate courts. The social composition of the juries was one of the key indices of political inclusion: exclusive control over the courts was a hallmark of the most reactionary oligarchies.Finally there were the magistrates — the archons — who handled executive duties. These could range from could range from leading an army to to conducting an embassy to overseeing weights and measures.** In most cities these were elected to fixed terms, but in some places they were elected for life or the office was hereditary. Almost every magistracy involved religious as well as secular duties; offering sacrifice and overseeing traditional observances were seen as critical to the well being of the city; sometimes magistracies were restricted to certain clans or statuses due to traditional religious constraints. Even in ultra-democratic Athens, the archon basileus or “king magistrate” was responsible for carrying out the ritual duties which had, in the dim mists of the pasts, been done by the long vanished kings of Attica.One notable feature of the magistracies is that they were often privately funded. Most Greek cities had minimal infrastructure and shaky tax regimes — so tasks that would seem to us like obvious “government responsibilities” were frequently farmed out to the private resources of individual magistrates, a system known as leitourgeia (“work on behalf of the laos”). This could range from being an ambassador — a nobleman with a pre-existing family relationship in a foreign city might be sent to negotiate a treaty — to privately outfitting a new warship or paying for the the construction of a new temple. The leitourgeia were in one sense an ultra-progressive form of taxation — but in another sense they were a means of limiting political power to the ultra-wealthy.The OneThe delicate balance of power which sustained an oligarchy or a republic was always in doubt.Greece had several periods in which aristocratic competition outweighed class solidarity: one or another ambitious aristocrat managed to remove his competitors and become sole ruler. In our sources these self-made monarchs are known as tyrants. It’s a word which has negative connotations today mostly thanks to the fact that most of our written sources usually represent an aristocratic point of view. The tyrant who managed to leverage his popularity with ordinary people to monopolize power was every aristocrat’s worst nightmare, though of course it was also often their secret dream as well.Tyrants were usually aristocrats who courted popular support to marginalize other aristocrats. They might be military heroes, populist reformers, or just particularly successful gangsters. A handful of those who achieved sole power became folk heroes for their successful reforms, like Solon and Lycurgus (both of whom, notably, voluntarily retired from their absolute positions). Others, like Phalaris and became bywords for cruel and capricious behavior.As a practical matter the rule of a tyrant was typically dependent on a mix of popular support and mercenary soldiers. The populist element in tyranny varied very considerably and had a lot to do with local history. For example one famous tyrant was Cleisthenes Of Sicyon, who rose to power by championing the Ionian-speaking part of the city’s populace against the Dorian-speakers who dominated the city’s aristocracy. On the other hand Peisistratos, who was tyrant of Athens for three different stints, started off as a populist representing the rural poor —- however he finally stabilized his position by reaching an accommodation with factions within the aristocracy.In generally, Greek tyranny was seen (by our aristocratic-leaning sources) as an illegitimate interruption in the proper form of government — it was “bad” in the same way that oligarchy was “bad”. There were a also handful of legitimate monarchies in the Greek world as well which didn’t have the same stigma. In Greek a pro-social royal government is a “basilea”, from the word for king. However there were not many examples. Hereditary monarchy tended to survive only on the fringes of the Greek world — in semi-civilized borderlands like Epirus and Macedon, or in overseas colonies like Cyrene where the descendants of the original founder retained power down to the age of Alexander.For a long time the heartland of Greek tyranny was Persian-occupied Asia Minor, where a tyrant could act as a de-facto Persian governor and could rely on Persian backing. However after several of the tyrants joined the great Ionian Revolt (499–493) the Persians ended up embracing democracy for their Greek subjects — mostly on the grounds that it was a lot easier for a single tyrant to plot against the Great King than it would be for a politically fractured democratic government.Greek monarchies (whether tyrannies or hereditary kingships) frequently retained structural of mainstream aristocratic republics. In Macedon, for example, the army traditionally functioned as an assembly and a court, though (like many Macedonian institutions) its “rights” were maintained as much by the threat of force as by law. There was also a council, similar to the republican boule, though often addressed as something like the “the King’s friends.” Monarchies themselves were often quasi-elective: while the kingship might belong to a particular family or clan, the army assembly was frequently the arbiter between rival candidates, particularly when there was no obvious claimant.The one institution which always distinguished a monarchy from a more conventional city-state republic was the existence of a paid standing army. Almost every classical story of a tyrant’s rise to power hinges on the moment when the ambitious would-be tyrant convinces the people to allow him to maintain a standing bodyguard on some pretext or other. In the classical era Greeks had a schizophrenic attitude about personal arms: while carrying a spear in the service of the city was the sine qua non of being a citizen, actually walking around armed within the city walls was seen as barbaric, or at best a throwback to a more primitive era. Thus the presence of permanent, paid armed force within the city walls was one of the signal markers of a tyranny, the kind of thing that would make other Greeks shake their heads. In a more traditional monarchy the bodyguard corps was at least fronted by aristocratic “friends” of the king, which lent it a more properly civil air.Sparta, interesting, had “kings” without being a monarchy. Structurally Sparta is really just a variant on the typical aristocratic republic: real political power tended to lie in the gerousia and the elected ephors while the kings were essentially hereditary magistrates with military and religious functions.One difficulty we have in understanding Greek tyrannies is the fact that our written sources are usually quite hostile to them. This is a statue of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who killed Hipparchus, the last tyrant of Athens, and became beloved folk-heroes for the rest of antiquity. Image: Josho Brouwers / Ancient HistoryThe ManyAthens, of course, is famous as the birthplace of democracy. Our writers (again, with their aristocratic bias) are often very critical of what seems to us like one of Greece’s greatest achievements. In Greek, democracy is more or less the bad version of rule-by-many — it corresponds not to aristocracy but to oligarchy. The good version of popular rule is polity. The Athenians often referred to their own system as isonomia, “equality before the laws.”The opposition between democratic and aristocratic regimes defined the classical era of Greece — the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta started off as a fairly conventional game of city-state rivalry, but it spiralled out of control into an ideological conflict pitting aristocratic and democratic factions against each other all over the Greek world for more than a generation. This was no mere war of words: almost no part of Greece was untouched by civil strife as well as the underlying superpower conflict between Athens and Sparta.Despite that, the democracies still shared the general structure of aristocratic republics: a citizen body which was identical with the city militia, an assembly to debate important matters, a council to manage administrative affairs, and magistrates to run the city from day to day. The key innovations which distinguished Greek democracies from their aristocratic counterparts were procedural and social rather than structural. In Athens — the city we know best — we can actually see the gradual democratization of the standard aristocratic republic over time in the reforms first of Solon, then of Cleisthenes, and finally under the radical democrats during war with Sparta.It was noted at the time that one key reason why Athens in particular embraced democracy is that the old equation of military participation and political power remained a force: as a naval power Athens depended on it seamen for survival. An oarsman who owned nothing but his oar still contributed to the city’s defense. He expected and was given citizen rights reflecting that fact: the navy was always the stronghold of democratic political allegiance in Athens while (unsurprisingly) the wealth cavalry-class hippeis were usually suspicious of democracy and sympathetic to aristocratic regimes in Sparta and elsewhere.The critical procedural marker of a democratic system was the substitution of sortition for voting. Magistrates were usually not elected, but rather chosen by lot. The system was intended to deprive the aristocratic minority, which could use social and financial pressure to win votes, of unfair advantages in access to public office. This meant that any free citizen could, in theory, be catapulted directly into public office without prior experience or political connections: a radically egalitarian approach to governance with few parallels in later history.This is what democracy looks like: a kleroterion, a random-selection machine used by the Athenians to select the members of the council, jurors, and lesser magistrates. This video shows a recreation of the machine in action. Image: Sharon MollerusObviously there were problems with an approach which did not even pretend to select candidates on merit. Typically the “candidates” were volunteers, and they were subject to a routine investigation before being allowed to enter the lots. A criminal record or a publicly-imposed limitation on citizen rights could disqualify you. Mental and sometimes physical disabilities could also bar you from office. In general, however, any citizen of a Greek democracy might, according to the luck of the draw, occupy most of the offices of state.There as one more important mechanism to keep that newly minted public official focused on learning their job: at the end of your term you’d face another investigation. If the assembly decided that you had misused your authority you’d be executed.The use of sortition was self-consciously radical. But even the most ardent Greek democrats felt there were some jobs where practical competence was too important to trust to luck. Out of the thousand or so offices in Athens, around a hundred which were elective — the most important ones being military commands and handling public finances. These offices usually ended up in the hands of wealthier, more aristocratic candidates. These officers too, however, had to stand face a potentially lethal investigation at the end of their terms; the old joke about the British hanging one admiral “in order to encourage the others” was more than applicable to Athens, which famously executed more than a few otherwise successful commanders.The other key procedural change which the democrats made was shift the balance of power between the council and the assembly. In most aristocracies the it was the council which prepared the agenda for the assembly, so even in aristocracies where the citizen assembly had real power the council had the power of initiative. In democratic states, however, any citizen could propose a new law or government action directly to the citizen assembly. In theory, any citizen could initiate a new vote on anything from a new tax to a declaration of war. This was the most radical imaginable expression of “equality before the laws.”However serious consequences could attend on the decision to propose a law or another government measure. Just as a magistrate had to face a potentially life-threatening scrutiny at the end of his term, a citizen was liable for trial if his proposal was regarded as contravening existing laws. Prosecution for proposing an improper law could be retroactive — thus it was possible for a private citizen to propose a measure, see it become law, and then to be tried and potentially executed for having proposed it.**** Personal liability for the law ended after one year; after five years the law was regarded as permanent and now new proposals which contravened it were subject to the same system of penalties.The possibility of legislation-by-prosecution showcases another critical way in which Greek democracies adapted the traditional aristocratic-republican formula: their approach to the courts.The council, which tended to be skewed towards aristocrats because it included those elected magistrates — lost exclusive control of justice, particularly in civil matters. Jury composition was always contentious, even in oligarchic regimes; in democratic cities this, too, was given to random sortition. In Athens, at least, jurors were paid — this made it possible for the less well off to attend the courts. Highly opinionated “professional jurors” who made a living by rotating between juries (both for the money and as a form of entertainment) were stock figures in Athenian comedy.These independent courts had wide-ranging powers and were not constrained by procedural laws or legal finesse. In Athens there no judges — while a magistrate would handle procedural matters the vote of the jury was based entirely on their personal interpretations of the law. The famous Greek art of public speaking evolved primarily in the courts, where the only test of a legal point was the jury’s reaction. This was equally true whether the case was a suit over a broken cart-wheel or an effort to reverse a politically charged law. Because the cases were often so contentious, the juries were very large — as many as 501 jurors — with the aim of diluting partisanship and getting a better cross-section of voices.From our distant viewpoint, Greek democracy is in a lot of ways simply the expansion of the aristocratic republic to include more of the population. The basic institutions are retained, with the addition of random selection, regular rotation of office, and lower financial bars to entry. Ironically, though, by making the ordinary man into an aristocrat (at least, before the laws) the democratic regimes also encouraged democratic cities to restrict immigration and naturalization. In Athens, for example, it was almost impossible for anyone to become an Athenian citizen unless all four grandparents had been citizens — even the mighty Pericles, the most important politician of the day, had to beg the assembly to grant his own son citizenship. It was entirely possible for a foreigner to move to Athens, but three or four generations later that family would still be metoikoi, resident aliens. Citizenship could only be possible by a vote of the assembly. Manumitted slaves had no path to citizenship either. This ingrained exclusivity was an aristocratic inheritance in democratic states that was never really erased.This image shows one phase of the evolution of the Athenian constitution — you’ll note that it includes the three key pieces (assembly, council, and courts) but that they are almost all chosen by sortition rather than election.Here, the Spartan constiution (simplified). Despite the tremendous differences in emphasis the key parts — assembly, council, and magistracies — are similar.TLDRThe Greek city-state had a very simple structure, and its three primary variations shared many similarities despite their obvious differences.The assembly — notionally representing the citizen militia — was the ultimate source of sovereign power: it was “the people” speaking as a body. In an aristocratic state the assembly was mostly expected to ratify decisions proposed by the council, dominated by the leading citizens. In a democracy, it was able to speak with its own voice. In a tyranny or a monarchy the assembly’s importance was a matter of style: a populist tyrant would rely on the assembly to overawe potential rivals, but one who ruled by force might not allow the assembly to meet at all.The council oversaw matters that required continuity and more deliberation than could be had in a mass meeting. In aristocracies, this might be a hereditary group or it might be chosen by wealth. In a democracy the council was chosen by lot.Courts were intensely political. Formal legal procedure was less important than the ability to move a jury — a fact which helps explain why the Greek education placed such a premium on oratory.Apart from those basic institutions, Greek states were extremely simple. Complex administration and permanent bureaucracies didn’t really emerge until after the age of Alexander, when giant multinational empires became the power brokers of the Greek world. Classical Greek constitutional and legal arrangements were constantly open to renegotiation and change; in many cases a single well-delivered speech could upend the balance of power. The intensity of these debates made Greek society both incredibly dynamic and also remarkably chaotic.* For some Greek thinkers there’s a subdivision within “rule of the few” between regimes based on hereditary privilege (aristocracy and oligarchy) and those based solely on economic privilege (timocracy and plutocracy in the good and bad versions). Generally speaking the balance between hereditary aristocracy and timocracy shifted over time; by the Hellenistic period money usually mattered more than birth in most of the Greek world though of course they were often hard to separate.**The idea of a community forum like the went on to have a long afterlife — our “ecclesiastical” comes from the fact that the early church used the word for its own meetings.*** Weights and measures were a constant source of friction in an economy where barter was always important — there’s a reason why the ancient goddess of justice is depicted holding scales.**** In practice the usual penalties were fines or restriction of citizen rights (such as disqualification from office). The death penalty was rare, but real:

In Western and Central Europe, the short answer is that the linear order only was adopted gradually, over the course of several centuries, and this adoption accelerated as muskets became a more flexible and effective means of delivering firepower. A line, as opposed to a deep column or the loose order, brings many more weapons to bear at any given time, and so maximizes the efficacy of firearms, but it also comes with serious disadvantages. These disadvantages were compensated for by a series of technical and organizational innovations starting from the late 1600’s through to about the first half of the 1700’s, when you might say that the line of battle was most widely accepted. (Should be noted that in Eastern Europe, which has a very different geography than the main theatres in Western Europe, the Turks and Poles never really got onto the bandwagon, and enjoyed mixed success in countering Russian and Austrian forces with non-linear tactics.)Not being very well read at all in medieval warfare, I can’t speak in great detail to the infantry tactics that prevailed when handheld firearms first appeared in any meaningful quantity in the late 1400’s. What I can say is that the combined-arms mix of pole arms and missile arms was growing in prominence at this time. The Swiss and the Northern Italians were especially famous for the tenacity, lethality and offensive power of their crossbow & pike formations. The Spanish, who for dynastic reasons became embroiled in the politics of Italy in the last decade of the 15th c., found in these units a somewhat adequate foil to their chief antagonists the French, widely reputed to have the most fearsome heavy horse in Europe. The pikemen provided the offensive power, the crossbowmen could protect the pikemen from missile-armed opponents. There was a problem though: crossbows weren’t very deadly against armored k’nnnnnniggits.That left the gun as the only solution, and it was hardly an ideal one. It was cumbersome, inaccurate, slow-firing, susceptible to weather, and complicated to manufacture. On the other hand it held two key advantages over bows and crossbows: it could penetrate high quality steel armor [1], and it was a lot cheaper to train a musketeer than an archer or crossbowman. Naturally (in a scenario familiar to combat veterans everywhere), early Renaissance governments picked the worse weapon because it could be put into action the quickest. The Venetian republic, linchpin of European politics at the turn of the cinquecento, switched its army from crossbows to firearms in 1490. Spain and the other Italian states were hot on their heels, eventually followed by the rest of Europe within a few decades.The line-of-battle was slow in coming however. For armies in mid-16th c. Europe—by which point the musket was very much established on the battlefield—depth was still as important as breadth when it came to infantry formation. The heavy horse remained the teeth of most armies, and men stood a much better chance against them if they were arrayed in dense squares than in lines, which could be pushed through or simply outflanked by horses. And meanwhile, the practical limitations of muskets, which I enumerated above, ensured that there just wasn’t a whole lot of firepower to maximize in the first place. Good musketeers could get off perhaps one or two rounds a minute. As the 1500’s progressed, their number gradually increased relative to the number of pikemen, though even by the start of the Thirty Years’ War—more than 100 years after muskets first appeared—the ratio was still only about 1:1 in most armies, and soldiers deployed in formations that were nearly as deep as they were broad.The first big step toward more linear tactics was the advent of volley fire, invented by the most influential military reformers of early Modern Europe—who else?—the Dutch. In a letter dated 8 Dec 1594, William Louis of Nassau discusses how he has just finished reading about the Romans’ use of javelin-throwers and slingers. In turns out that according to Aelian, Roman practice called for these missileers to be arranged in ranks. The first rank (of six total) would release their weapons, then step back while the next rank released theirs, they’d step back and make way for the third rank, and so on. The enemy would be subjected to a nearly continuous hail of missiles thereby, with no one row of slingers or javelin-throwers becoming too exhausted to keep launching. William advised his interlocutor, Maurice of Nassau (yes, that one), to instill similar practice among the Dutch musketeers. Not only would this compensate for the inherent weaknesses of both muskets as weapons and musketeers as a class of soldier, but it would also make the most of the element of firepower; an important force-multiplier that the Dutch ought readily to use to hold on against the tough, disciplined, more numerous armies of Spain. To make it most effective, of course, required thinning out the columns, and turning the prevailing tactical paradigm on its head: thereafter, it would be the pikemen supporting the musketeers, not the reverse as had been true a century earlier.And from that point on, we’re off to the races. From the turn of the 17th c. to the end of the Seven Years’ War, firearms technology underwent dramatic improvements. [2] Metallurgical changes meant thinner but stronger barrels, which translated to lighter weapons capable of firing a full-powered powder charge. Lighter weapons eliminated the need for the fork-rest. Better design transferred the recoil through the body rather than straight back into the shoulder, lessening the flinch reflex and so improving accuracy. Powder became more potent and much cheaper. The clumsy, dangerous matchlock was replaced by the much safer and more reliable flintlock. Self-contained paper cartridges, reversible iron ramrods, thinner sleeves, and less bulky jackets were all introduced to speed up the process of reloading. In the 1670’s, the French also introduced the bayonet, portending the elimination of pikemen altogether by the beginning of the 18th c.Thus drill instructors in the mid-1700’s could reasonably expect that after a few weeks’ training, a new recruit should be able to fire his weapon 2–3 rounds a minute, which equated to anywhere from 2–6x the rate of fire of his ancestor 300 years earlier. If he survived a couple of firefights—which was likely, as large battles became more common in the 18th c. than they had been in the 16th—then the benefit of combat experience would likely make him even faster, and probably cooler, under fire. The new recruit also had a better weapon, which didn’t need to be fired with a live flame wrapped round his hat and had a much lower risk of blowing up in his face. Though he probably didn’t speak the same language as his king, he did have a sense of himself as a {Dutchman/Swede/Englishman/Spaniard/Austrian/Frenchman}, and served in the army as a free man, rather than out of some semi-feudal obligation. Enemy cavalry was still a threat to the new recruit—much more so, in fact, because the traditional heavy horse had been supplemented by several new and particularly nasty species, such as hussars, dragoons, and uhlans—but for that contingency he benefited from the invention of the battalion, a smaller, nimbler tactical unit than its older counterpart, which could deploy very quickly from line into column into line into square and back. And not least, the new recruit was perfectly aware that if he stepped out of formation or tried to run, he would be intercepted and shoved back into the line under a hail of blood-curdling curses and closed fists from a burly psychopathic creature armed with a hideous temper and an odd weapon resembling a cross between a spear, a battle-axe and bowie knife. These creatures, formally referred to as “sergeants” or “NCOs”, differed from their earlier incarnations in being in charge of a smaller number of soldiers, and being more directly responsible for their men’s training, fitness, health and discipline. [3]This latter bit was all was very important. Training was vital because in the heat of battle, the troops could not be relied on to think (the 18th c. didn’t hold low-born men to be very intelligent; if they were capable of that, they they’d have been born as nobles). They needed therefore to be able to load and fire by muscle memory, honed via repetition and generous helpings of physical abuse. Their movements, right down to the distance of each step, needed to be accurate and well-timed. If the men’s steps were out of sync, or some of them hesitated, the line would become jumbled and its fire ineffective. The best Prussian regiments could maintain Frederick’s prescribed march cadence (75 steps a minute) in columns, even without drums, then wheel into line and launch an assault over uneven ground without needing to stop and re-form their ranks. And once they had closed with the enemy, the best-drilled units could stomp their opponents in a firefight, loosing four or even five volleys to every two or three of the enemy’s. The better they were drilled, the thinner their ranks needed to be, the longer the line could be extended, and the more fire could be poured onto the enemy at any given moment.So, to recapitulate: The reason that soldiers fought in lines after the development of muskets is that fighting in a line was a solution to a problem—how do I direct the most volume of fire in the least amount of time onto the enemy?—which didn’t exist when muskets first came into being. The line-of-battle was no panacea, and indeed by the early 18th c., military theorists who were dissatisfied with the high casualties associated with it—most famously, Maurice de Saxe, a French general—began proposing alternatives, based either on a rapid closing with the enemy via the bayonet, or on skirmish and firing from cover. But the line certainly was a more logical solution than the column, the tactical formation that it mostly replaced.[1] For reasons unknown to me, there’s this persistent myth that the English “Bodkin point” arrow was capable of armor penetration. Not only was it not intended for this purpose—the Bodkin was made out of iron, not steel, and so was much too soft to pierce good armor—but modern tests show that this is simply not true. Penetrations are possible, yes, but only at extremely short range, and not nearly deep enough to stop a man-at-arms coming at you with a pole-axe. Remember that armor in this time was worn over a thick, densely woven quilted jacket which would’ve dissipated whatever kinetic energy remained behind the arrow. Henry V owed his victory at Agincourt to the English infantry in hand-to-hand combat, not to his archers.[2] A partial list of my answers about warfare in Europe in the 1600’s-1700’s follows:How was non-guerilla style musket warfare very tactical/strategical when you'd just stand in waves taking turns firing at each other?How accurate were muskets?Were battlefield tactics in wars during the 1600s and 1700s in Europe completely illogical?How would soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars clean out the barrel of their musket during battle?How were fusiliers used differently when compared to the regular infantry?What were the training methods practiced by the Prussian infantry beneath King Frederick II? Did any of these methods later help Baron von Steuben prepare the American Continental Army for war?[3] This bizarre type of human continues to be much held in awe down to the present day by members of the armed forces throughout the world. Then they leave the service and become soft indulgent idiots, their six-packs and steely demeanors transformed into a lumbering beer gut and an achy waddle down the driveway to get the newspaper. With undying affection, Josh Beam Michael Peacock Nick Layon User-9224915271992904767 Thomas Lewandowski Liam Ryan User-11209888992318069090 et al.Sources:Arnold, Thomas. The Renaissance at War. London: HarperCollins, 2001.Brooks, Richard, ed. The Atlas of Military History. London: HarperCollins, 2000.Chandler, David. The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough. New York: Sarpedon, 1994.Duffy, Christopher. The Army of Frederick the Great, 2nd Ed. Chicago: The Emperor’s Press, 1996.Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500 - 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Charlemagne (r. 768–814), crowned Emperor of the Romans on Christmas 800 AD, did not come out of nowhere. His family, the Arnulfing clan, had been the real power among the Franks for a century; and the Franks had ruled the better part of Gallia and Germania Minor since the early 500s.I do not mean to understate his influence, which was tremendous: spending almost his entire reign in the saddle, he pushed the frontiers of his realm to their farthest realistic extent, eliminated the formidable Avars and Saxons, converted half the Slavs, and gave the Franks a firm hold on the wealthy Mediterranean lands to the south. It has been said that Augustus’ conquest of the East received Rome a city of brick, and returned it a city of marble: Charles’ dilation of the Frankish realm took a Europe of forests and returned it a land of palaces, abbeys, and churches. Though in the long 10th century the Franks would relive the age of internecine strife and Magyar, Viking, and Saracen incursions deep into their heartland, he gave them some generations’ reprieve, and it did not go to waste.But to say his empire lasted 1,000 years is to stretch fact into fancy. There are two dates plausibly given for the end of Charles’ realm: AD 843, when the Treaty of Verdun divided it between competing kings under a senior Emperor; and AD 888, when Charles the Fat, the last Carolingian Emperor to (re-)unite them by inheritance, was deposed by his own magnates for showing cowardice before the Vikings, dividing the empire into five separate kingdoms without even the pretence of an authority over them. Only in AD 962 would Otto of Saxony, from another dynasty, again impose a tentative unity on these divided realms.On the occassion of Verdun in 843, Nithard, illegitimate grandson of Charlemagne, lay abbot of St. Riquier and knight in the service Charles the Bald, king of the western Franks, wrote:In the time of Charles the Great of blessed memory, who died almost thirty years ago, peace and concord ruled everywhere because our people were treading the proper way, the way of the common welfare and thus the way of God. But now since each goes his own separate way, dissension and struggle abound.Once there was abundance and happiness everywhere, now everywhere there is want and sadness. Once even the elements smiled on everything, and now they threaten, as Scripture, which was left to us as the gift of God, testifies: and the world will wage war against the mad.Below, see the division made at Verdun, beginning with Emperor Lothair of the Middle Kingdom (“Lotharingia”), largely synonymous with the old regnum of Austrasia. His brothers Charles the Bald and Louis the German received the western and eastern Franks, respectively. Lothair’s own son became king of Italy under his father; Charles the Bald’ son became king of the Aquitainians; Louis the German’s son became King of the Bavarians, each also under the suzerainty of their father. Six regna in total, not counting the indigenous principalities of Saxons, Gascons, and Burgundians also (re-)emerging at the time:From their perspective, we might now ask the better question: how had Charles brought all these together, and kept the internal peace? Of the two kingdoms in the east and west, neither seems an easy unity. Both include diverse races (gentes), each of which has its own customary law governing its affairs and with its own local rulers, tribal assemblies and armed forces.In the eastern kingdom:Saxons, Franconians… Swabians (or Alemanni), and Bavarians… Raetians and Carinthians inhabiting the Alpine valleys… the coastal Frisians and, inland, the Thuringians, (both) neighbours of the Saxons… their history influenced by Saxon domination. These divisions into gentes or peoples are essential for understanding the (kingdom’s) social, legal, and political structure…(Benjamin Arnold, Medieval Germany)In the western kingdom:(After the 840s, no king) could assert authority among the Gascons (or Basques), who dominated a surviving Germanic and Gallo-Roman population (in the south); nor among the Celtic-speaking peoples of the Breton peninsula… who, under their renowned leaders Nominoe, Erispoe, and Salamon, terrorized the inhabitants of the Loire region… (even) within lands where their rule was recognized, the kings had to cope with deep-seated (regional gentes)… the Visigoths of Septimania (Gothia) and the Spanish March, the Burgundians of Burgundy, the Franks of Austrasia and Neustria, all differentiated from the Gallo-Romans of Aquitaine…(Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making 843–1180)The answer, then, might lie with the middle kingdom of Lotharingia/Austrasia, later called Lorraine, usually (but only roughly) defined by the rivers Meuse and Rhine. This region had been the original seat of the Arnulfings or Carolingians:…while Lotharingia was relatively small by Carolingian standards, it did have a spectacular concentration of political resources which its rulers sought to manipulate, including two archbishoprics, eight bishoprics and numerous imperial monasteries that served as centres of wealth, commemoration and elite socialisation. Among them were several archetypal dynastic centres like Aachen (Charlemagne’s most famous palace) and Metz, the final resting place of Bishop Arnulf, the numinous progenitor of the Carolingians. Little wonder that in the 13th century Lotharingia could be referred to as patria regum (homeland of kings).Dorestad, near the mouth of the Rhine, was a major trading node of the Carolingian period… (contemporary hubs arose) further inland (such as) Verdun on the Meuse, a commercial centre which contemporary observers associated with long-distance slave trading to the Mediterranean littoral… regional circulation of goods was an increasingly important feature of Lotharingian life in the later ninth and tenth centuries. Local ruling families certainly benefited from such activity, as illustrated by the appearance in the tenth century of aristocratic strongholds built in stone… such fortresses (demonstrate) that economic vitality did not necessarily lead to political stability – material resources were a focus of conflict as well as a source of wealth.None of the kings who ruled after (AD 888), even those descended from the ninth-century Carolingians, could expect to have their legitimacy accepted as a matter of course. They had to compete not just to dominate their rivals but even to establish the very notion of their own regality… In this struggle for legitimacy, attempts to appropriate the symbolic capital of Lotharingia’s Carolingian past played an important role. (Yet) the heartlands of the tenth-century dynasties were far from the core territories (of the 9th-century empire).This paradox fuelled conflict over the kingdom, its physical unattainability making it hard to definitively control and causing its symbolic significance to inflate… The intensity of the struggle for Lotharingia between its neighbours, each operating at the fingertips of their reach, was what burned its shadow onto the map of Europe.(Simon MacLean, Shadow Kingdom: Lotharingia and the Frankish world)In other words, 10th c. kings suffered from a protracted crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of their people; they were not “kingworthy.” The key to Charlemagne’s kingship lay with the network of institutions we just saw radiating outwards from the nerve-centre of the Frankish realm, bishoprics and abbeys, gradually embellished and endowed by generations of his family. The forefather of the Arnulfings, Arnulf of Metz, had been both bishop and abbot. The seat of Charlemagne at Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, was the greatest of a network of palaces throughout the Frankish kingdoms. These were centres for the dissemination of religion: at his court, the Carolingian king would assemble and consult with the three “orders” of magnates, the bishops, the abbots, and the nobility.Two institutions underpinned the king’s authority: the call to arms, and the call to prayer. I call your attention to Nithard’s comment, “(in the 800s-830s) even the elements smiled on everything, and now they threaten… the world will wage war against the mad.” The tissue of the state was based on collective prayer as a form of penance, expiation for the Christians’ collective sins. From the court in Aix, the king would sent calls for specific prayers to specific provinces: when famine and disaster threatened, the notables of the provinces down to the level of pagi or local communities would gather up the people and direct them to beg God to stay His wrath, and for forgiveness of their sins.From Charlemagne’s reign onwards, such moral warning, or admonitio, as it was usually called, pervaded public discourse. ‘We admonish you now to re-read your capitularies, to recall the duties with which you have been charged orally and to strive to be so zealous with regard to these that you may receive both reward from God and fitting recompense from that great lord of ours.’ Thus wrote a commission of four of Charlemagne’s missi, clerics and laymen, to the counts within their jurisdiction. In a similar vein, the issues in the political dissension of the late 820s and early 830s were phrased in terms of sin; the most hotly debated questions revolved around the question of who had sinned and why, and how the offended deity could be placated.Mayke de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840One writer from 828 wrote, in the Epistola Generalis,Who does not realise that God has been offended by our depraved acts and provoked to fury, when he sees His anger savage the realm committed to us by him for so many years with manifold scourges, for example by constant hunger, by the death of animals, by plagues among men, by the sterility of almost all fruit trees? (All this and more) should be ascribed to our sins, that the enemies of Christ’s name, who entered this kingdom, have committed robberies, set fire to churches, captured Christians and killed the servants of God, boldly and with impunity – indeed, most cruelly. It is therefore through a just judgement of God that we, who have sinned in all respects, are scourged inside and outside. We are obviously ungrateful for God’s kindnesses, for we are found to use these not for God’s will, but for our carnal pleasure. And therefore the creatures of God, divinely committed to us, rightly fight for God against us ungrateful ones, as it is written: “and the world will wage war against the mad.”I trust the pattern is obvious. Monasteries, for example, served just this purpose: their monks were state servants, engaging in continuous prayer for purposes commanded them by the king. The priest-king, who presided over councils of the Church, commanded the service of the milites Christi (soldiers of Christ) both in this world and the other.This resolved into an ideology of kingship comparable to what is popularly understood as the “mandate of heaven”, but I would encourage the reader to view in terms of the Germanic tribal “trial by combat.” The Franks sincerely believed that victory in battle was the sine qua non of divine favour: their conversion to Christianity had been phrased in just these terms. There was no question that it was God who decided the victor in all contests of armed strength — consider the deposition of Charles III in AD 888, for avoiding battle, in this light. The flip-side of this idea was that kings faced with rebellion and invasion had their problems compounded: they held personal responsibility for their realm’s moral conduct, whose breach angered God into “scourging them from within and without.” Among Charlemagne’s successors, the increasing absence of victory and prosperity led to paroxysms of public piety, attempts to find scapegoats, and breakdown of loyalty to kings who were seen as less than righteous.For Charles, of course, success on the field meant legitimacy at home. The assumption of responsibility for the moral failings of the world gave the authority, spiritual rather than profane, to correct them: a king victorious in war became the corrective rod of God to His children. His dilation of his realm over the barbarians brought them under the tutelage of the Church: his victory over the barbarians gave him moral authority to subject the Church to his royal “reform programme” (to use a highly anachronistic term). The Church here is not a separate institution, it is the Ecclesia or congregation of the Franks: the king corrected the failings of his people like a father or teacher his children, earning the title of pater patriae (“father of the fatherland”). When in AD 955 Otto of Saxony, future Holy Roman Emperor, defeated the Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld, he created the conditions for the restoration of the Christian Empire: long before the Pope did so, his soldiers saluted him as Imperator and pater patriae. By defeating the enemies of the Christians, he became a sign sent by God to correct us, the mediating teacher/disciplinarian between the congregation and its Lord.The 11th c. Song of Roland gives us a very colourful picture of Charlemagne as the wise, wonder-working king:(Charles) was wearing his fine white coat of mail and his helmet with gold-studded stones; by his side hung Joyeuse, and never was there a sword to match it; its colour changed thirty times a day.A very different picture is given by a contemporary chronicler, Notker of St. Gall, describing Charles’ triumphant entry to Pavia, chief city of the Lombard kingdom, on his way to Rome in 773 AD:Then appeared the Iron King, crowned with his iron helmet, with sleeves of iron mail on his arms, his breast protected by an iron byrnie, an iron lance in his left hand, his right hand free to grasp his invincible sword. His thighs were girt with iron mail, which other men were wont to leave unprotected so that they might spring more lightly on their steeds. And his legs, like all his host, were protected by iron greaves. His shield was plain iron without device or colour.Around him, before him, and behind him rode all his men armed as nearly as like himself as they could fashion themselves. So iron filled the fields and roads, and the sun’s rays were on every side reflected from iron. “Iron, iron, everywhere!” cried the terrified people of Pavia.This dream-like vision of iron is largely symbolic; a “plain iron shield without device or colour” is not plausible. The monk of St. Gall is rather trying to make a laudatory account of the Franks as an unstoppable natural force, with Charles embodying the alchemical-astrological properties of iron, the metal of Mars.But the image reflects a reality. The 9th century was the last time Europe saw effective use of the universal call to arms of all free men, which was liberally used by Charles: every man in his empire, even and especially the recently conquered, had either to fight or provide provisions for the army at the king’s call. The immense popular mobilization the Franks were capable of was, for economic reasons, never fully deployed, but serves to illustrate the immense organisational power of the monarchy. The Carolingian supply system was far in advance of later medieval kingdoms, keeping large armies supplied over transcontinental campaigns in pagan lands.Yet it was the changes wrought by Charles himself that made the system obsolete. In prior centuries, Greek-Roman authors had remarked the Franks seemed to lack horses, fighting only with infantry. They did have cavalry, in truth, but they did not use the stirrup (which had been introduced by the Parthians some time earlier), and had little armour: the Frankish army of Charles Martel was probably almost entirely light infantry, aided by light cavalry auxiliaries for raiding and reconnaissance.It was roughly in Charles’ reign that the oriental model of heavy cavalry, the cataphract or armoured knight, was imported: awe of the “Iron King” by the monk of St. Gall reflects the shock value of an army centred on an “invincible” core of heavy cavalry. At the same time, this made old tribal levies increasingly obsolete: over the course of the 9th century, military value would be confined to the wealthy men who could purchase a suit of iron.The late 6th-early 7th c. Isola Rizza Dish, showing a heavily armed cavalryman with Asiatic dress, of Roman-Italian origin. The Romans themselves had adopted Parthian cavalry styles with great success against the Germans since the mid-3rd century.Charlemagne’s campaigns coincided with the reopening of trade between the south Mediterranean rim and the former Roman west, and their purpose economic as well as political.“…slaves were in demand on the southern rim… After centuries as the main theatre of war between the empires of Rome and Persia, the economic of gravity around the 'Fertile Crescent' returned to peace, just as a new world system coalesced from the Atlantic and the Pyrenees to the gates of India… The new economic geography fostered an Arab agrarian revolution, spreading the intensively irrigated and cultivated plants of India across this new world and boosting the productivity of old lands…Slaves were crucial to the Muslim economy… (from) black Africans enslaved in the land reclamation projects of 9th century Mesopotamia… (to) domestic and military slavery, no less vital to the economy and state. The Muslim conquests had produced hordes of war slaves… (yet) the end of the Umayyad dynasty and its vast victories forced the Abbasids to turn to large-scale purchasing of slaves… What is more, the end of military expansion and the need to begin buying slaves coincided with the final Justinianic pandemic (of bubonic plague). It is no coincidence that Venetian merchants in the historical record were in the business of exporting enslaved European Christians to Africa around 750, just as the caliphate was emerging from the last bubonic plague of the early Middle Ages. As in earlier and later epidemics, the demand for labour surely spiked just then.“The best thing is to consider the slave trade of early Europe in simple terms, for instance of comparative value. What evidence there is suggests that slaves doubled or tripled in value, once they were transported to the opposite shore of the Mediterranean… Compared to other forms of commerce, indications of Frankish slave trading are not hard to come by. Slave markets marked the frontiers of the Carolingian empire: at Utrecht; along the Alpine route to Italy; and on the banks of the Danube (…) the booming trading currents of the North Sea (did not come) to a halt in the Carolingian land mass, whose great Rhenish artery flowed from Italy's Alpine border to the trading docks of Dorestad in the Dutch delta… slave traders (would have travelled along the) eastern Alpine corridors where the Arab and Byzantine coins cluster, and where archaeologists have recently noticed the enigmatic presence of glass beads, a commercial ware imported from the Islamic world.(…) For instance, in the 770s or 780s, Paul the Deacon wove contemporary concerns through the whole texture of his unfinished masterpiece, the History of the Lombards. He began with a 'scientific' description of the salubrious weather of northern Europe, founded on the ancient climatic theories of health. This, Paul explains, is why the north produces people so prolifically. This vast land mass (in which he explicitly includes eastern Europe) deserves the name 'Germania', because of the teeming masses its healthy climate 'germinates'. Europe's high fertility explains the slave trade and invasions of Paul's own time: 'This is why the countless troops of captured slaves (captivorum) are frequently driven away from this populous "Germania" and sold to the southern peoples.’(Michael McCormick, New Light on the 'Dark Ages': How the Slave Trade Fuelled the Carolingian Economy)To put it another way: global economies generally show signs of a centre, which produces skilled labour and luxury goods, and a periphery, which produces raw resources and immigrant labour. The ancient Greeks bought Gaulish slaves for wine and ornate pottery; the medieval Arabs bought Saxon, Magyar, and Slavonic slaves from the Frankish conquerors of Germania in return for silks, spices, and jewelry. For example, over a seven-year period in the 770s Pope Hadrian I - who had himself been accused of selling Christians to slavery in Africa - gave away hundreds of silk hangings to allies and political supporters, totalling an estimated 3,000 sq/m of silk. The sheer value of this fabric, in which Papal and Imperial courts dressed, would have been worth a king’s ransom: the scale of wealth that flowed into the Carolingian realm through Italy was quite unlike anything those lands had seen before, and was contemporary to the creation of the saqaliba (“white slave”) armies in the courts of Africa and, later, Egypt and Syria. Much as economic systems are wont to do, the 9th century exported the wars necessary to sustain the way of life of the heartland to the periphery.But, not to end on this drab economic note, I will underline the ideological connections between one and the other. The status of slave was no accident: it represented a form of (forced) guidance, common to slave and conquered heathen, which the emergence of a divinely sanctioned order reinforced. The common thread running through emerging medieval institutions was order, rationality, and control: the imposition of a public, masculine ordering force (the res publica, then identified with the life of knighthood) to tame a pagan world that seemed to the Franks a dark place divided between effeminate weakness and animal barbarism, a world which seemed to easily spin out of control. The ongoing religious war was waged internally as well as externally, giving the entire society the promise of liberation from the chaotic forces of the Other and the erosion of its strength. The kingship, personified in the pater patriae, provided the living and active embodiment of this cosmic order, and was seen as right and lawful so long as it could victoriously impose order in the field and in the expanding congregation-ecclesia of the Christians.