Hanlon Gregory. The Twilight of A Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats And European Conflicts, 1560-1800

Routledge, 1998. — 384 p.At a time when most European nations were establishing permanent armies, Italy was pursuing a distinctly different path. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Italian states virtually ceased making war against each other and, with the important exception of the Piedmontese, Italian elites lost interest in military affairs. The Twilight of A Military Tradition describes, for the very first time, this unexpected withdrawal of Italian aristocrats from military careers during the period from the Spanish ascendancy to the invasion of Bonaparte.In this pathbreaking book, Hanlon outlines the process of military withdrawal in the context of events unfolding in Europe and explores how the Italians rallied to defend a Catholic conception of Europe. Prominent in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire and committed to quelling the Protestant Reformation in France and the Netherlands, the Italian army began a noticeable decline around the time of the Thirty Years' War. Spain and Austria were unable to employ many Italian soldiers during the war, and France was not inclined to seek their services. As a consequence, the military institutions that existed in each of the Italian courts gradually waned and Italian elites turned instead to other pursuits in the Church and in government bureaucracy.Alive to methodological issues and sensitive to the multifacted nature of war, the author provides an invaluable account of an overlooked Italian legacy and an important investigation into an uncharted realm of military history, shedding new light on the politics, society and culture of power in the early modern period. In addition, The Twilight of A Military Tradition gives a much-neglected dimension to three centuries of European political and military history.Gregory Hanlon is a French-trained behavioural historian. His books include The Hero of Italy (2014), Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies (2016), and uropean Military Rivalry, 1500-1750: Fierce Pageant (2020), winner of the Marraro Prize for Italian histor