Ortaçağda Kibir ve Açgözlülük

Kibir, feodal ve hiyerarşik bir çağın günahıdır denilebilir belki de. O zamanlar mülkiyet -modern anlamdaki gibi- akışkan değildi ve iktidarın parayla henüz baskın bir ilişkisi yoktu… Bu nedenle kibir sembolik bir günahtır ve son kertede bütün kötülüklerin müsebbibi olan şeytanın kibrinden doğduğu için metafizik bir niteliğe bürünür… Öte yandan açgözlülük ne böylesi bir sembolik niteliğe sahiptir ne de ilahiyatla bu tür bir ilişki içindedir. O tamamen dünyevi bir günahtır, doğanın ve tensel arzuların dürtüsüdür. Geç ortaçağ döneminde paranın artan dolaşımıyla birlikte iktidar koşulları değişmiş ve zenginlik yığarak hırslarını tatmin etmek isteyenlerin önünde sınırsız bir alan açılmıştır. Böylece bu çağda açgözlülük başat günah haline geldi.

Ortaçağda önce kibir en büyük günahken, sonradan açgözlülük en büyük günah oldu. Çünkü tüccarlar zenginleşti, eskiden sadece soylular güçlüydü.

Denizaltının Dezavantajı

But although submarines could impose a blockade, they could not operate according to principles of Prize Law laid down for the age of sail; forcing a vessel suspected of carrying contraband to heave to, searching her, placing a prize crew on board to take her to the nearest port where a Prize Court could adjudicate on the propriety of impounding her cargo. At best they could search their victim and give its crew time to take to the boats before sinking her. But for a submarine to surface at all was to render itself vulnerable to the smallest armed merchantman. The temptation to sink at sight and ask questions afterwards was overwhelming. The Germans restrained their submarine commanders from considerations of prudence rather than humanity: such isolated instances as the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which was probably carrying contraband but was certainly carrying a number of American citizens, made it clear that unrestricted submarine warfare would add the United States to the already large number of Germany’s enemies.

Ordu, Eğitim Seviyesinin Artmasını Gerektirdi

So also were basic educational standards. Modern armies had become complex organizations demanding literacy and numeracy down to a very low level of the hierarchy; a cynic might suggest that it was even more necessary for NCOs to be literate than it was for officers. The common saying that it was the Prussian schoolmasters who won the Franco-Prussian War implied something very different from the comment attributed to Wellington, that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

Alman Nation State Fikrinin Doğuşu

Scharnhorst, their leader, was appointed President of the Military Reorganization Commission set up after Jena to remodel the Prussian Army. It was clearly not enough mechanically to imitate such French formations and techniques as the divisional system and the employment of light infantry. So long as the Prussian Army consisted of long service conscripts despised by the rest of the population and kept in order by the lash, no serious military reform was possible. The army had to consist of serious, intelligent, reliable patriots who saw themselves as the defenders of their country and were seen as such by the rest of the community. But first it was necessary, as Gneisenau drily remarked, ‘to give the People a Fatherland if they are to defend that Fatherland effectively’. And was that Fatherland simply the hereditary estates of the Hohenzollern family? Was it not rather a broader, nobler concept: Germany?

Birth Of nation state. Insanlar hanedan icin degil fatherland icin savasacak fikri verelim ki orduya gelsinler

Britanyanın Donanmaya Öncelik Vermesi

Britain’s insular position and maritime strength throughout the eighteenth century had kept her army a small, marginal institution for whose maintenance authority had to be annually sought from a suspicious Parliament and was sullenly granted. In peacetime it was occupied mainly in garrisoning overseas possessions, including the most troublesome of all, Ireland. For war new regiments were recruited ad hoc and disbanded when peace came.

Ingiltere ada olduğundan navy öncelikli. Barışta ordu disband ediliyor. Hem masraf hem de kral otoriter olmasın diye cromwell devrimi gibi

Fransız Devrim Ordusunun Dönüşümü

There could be no question, after 1794, of demobilizing these immense armies: to so do would have been to create chaos within France. But there could equally be no question of their subsisting on French territory. So the war which had begun as one for the defence of France and her Revolution was transformed into one first of plunder and then of conquest. The Directory did not much care where the French armies went so long as they and their generals stayed abroad. The young Bonaparte led his starving and ragged forces into Italy in 1796 with a simple promise of plunder, thereby initiating a course of conquest which acquired an impetus of its own. If we ask why Napoleon’s armies were to follow him not only into Italy but to Egypt, to Germany, to Poland, and ultimately to Russia, and recognize that an increasing number of the wretched young conscripts did so because they had no alter- native and would far rather have stayed at home, we find that part of the answer lies in the prospects of loot, part in the hopes of promotion on the field—for the Napoleonic armies were most effective vehicles of social mobility—and part in a quest for adventure; all of which could be summed up in the concept of la Gloire, Glory.

Askeri Disiplinin Artma Sebeplerinden Biri

Corruption still flourished, supply systems still broke down, and when they did the people who suffered were the unfor- tunate peasants and townspeople on whom the troops found themselves billetted. Further, as Europe became more orderly and prosperous, and as more numerous and attractive careers presented themselves in agriculture, commerce, the crafts, and the professions, it became more difficult to recruit into the ranks of the armies anyone except social drop-outs, criminals, dupes, and half-wits who could only be kept under control by ferocious discipline and who when the opportunity presented itself were liable to behave with quite bestial savagery. We must not be deceived by the superficial elegance of the armies of the rococo age: they were brutal and squalid institutions, and war was still, for those involved in it, a brutal and terrifying affair.

Firepower’ın Shock’un Yerini Alması ve Drill

drill, was significant mainly in relation to the growing importance of fire power on the battlefield. It was Prince Maurice of Orange who, at the end of the sixteenth century, first saw clearly that fire power was now the decisive element rather than shock: that the pike was there to protect the musket, not the other way round. It was thus necessary to devise both formations which would maximize fire power, and procedures to ensure its continuous and controlled delivery. Instead of the pike squares several thousand strong with ‘sleeves’ of protective shot which had become normal in the sixteenth century, Maurice adopted elongated formations of musketeers some ten deep, with pike formations interposed simply to protect them against charging cavalry; the musketeers countermarching in their files, reloading as they did so, so that their front rank was always giving continuous fire. This development in the conduct of battle demanded a greatly heightened degree of control on the battlefield itself: control of movement, control of fire, above all (now that the troops were no longer huddled together in great masses but strung vulnerably out in line) self-control. For this drill was needed, and, more than drill, discipline. The concept of discipline has become so much a part of our idea of military life that it is hard for us to realize what a new phenomenon it was in European warfare in the seventeenth century. Feudal men-at-arms were totally, gloriously undisciplined; so were the landsknechte and the tercios, men who simply arrived with their tools and did their job and who regarded one another very much as equals, distinguished by function but not by status.

Privateeringin Doğuşu

What could be done to assert naval power when there were no resources to pay for it? All European princes has recourse to the same expedient: the issue of ‘letters of marque’, authorization to private vessels to distress the enemies of their sovereign and take prizes, out of which the sovereign would take his or her share of the proceeds. The privateer was thus in a way the maritime equivalent of the condottiere.

Osmanlı Nasıl Düzenli Orduya Sahip Oldu?

Piyade, topçu ve süvariyi içeren daimi ordular onbeşinci yüzyıl gibi erken bir tarihte Doğu Avrupa’da biliniyordu. Ama John Hunyadi, Matthias Corvinus ve Fatih Sultan Mehmet zamanında bu tür güçler, sadece düşmanın sınır topraklarını yağmalamanın sonu gelmez süreciyle ayakta tutulabilirdi. Şu ana dek, yağma temelli askeri sistemi mantıksal bir kusursuzluğa yükselten Osmanlıların bile, bu tür bir sistemin gerektirdiği belirsiz coğrafi genişlemeyi ayakta tutamadığını gördük.

Osmanlı duraklama devrine kadar rahatça yağma yapabildiği için daimi orduyu ayakta tutabilmişti.

Bu nedenle, on yedinci yüzyılda Doğu Avrupa’da yeni olan profesyonel daimi ordunun ne fikri ne de gerçekliğiydi; yeni olan bu tür güçlerin ayakta tutulma tarzıydı. Vergiler esas ikmal kaynağı olarak yağmanın yerini aldı.