Dr%20David%20Parrott: List of publications

Challenging the traditional argument that the French army in the 1650s was marked by significant developments in centralized administrative control, this article looks at the continuing importance of the interplay of three interest groups in determining the effectiveness of military operations: central government; the generals and their military administrators; the regimental officers. It argues that in the Italian theatre these three interest groups proved unable to work together, and explores the consequences of this for strategy and military outcomes.

Topics covered include logistics, supply, recruitment, and the finance of war. Chapters have been carefully commissioned with an eye towards complementarity.

In The Oxford Handbook of the Old Regime, an international team of 30 contributors surveys and presents current thinking about the world of pre-revolutionary ...

Yet, despite the extraordinary variety of the people, circumstances, and motives discussed in this book, there is a strong case for continuity in the ...

This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Program on the Changing Character of War.

In this book, the seventeenth century, heavy with significance for the future of Europe, is fully explored by Professor Bergin and six major authors as they address, in turn, economy, society, politics, war and international relations, science, thought and culture ('The Age of Curiosity'), and Europe in the wider world. In a set of chapters covering and contrasting the European experience across the full century and the full continent, the reader is offered a rich, lively, and provocative introduction to the period, and students a superbly authoritative context for more detailed work.

Considerable attention has been given to the development of new and more sophisticated styles of fortification which spread across early modern Europe, and to the assumed impact of such developments on the character of war and international relations. However, by taking at face value the rhetoric of impregnability attached to massive fortification projects, historians have missed the essential point that fortresses could succeed in their defensive purpose only in conjunction with field armies able to relieve the garrison placed under siege. This essential lesson was ignored by rulers of second- and third-rank states, who constructed fortifications to project both military effectiveness and dynastic status but without incurring the huge and unsustainable additional costs of maintaining an effective field army. The result of such fortification projects - seen in case studies of the Farnese citadel at Piacenza, the Gonzaga at Casale-Monferrato and the dukes of Savoy at Pinerolo - was to undermine an earlier diplomacy based on a careful balancing of the major powers and their interests in Italy. Strategically placed citadels held by rulers without effective field armies presented both an enticement and a danger to the governments of France and Habsburg Spain. The result was a series of pre-emptive strikes which established garrisons of French or Spanish troops within these citadels, often to prevent the other major power doing the same thing, and a drastic curtailment of the freedom of the respective Italian princes.

This book brings together, for the first time, the classic articles that began and have shaped this debate, adding important new essays by eminent historians of early modern Europe to further this important scholarly interchange.

This study of Cardinal Richelieu's career as chief minister to Louis XIII of France presents the original research of eight experts in the field. Linking their work is the belief that Richelieu's ministry was a significant moment in the history of early modern France. The authors reject the traditional picture of Richelieu as the single-handed creator of the French absolute state and the original exponent of Realpolitik. Instead they paint a collective portrait of a statesman politically astute but none the less devout. The Richelieu who emerges is in many respects a conservative figure, but one driven by a genuine desire to establish a more just and peaceful society (both in France and in Europe). The emphasis here then is on Richelieu the Cardinal, not Richelieu the secular statesman. The tragedy and irony of his ministry, as the authors also show, was that in order to maintain himself in power, Richelieu had to behave more like a Renaissance prince than a Counter-Reformation prelate.