§1. Military provisions pertain to pay or sustenance, for all things are in vain if the soldier hungers. But because an immense expenditure and great care are needed here, so that provisions may be given at the proper time and not be corrupted, I preferred to speak of the matter separately.
§2. The power of a monarch must be estimated from the multitude and ready availability of his provisions. The Turk excels in the art of war and generally observes these practices: first, always to have forces prepared; second, to forestall the enemy; third, to strike treaties with the enemy’s neighbors; fourth, gradually to occupy a region; fifth, to seize useful occasions for campaigns; sixth—and this especially obstructs rulers—not to keep faith. For that is the reason why those whom he besieges defend themselves to the extremity.
Those who write about his power exalt his strength beyond measure. As far as equipment for war is concerned, they say that he indeed possesses enormous and almost incredible resources. He has innumerable cannon. From all Hungary he carried away five thousand, from Cyprus five hundred, and from La Goletta not many fewer. The engines among the Turks are of such monstrous size that they demolish walls by their noise, not merely their blow.
It is established that he has never fought with all his strength against the king of Spain, although strength should not be measured from a battle. I assert that this power would be four times greater if he took account of provisions, that is, of agriculture. For now he is often left destitute, although from Egypt alone he could feed two hundred or three hundred thousand soldiers. But God did not will so savage a tyrant to excel in all things; he diminished the fodder of so savage a beast.
§3. This, therefore, must be done: the soldiers’ beggary must be prevented; they must have food and the other things whose denial causes human nature pain. But the camp should be content with little. The Persians subsisted upon bread and water and sometimes watercress; now beggars, once they have fastened a feather to their hat, seek delicacies with the greatest insolence. The emperor Avidius Cassius permitted them to carry only bacon and hardtack. Vulcatius, in Avidius.
As Appian says, Scipio conducted foraging with great diligence. He marked out the place which he was going to harvest and rode around it himself with selected squadrons; by this method he eluded African ambushers. Tribunes sometimes received the ration from the soldiers, which Theodosius prohibited: law Septem, Code, On the Disbursement of the Military Ration. Alexander subjected to capital punishment tribunes who did this and who had taken anything through stellaturae. There is also a law of Justinian: law Secunda, § Pro limitaneis, Code, On the Office of the Praetorian Prefect of Africa.
§4. Caesar judged it best to conquer the enemy by hunger. Corbulo preferred the mattock: “For what can be accomplished by sweat does not require blood.” Caesar always acted with the greatest diligence so that want would compel the enemy to battle. Marius always provided for himself so that want of provisions could not compel him unwillingly to battle.
§5. The care of surgeons and the wounded also belongs here: there should be as many surgeons as possible in camps, so that the sick may be cared for. Great care must be taken for health, because those dwelling in close quarters very easily spread pestilence. Accordingly, air, water, soil, cold, heat, clothing, and exercises must all be directed to this end: that the soldier remain healthy and vigorous.
§6. If anyone wishes to consider the costs of war, although they increase day by day, he will be able to take an example from Ranzovius’s catalogue, book 1, chapter 7.
For the support of the commander of one legion, 400 florins were given each month. For his retinue and attendants—namely, a guard of eight praetorians; a mounted guard of the same number of horsemen; one wagon; a drummer; a trumpeter; a preacher; a secretary; an interpreter; a dispatch rider; a forerunner; and so forth—200 florins were given. To the military praetor, 40 florins; to the prefect of capital matters, 40; to the prefect of the watches, 40; to the assigner of lodgings, 40; to the legionary scribe, 40; to the administrator of the court, 32; to the judicial scribe, 32; to ten commanders of formations, 20; to the prefect of baggage-servants and camp-followers, 8; to the prefect of the prison, 12; to six lictors, 48; to the executioner, 16. The sum was 1,068 florins. This sum was given each month to the commander and attendants of one legion, and amounts to 12,816 florins for a whole year.
In place of travel money or hiring money, captains received 500 florins for each cohort, and one florin and ten batzens for each soldier. As concerns the soldiers’ pay, the same commander established for each month—as is also observed in decrees of the Roman Empire concerning universal contributions—four florins for a foot soldier, but twelve florins for a cavalryman.
Privileges, or rather extraordinary pay and honoraria, were established for each month for the commanders and prefects of individual cavalry cohorts, which are commonly called standards: to the commander of cavalry, 200 florins; to the master of cavalry, 100; to the legate, 32; to the standard-bearer, 50. The sum was 382 florins. Moreover, for every twelve cavalrymen a packhorse and a four-horse wagon are assigned; single pay is rendered to the former, double pay to the latter.
From this, therefore, after a calculation has been instituted, we can gather in some measure what sum of money is required for the monthly or annual pay of a large or small army. Let us suppose, for example, that a certain king has decreed a war, for the conduct of which he wishes to enroll an army of 46,200 men, among whom are 6,000 cavalry and 40,200 infantry—approximately the army which one king probably leads out against another. He now deliberates with his men concerning the monthly and annual costs which the pay of so many soldiers will consume. Accordingly, from the figures just set down, he will institute a reckoning of this kind.
For 40,200 infantry.
The number of infantry constitutes 134 cohorts. According to common custom one cohort has 300 soldiers, among whom there are generally 96 recipients of double pay—namely, 82 armored pikemen who use long shafts, and 10 advance musketeers, by which name I call those who discharge larger guns of a more dreadful sound after placing them upon rests. These recipients of double pay, as their name also indicates, are entitled to two payments. Therefore, for maintaining one cohort, apart from the pay of the captain and the other prefects, 1,584 florins are required each month and 19,008 florins over the span of a whole year. Hence, for 134 cohorts, 212,256 florins will be counted for monthly pay and 2,547,072 florins for annual pay.
For the cavalry.
Six thousand cavalrymen constitute twenty cohorts or standards. Three hundred cavalrymen complete each cohort. Hence we shall reason thus: since twelve florins are paid to one cavalryman each month, one cohort requires 3,600 florins in one month and 43,200 florins in a whole year. The entire cavalry, however, which consists of twenty cohorts, claims for itself 864,000 florins for each month and 10,368,000 florins for a whole year. So much money must be procured for the common cavalrymen, without considering commanders, chiliarchs, masters, centurions, decurions, quartermasters, curators of provisions, and other administrators of military duties.
If one now wishes to investigate how great a quantity of silver is required for the entire army, the pay of the cavalry and infantry set down in the preceding rough outline, when collected, amounts to 1,076,256 florins for a single month and 12,915,072 florins for a whole year.
Moreover, for the principal commanders and their remaining attendants, the calculation of pay proceeds approximately in this manner. The 40,200 infantry make eight legions, assigning 5,000 to each. Each legion has its own particular head or commander and its other superior prefects, for whom, as is clear from the foregoing, monthly costs of 1,068 florins and annual costs of 12,816 florins must be collected.
If, for the individual magistrates of every cohort, 100 florins are counted as monthly pay, the cost pertaining to the lower commanders and prefects of the whole infantry will be 13,400 florins monthly and 160,800 florins annually. If the pay of the principal commanders and other legionary prefects just set down is added to these sums, the sum required for the superior as well as the inferior magistrates of the infantry comes to 14,468 florins for one month and 173,616 florins for a whole year.
The commanders and prefects of the cavalry, or of the twenty cavalry cohorts, cannot perhaps be maintained at a smaller cost. Accordingly, this sum doubled will give the pay of all those who hold command in an army of 46,200 men, though without including the supreme commander of the war: 28,936 florins in one month and 347,232 florins for a whole year.
Finally, if the preceding sum, which contains the pay of the soldiers—infantry and cavalry together—is added to these amounts, there emerges, after a fashion, the sum of sums, or aggregate of all the money that must be assigned for maintaining an army of 46,200 men: 1,105,192 florins for each month and 13,262,304 florins for a revolving year.
These figures, however, do not include the costs of cannon or of the vehicles by which pontoon bridges, ladders, rams, and other things necessary for a campaign and the storming of cities are moved; nor the costs of the horses drawing them, gunpowder, cannonballs, and reconnaissance. Experts in military affairs estimate the sum of these things as no smaller than that which pertains to maintaining the entire army. But even if the accounts are contracted as narrowly as possible, they will exceed a third part of the sum which I have stated.
Tables of pay decreed for the army to be enrolled against the Turk.
We shall now append those tables which were composed in the year just past, when a common deliberation concerning the Turkish war was undertaken among the estates of the Empire at the Diet of Regensburg.
First, it was proposed that an army of 60,000 Germans and Hungarians should be opposed to the Turks. Among them were to be 12,000 ordinary German cavalrymen; 5,000 cavalrymen equipped with longer firearms, whom they call arquebusiers; 12,000 Hungarian cavalrymen; six legions of German infantry, which, assigning to each 4,000 soldiers or ten companies, make 24,000 infantrymen; and finally 7,000 Hungarian retainers.
For the pay of this army and its magistrates, a calculation of this kind was instituted. First, for one thousand ordinary German cavalrymen—including the money to be spent upon the support of the commander, the master of cavalry, the prefect of baggage, and the decurions, and likewise the enlistment bounty and travel money, or the money with which the soldiers are first hired—17,000 florins were decreed for a month. Thus 12,000 cavalrymen claim 204,000 florins for themselves each month and 2,448,000 florins in a revolving year.
Furthermore, one hundred cavalrymen armed with long firearms necessarily require 1,400 florins monthly. By this reckoning, 70,000 florins monthly and 840,000 annually must be assigned to 5,000 cavalrymen of this kind.
Third, since five florins must be counted out to the Hungarian cavalrymen each month, 6,100 florins monthly must be assigned to one thousand cavalrymen, including at the same time the chiliarch’s allowance and the doubled pay of the pipers and guards. Hence, for 12,000 cavalrymen of this kind, 73,200 florins must be counted monthly and 878,400 florins annually.
Fourth, if 30,000 florins are assigned each month to each legion together with the commanders’ allowances, those six legions will require 180,000 florins monthly and 2,160,000 florins annually.
Finally, the monthly pay of a Hungarian retainer is two thalers. Hence, after a particular calculation has been completed—if the commanders’ allowances and the doubled pay of the decurions, standard-bearers, and drummers are counted—20,620 florins monthly and 247,440 florins annually must be assigned for a force of 7,000 retainers.
Now, if all the expenses to be disbursed upon the whole army divided into these five kinds of soldiers are collected into one aggregate, the sum will come to 547,820 florins for each month and 6,573,840 florins for a revolving year.
Besides these expenses, their own costs must also be assigned to the supreme commander of the war, his legate, tribune, and the other attendants and prefects of the highest magistrates, as well as to scouts, bronze engines and those appointed to care for them, and the many other things necessary for war. Even if these are calculated most sparingly, they will equal 100,000 florins each month and 1,200,000 for a whole year. Yet not all things pertaining to the use of military artillery are included in the preceding calculation, but only their prefects and curators and the beasts appointed to draw them. If all are truly defined according to their costs, they will amount to a third of the other expenses of war.
§7. He describes provisions in this manner. For each horse six pounds of hay are given as nightly fodder; and to every nine horses as much oats as the common vessel called a tonna, in which herrings are pickled, holds.
To each man there are distributed daily two pounds of bread, one and one-half pounds of meat, one herring, and three measures of beer. For a whole week, two pounds of bacon, the same amount of cheese, and the same amount of butter are distributed. For a whole month, one cup of salt is distributed.
From this, a calculation of rations would have to be instituted according to the number of men. Thus, to make what we have said clear by an example, let the question be proposed how much monthly food is required for one cohort of soldiers, which according to common custom contains 300 persons. This question, solved by the rule of proportion, produces the following calculation of provisions.
For the monthly sustenance of three hundred soldiers there are due: 18,000 pounds of bread, that is, 180 hundredweights; 13,500 pounds of meat, that is, 135 hundredweights; 2,400 pounds of bacon, that is, 24 hundredweights; the same number of pounds of cheese; the same of butter; 9,000 herrings; 27,000 measures of beer, that is, 306 amphorae together with 72 measures; and 300 cups of salt.
§8. I have recounted above, in the same chapter concerning the method of naval war, the provisions for the fleet. The tables of the Danish fleet in 1567 contained: 20,854 sides of bacon; 6,040 pieces of smoked beef; 11,560 quarters of smoked mutton; 29,000 smoked geese; 104 lasts and 4½ tonnae of butter; 206½ lasts of herring; 206½ lasts of smaller cod; 5,104 wagonloads of stockfish or hake; 16 lasts of salted pike; 16 lasts of salted eels; 16,000 sea albicae; 32,000 dried sea-scallops or flatfish; 32 bundles of long cod; 32 bundles of larger cod or capitones; 87 lasts of oats prepared for human food; 81½ lasts of vetch; 1,366 lasts of bread, including bread twice baked; 4,741½ lasts of beer; 10 lasts of vinegar; 24 lasts of Lüneburg salt; and 31 lasts of coarse foreign salt.
§9. In order that what is needed for one ship may be understood, let the chapter cited concerning the equipment of the Danish admiral’s ship be read.
§10. It has rightly been asked whether kings should act so that the costs of war are diminished or rather increased. I indeed would prefer that they be increased, lest wars be declared more easily and promptly if they are waged at small expense. Provision has been made for human nature by the fact that a man cannot be killed without great expense: if humanity does not spare a human being, at least avarice may restrain it.