TECHNOLOGY, WAR, AND GOVERNMENT 491
221 B.C., Western Europe mid-way through the twentieth century of the
Christian Era had lost her own stomach for a warlike temper which she
had thus perversely re-evoked in Chinese hearts; and this revolutionary
psychological change in Western Europe marked the turn of a local tide
that had been flowing, save for one pause in the eighteenth century,
since the opening of the Modem chapter of Western history.

When, at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the North
Italian field of a Late Medieval Western Balance of Power between city-
states had suddenly expanded to embrace the whole European domain
of Western Christendom, the nation-states that were now replacing the
city-states as the Great Powers in a larger constellation of forces had
still followed the example of their Milanese, Venetian, and Florentine
predecessors in fighting their battles mainly with mercenary troops—
and these hi numbers that were relatively small by comparison with the
contemporary Western World's total stock of potential 'cannon-fodder*.
In this Early Modern Western World the only peoples yet broken in to
military service en masse were the seafaring populations of Venice and
Genoa who furnished the man-power required for rowing their war-
galleys.1 In most of the Transmarine and Transalpine West European
countries the only class yet militarized was a rural aristocracy that
furnished a national heavy cavalry.

In sixteenth-century France, for instance, poverty conspired with
martial spirit to send the younger sons of the nobility into the gendar-
merie? On the other hand the younger sons of a French peasantry that
was able to make a living from agriculture found no need and felt no
inclination to seek service in a national infantry;3 the only French pro-
vince that produced a native infantry in the sixteenth century was
Gascony;4 and in this age the French Government did not persevere
in its discouraging attempts to build up a native infantry on a nation-
wide scale,5 because it was rich enough to hire a Swiss infantry which
had established its ascendancy over the heavy cavalry of a Medieval
Western Christendom since the eighth decade of the fifteenth century6
and which had been constrained by poverty to raise its military pro-
ficiency to a professional pitch of excellence at -which it could sefi itself
at a high price for mercenary service abroad.7 Taking a cue from the
Venetian Government,8 the French Government in the sixteenth cen-
tury recruited its light cavalry from mercenary Albanian *stradioti*;9
and, for the reinforcement of armies operating in the Italian arena of
Modern Western warfare, France could compete with other belligerents,
non-Italian or Italian, for the services of the professional forces of the
Italian principalities of Mantua, Ferrara, and Urbino,10 which were
pioneers in the state trading enterprise—afterwards taken over by Ger-
man principalities catering for a wider market—of maintaining standing

1 See Fueter, E.: GeschichU des Europauchen Staatensystems von 1492-155$ (Munich
and Berlin 1919, Oldenbourg), pp. 30-31, 163-4, and 228.

2 See ibid., p. 54. 3 See ibid., p. 53. 4 See Jbid., p. 59-
s See ibid., p. 59. * See Ibid., p. 18.

i The equipment, drill, and licensing of these Swiss mercenaries in the pre-Reforrna-
tion generation of Early Modern Western history are described by Fueter, op. at.,
pp. 10-18 and 334-6. * See ibid., pp. 19 and 163.

9 See ibid., p. 58. I0 See ibid., pp. 231-2.