The Nine Years' War and the British Army 1688-1697: The Operations in the Low Countries

This is a description of how the Nine Years War affected the British Army, both in its actual operations in the theatre of war and in its size, operative capacity and costs. This war brought about radical changes in the sizes and the associated costs of the armies of Britain, France, Austria and the United Provinces in a relatively short period. For example, the size of field armies grew from an average of about 25,000 men during the Thirty Years' War to an average of about 100,000 men in 1695 during the Nine Years War. The costs of sustaining such huge field forces in terms of food, equipment and pay brought Britain and France, in particular, fiscal crisis and a shattered economy respectively, after the peace. The logistical effects of packing such large bodies of men into the small geographical area of the Spanish Netherlands was that the modus operandi of the fighting forces was changed to a more deliberately slow and methodical one. In order to offset some of the effects of this, the participants attempted indirect strategies such as the vigorous economic warfare that the French waged on the British and Dutch ports and the raids that the "Maritime Powers", the British and Dutch, made upon the French coasts.