The Renaissance Blitzkreig and the birth - and death - of the Westphalian State

Technology develops slowly, step by step.  It rarely comes in a bolt from the blue - that happens when someone figures out that a tipping point has been reached.  Then the change is dramatic, and sudden, and there's no going back.

Alexander the Great was one of these tipping point moments.  Charles VIII was another.

France in 1494 was only 40 years past the end of the Hundred Years' War with England.  And yet this still half-Medieval, half Renaissance kingdom had done something that none of the other European states had: it had grown big enough that it was able to invest serious money in the new-fangled cannons (actually, not even known by that name yet).  While other princes used the hugely heavy, unwieldy monsters like those that had battered down the walls of Constantinople a couple decades prior, the French had invested in better casting techniques, and better design. 

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The result was a light, strong, and mobile weapon that could  quickly be brought into action (rather than taking a day or two to emplace).  They could fire two or three rounds a minute, rather than two or three a day.  And rather than the traditional stone cannon balls - which would crack on impact - they fired cast iron shot.  The shot was propelled by a new form of gunpowder, - corned powder, which burned more efficiently and could impart more velocity to the shot.  Essentially, the cannon had reached the form that it would retain through the Crimean War.

Charles marched his French army Hannibal-like across the Alps into Italy.  The ran into an army from the Kingdom of Naples, fortified in the massive castle at Mordano.  The Neapolitans might have been excused at being a bit complacent, after all, the castle had withstood sieges lasting years.  The French wheeled their guns up to the gate, and three hours later had reduced it to rubble.  Charles' soldiers rushed through the breech, and slaughtered everyone inside.

Castle after castle fell not in weeks, or days, but hours.  Piero di Medici fled Florence.  Rome itself threw open its gates to the invaders.  Alfonso II of Naples rested his hopes on his strongest fortress at Monte San Giovanni.  It took Charles' guns eight hours to batter it open.  Alfonso abdicated.  In four months, Charles had marched the length of Italy.

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He had also changed forever the way that war was waged.  The day of the City-State had passed, since only national monarchies had enough money to equip an army with artillery.  Two years after Columbus discovered Terra Nova, the modern Westphalian State was born.

Charles didn't live to see it, cracking his head on a low door in his palace and dieing.  But the new century saw the rise of Nations: first Spain, then England of Good Queen Bess, then the Scandinavian realms that led to Gustav Adolf.  By then, the New World had been planted with colonies, and Charles' successor Louis le Roi Soleil was building Versailles. 

The tipping point was sudden, and bloody, and there was no turning back.  We're at a new tipping point, where the Westphalian State is nearing the end of its viability.  Networked information and networked warfare has made the old ways unviable. The situation is much like that facing the Italian City-States in 1493.  All seemed calm and well understood.  Predictable.

Who today's Charles VIII will be, and when he will kick down the old, complacent order: that's anyone's guess.

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