The Effects of The Thirty Years' War - Europe

"Most countries—the Dutch Republic, which benefited from a flourishing economy in the midst of military conflict, was probably one of the few exceptions— waged war between 1618 and 1648 with financial resources that were grossly inadequate. Some countries such as Sweden nevertheless managed to finance their armies for long periods of time primarily out of contributions raised in areas under military occupation. Others tried, with limited success, to rely on taxation. France, for example, managed to double its income from domestic revenues in the 1630s and early 1640s. However, the enormous fiscal pressure provoked a series of popular revolts in France that prevented further increases in taxation and finally led to bankruptcy and civil war in 1648–1652. Most participants in the war entrusted the raising and maintaining of troops at least to some extent to military entrepreneurs who had their own sources of income and credit, thereby complementing the insufficient resources of the state. These entrepreneurs hoped to recoup their investments and to make a profit by extorting payments, not to mention downright plunder and confiscation, from occupied provinces. The hardship this involved for the civilian population was considerable. France, however, which was reluctant to rely on military entrepreneurs because of the dangerous domestic implications of such a system, was hardly more successful in asking noblemen to pay for the units under their command partly out of their own pockets without giving them, in compensation, full legal ownership of their regiments. Spain initially had a fairly sophisticated state-controlled system of organizing and financing warfare, but gradually more and more responsibilities such as the recruitment of soldiers were delegated to local magnates and urban corporations, and thereby decentralized. This phenomenon may be seen as a wider-ranging process of administrative refeudalization, as some historians have argued."

Source: Jonathan Dewald - Editor in Chief, Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of The Early Modern World (Thomson Gale, 2004), Volume 6, Thirty Years’ War, page 33

Map Source: University of Texas at Austin, Perry-Castaneda Library, Map Collection
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
From "The Cambridge Modern History Atlas" edited by Sir Adolphus William Ward, G.W. Prothero, Sir Stanley Mordaunt Leathes, and E.A. Benians. Cambridge University Press; London. 1912.