Maurice of Nassau (Dutch General) instituted a wide range of reforms and innovations that provided the Dutch army with the strength to secure the independence of the Netherlands from Spain. His changes in infantry organization provided the initial example of battalion-size units, and his integration of artillery and engineer support gained him the reputation as a master of siege warfare. Maurice also .recognized the importance of a professional army by instituting better pay and conditions, for. efi listed men and establishing the first military academy for officer training.
From the time of his birth, on November 14, 1567, at Dillen- burg, Germany, Maurice was destined for military leadership. His father, William the Silent, led early, unsuccessful revolts to free the Netherlands from Spanish control. Maurice, while studying the art of war under his father, did not neglect his civil education. He attended school in Heidelberg and after rejoining his father at Antwerp studied mathematics and the classics at Leiden University.
The assassination of William in 1584 thrust the seventeen-year old Maurice into a position of leadership much quicker than either he or his father had anticipated. Despite his youth, Maurice became the president of the State of the United Provinces and over the next few years added the viceroyship of neighboring provinces, including Holland and Zeeland. Along with government responsibilities, Maurice also assumed the tide and duties of admiral general and captain general, making him, in effect, the commander of all Dutch military forces.
Maurice recognized that to rid the Netherlands of Spanish control he had to reorganize the army. His study of the Romans and his appreciation for mathematics led Maurice to reduce the size of his basic fighting unit to five hundred and organize it in a fashion similar to the battalion unit that would dominate future armies. Within the battalion formation, Maurice arranged pike- men in the center and musketeers on each flank. Instead of formations composed of troops positioned in depth to replace those who fell in front, Maurice arranged his soldiers so that all could fight from the onset of battle. To replace losses, Maurice depended on maneuver, drilling his troops repetitively during peacetime so that he could quickly shift them to endangered areas during combat.
Maurice also ensured that his soldiers had the most modern weapons available, including lighter muskets with longer range, and he standardized his artillery calibers. He integrated gun bat-: teries and engineer support into the infantry battalion formations. The Dutch cavalry remained the least changed by Maurice, but he did institute vigorous training to make the horsemen more responsive to orders in the midst of battle.
Individual soldiers and officers also received Maurice’s attention. He recruited locally, instituted strict training and discipline, and provided adequate pay on a consistent, regular basis, which was not the norm for sixteenth-century armies. Maurice encouraged his officers to attend classes at local universities and in the early 1590s established the world’s first formal military academy for officer training.
By 1590, Maurice had assembled and trained a responsive, mobile, fast-moving, dependable army. Benefiting from the redeployment of part of the Spanish army to meet obligations elsewhere on the Continent, Maurice captured Breda and Steenbergen in 1590 and in the following year secured Deventer, Zutphen, Nijmegen, and Groningen. With the northern provinces now in his control, Maurice spent the next ten years building a defensive system that connected cities, towns, and rivers with continuous breastworks supported by artillery and engineer obstacles.
While building his defensive line, Maurice continued to carry out offensive operations against the Spanish in the southern provinces. On January 24, 1597, he advanced under the cover of bad weather to attack 6,000 Spaniards at Tournhout with his force of seven thousand. At the end of the bajLtle, Dutch losses numbered only one hundred dead, compared to twenty-five hundred slain enemy. Three years later, Maurice moved farther south and invaded Flanders, where, on July 2, he decisively defeated the Spanish at Nieuwpoort, inflicting thirty-five hundred casualties. The victory, however, cost Maurice twenty-five hundred soldiers, and these losses, combined with his long lines of resupply, forced him to withdraw back to Dutch territory.
Maurice engaged in several minor land and naval skirmishes over the next few years while also dealing with internal power struggles. His large army and strong defenses produced a longterm truce with Spain in 1609, but Maurice refused to renew it in 1621 and returned to the battlefield. He accomplished no great victories in this final campaign, however, and died at The Hague from a liver ailment on April 23, 1625, at age fifty-seven.
Although he never defended against an invading army or sought to subdue foreign lands, Maurice merits inclusion in this list of influential military leaders because he established the battalion as the primary maneuver force and advanced the care and training of enlisted men and officers. By adopting many of Maurice’s innovations and improving upon others, Gustavus Adolphus became one of the all-time great military leaders. All across Europe, other armies also copied Maurice’s military organization and training techniques.