Mercenaries and Sovereignty in Germany’s Long 19th Century

That a government must exercise autonomous control over military affairs is typically regarded as axiomatic in Modern European History; after all, to borrow from Charles Tilly, “war made the state, and the state made war.” Still, the long nineteenth century in Central Europe was replete with cases in which rulers either outsourced their own military’s services, or contracted with foreign sources of troops in order to cut costs or achieve perceived benefits to themselves and their subjects. Figuring out just how widespread this practice was is difficult, and arguably impossible. Nonetheless, re-examining cultural perceptions of the “mercenary” problem in the long nineteenth century represents a potential start. An important site for inquiry is the Vienna Congress in 1814 and 1815, when issues of prestige clashed with shifting attitudes about whether military control was necessary or desirable to achieve “sovereignty” over a given political unit. Evidence in contemporary protocols and correspondence paints a far murkier picture than is assumed. It also suggests continuities with later, twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about the propriety of outsourcing military services in the non-European world.