reduced according to the military and political situation of the moment.
Spain had indeed maintained a relatively high effective in peace, but
elsewhere a few personal guards, small garrisons, and sometimes a small
regular army to serve as a nucleus, constituted the only permanent
forces kept under arms by sovereigns, though, in this era of perpetual
wars, armies were almost always on a war footing. The expense of
maintenance at that time practically forbade any other system than this,
called in German _Werbe-system_, a term for which in English there is no
nearer equivalent than "enlistment" or "levy" system. It is worth
noticing that this very system is identical in principle with that of
the United States at the present day, viz., a small permanent force,
inflated to any required size at the moment of need. The exceptional
conditions of the Dutch army, indeed, secured for its regiments a long
life; yet when danger was finally over, a large portion of the army was
at once reduced. The history of the British army from about 1740 to 1820
is a most striking, if belated, example of the _Werbe-system_ in
practice. But the Thirty Years' War naturally produced an unusual
continuity of service in corps raised about 1620-1630, and fifty years
later the principle of the standing army was universally accepted. It is
thus that the senior regiments of the Prussian and Austrian armies date
from about 1630. At this time an event took place which was destined to
have a profound influence on the military art. Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden landed in Germany with an army better organized, trained and
equipped than any which had preceded it. This army, by its great victory
of Breitenfeld (1631), inaugurated the era of "modern" warfare, and it
is to the system of Gustavus that the student must turn for the initial
point of the progressive development which has produced the armies of
to-day. Spanish and Dutch methods at once became as obsolete as those of
the Landsknechts.