When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

Our war is nearly over, but we still have some matters to discuss! Here we summarise what we’ve learned over the last few episodes, and pave the way for the narrative to come. There is much we still don’t know about warfare in the 17th century, simply because there is so darn much to know! However, over the last several episodes, we’ve given a very good grounding in what 17th century warfare was all about. We saw how important the theory of the military revolution was, because it shaped debate about how warfare changed during the 17th century. Indeed, the military revolution thesis led to historians producing counterarguments at a rapid rate, to the point that more material than ever before on the period was released in the last fifty or so years. This is of course great news for us, and means that we haven’t exhausted the well of sources just yet.Here we revisit some of the most important lessons we came across. The trace italienne was arguably the most important, since this technological development facilit