From the standpoint of the combatants, battle is an enduring phenomenon governed by deeply seated aspects of the human psyche, mostly independent of cultural circumstances. Such is the provocative thesis underpinning a work that pits not just French against Spanish armies in Northern Italy, but also behaviorism and evolutionary psychology versus postmodern and historicist views of human nature, running counter to recent cultural histories of warfare.

The introduction offers an overview of early modern military historiography and a defense of an academically marginalized field. Early on, basing his approach on behaviorist studies, military psychology, and especially the ideas of the nineteenth-century military theorist Ardant du Picq, Hanlon introduces the underlying theme of his work: the direct connection between war and human action and reaction. The book approaches this great question through a study of the neglected Northern Italian theater in the Thirty Years’ War, the Franco-Savoyard attack on Spanish Milan in 1635–36 leading to the battle of Tornavento and its aftermath. Extensively researched in primary sources, this is also a case study in the resilience of a declining Spanish monarchy and of the political history of Northern Italy in the seventeenth century as well as a ground-level exploration of early modern military life.

Chapter 1 lays out the geopolitical and strategic setting for the campaign and the battle, specifically the Thirty Years’ War and the French drive, led by Cardinal Richelieu, to topple the Habsburgs and Spain from their position of European mastery in the early seventeenth century. Chapter 2 compares the opposing armies in Northern Italy and suggests interesting comparisons between the Spanish forces there and the much better studied army of Flanders. It provides a day-to-day campaign narrative of the kind we seldom get nowadays, filled with very vivid details of military life as well as the long and awful impact of war on rural, civilian, and ecclesiastic life. Chapter 3, the core of the book, is a minute analytical narrative of the indecisive battle of Tornavento on 22 June 1636, which, pending potential archaeological findings, is the most detailed in existence. Here Hanlon’s theoretical and behaviorist approach to combat pays off, as this is the most incisive and informed study of the soldier’s experience in an early modern battle that I have read. It utilizes the latest weaponry research and includes one of the best descriptions of Spanish tactics available as well as a convincing critique of the accuracy of contemporary graphic sources. Chapter 4 deals with the aftermath of the battle, which ended in Spanish retreat after failing to storm the French positions, and in Franco-Savoyard withdrawal after the combined army fell victim to exhaustion, lack of pay, and disease, and Paris came under threat from the army of Flanders. The conclusion places the battle in the context of the Thirty Years’ War and the remarkable survival of Spanish rule in Italy.

This book is not without minor flaws, such as the absence of maps showing the Franco-Savoyard entry and withdrawal or of crucial movements and moments in the battle or the misidentification of the Spanish tercio as an administrative construct manned mainly by Castilians when it was also a fighting unit with personnel drawn from all Iberian kingdoms except Portugal. And some will question Hanlon’s deliberate underplaying of cultural and ideological factors in the face of evidence in his own narrative suggesting their importance. Thus he points out that the presence of Protestant troops galvanized Italian resistance to invasion; acknowledges that blood, language, and common geographic origin were essential in unit cohesion and fighting spirit; and illustrates how fear of being perceived as cowardly determined the actions of commanders on both sides. These are certainly cultural factors impinging on combat. Furthermore, he casts doubt on the relevance of religion or dynastic loyalty to most soldiers, even though David Trim and René Quatrefages, among others, have persuasively argued the opposite. Nonetheless, theoretical debates aside, for students of the Thirty Years’ War and early modern Italian and Spanish history as well as for those interested in the human experience of war, this is a very rewarding book, the best by this author so far. It is also a pleasure to read.