Lecture 7 min.
Thus, at the beginning of the 18th century a new science was born - theoretical mechanics. In the following century this science became the principal tool of engineers designing new machines - but at that time there were as yet no machines, and scientists used it to calculate the motion of comets. The highest achievement of 17th-century technology was the so-called "Machine de Marly"; it comprised 14 waterwheels 12 meters in diameter and was built to power the fountains of Versailles. The machines of that era were driven by waterwheels, and factories were therefore built along rivers. The largest ironworks were located in Sweden - a country rich in iron ore and never short of charcoal. In the 1610s the Swedish mines attracted the attention of the wealthy Dutch manufactory owner Louis De Geer (1587-1652), who managed to set up production of light cast-iron cannon; his 4-pound gun, together with its carriage, weighed 35 poods and could be hauled by a team of two horses. From then on, cannon could move across the battlefield alongside the infantry; De Geer organized the mass production of guns, and soon every regiment of the Swedish army was issued two light "regimental" cannon; the Swedes now held a devastating new weapon.
The Swedes' fundamental breakthrough, light artillery, triggered a new wave of conquests. In 1630 the Swedish army, led by King Gustavus Adolphus, landed in Germany, and a year later, at the Battle of Breitenfeld, Swedish howitzers shattered the army of Emperor Ferdinand II. The Swedes became masters of Central Europe; over twenty years of war, 20,000 towns and villages were burned and two-thirds of Germany's population perished. The Swedish army then descended on Poland - this was the terrible "Deluge," when almost every Polish town was plundered and half the Polish population died. In 1700 the Swedish king Charles XII crushed the Russian army at Narva; the Swedes could have taken Moscow, but the Swedish king marched into Poland instead - he believed victory would not escape him, that the Russians could do nothing regardless. Charles assumed the Russians had no good iron ore, since they bought nearly all their quality iron from Sweden. But the king was mistaken; shortly before this, the richest ore deposits had been discovered in the Urals, and just before the war began, Tsar Peter ordered a large ironworks to be built at Kamensk. Foreign craftsmen were brought in, and the plant was built in great haste; the first blast furnace was fired up in the autumn of 1701, the plant produced 180 cannon in 1702, and by 1703 - almost 600 cannon, four times more than had been lost at Narva. When Charles XII invaded Russia in 1708, he was met by powerful artillery; at the Battle of Poltava most of the attacking Swedish infantry could not even reach the Russian lines - it was cut down by Russian cannon fire.
Adopting Swedish military technology meant modernization along European lines for Russia. Peter's reforms included the creation of new industries, a new army, a new state administration, and the adoption of European dress and European customs. As a result of this modernization, Russia entered the European cultural sphere and became a European country. Ural ore was better than Swedish ore, and the Ural metallurgical industry created by Peter soon took first place in Europe. The first head of the Ural mining works was Peter's friend and associate, the Dutch engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin; his successor was Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev, who had studied in Sweden. The Ural blast furnaces were, for their time, the largest in the world, reaching 13 meters in height and 4 meters across. Russian metallurgists and artillery engineers soon surpassed their foreign teachers; in 1757, under the direction of Count Pyotr Shuvalov, the best artillery piece of the age was created, the "unicorn" howitzer. In 1759, at the Battle of Kunersdorf, the "unicorns" shattered the army of the Prussian king Frederick II. The unicorn became Russia's new weapon, and its appearance set off a wave of Russian conquests; by the early 19th century Russia's borders had reached the Danube and the Vistula.
While the outcome of wars on land was determined by artillery, the outcome of wars at sea was determined by the perfection of ship design. The end of the 16th century was marked by a new fundamental breakthrough that changed the destinies of nations - the invention of the Dutch fluyt. The fluyt was a new type of ship: it had an elongated hull, tall masts with an advanced sail rig, and was fitted with a ship's wheel. The fluyt far surpassed the Spanish caravels in speed and maneuverability - and it gave the Dutch mastery of the seas. In 1598 the Dutch fleet broke into the Indian Ocean, into waters that until then had been dominated by the Portuguese and the Spanish. Within twenty years the Dutch drove all their rivals from the seas and seized almost the entire maritime trade. Huge convoys of ships laden with Asian goods arrived in Amsterdam - the new commercial capital of the world; from there the goods were distributed throughout Europe. The appearance of the fluyt made possible mass shipping on a scale never seen before, and the Dutch became a nation of seafarers and merchants; they owned 15,000 ships, three times more than all the other European nations combined. The colossal profits from monopoly middleman trade brought Holland riches that made it a symbol of bourgeois prosperity. Merchants' capital was invested in industry; thousands of manufactories worked on raw materials brought from other countries and exported their output to European markets.
European countries - England and France above all - sought to free themselves from Dutch intermediation and build ocean-going fleets of their own. Holland, however, had no wish to give up its trade monopoly; the second half of the 17th century went down in history as an age of naval wars, and in the end Holland was defeated and England became the new master of the seas. The English won thanks to their achievements in shipbuilding; in 1637 the shipwright Phineas Pett built the first three-decked ship of the line, the "Sovereign of the Seas." It was the largest ship of its time, with a displacement of 1,700 tons and 126 guns. By the end of the century England had more than a hundred ships of the line. Peter I, who came to Holland in 1697 to learn shipbuilding, was disappointed to find that Dutch master shipwrights worked by intuition, without using drawings, so he went to England and completed his training there. The English fleet dominated the seas, England replaced Holland, and seized control of the middleman trade. Dutch merchants moved to London along with their capital, took English names, and became English merchants. England became a prosperous trading power - and the guarantor of that prosperity was the ship of the line, the invention of Phineas Pett.
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