MARTINET

This article appears in Volume V17, Page 800 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAR-MEC

MARTINET , a military

term

TERM

(more generally used in a disparaging than in a complimentary sense) implying a strict disciplinarian or

drill

DRILL

-master. The

term

TERM

originated in the French army about the middle of Louis XIV.'s reign, and was derived from Jean Martinet (d. 1672), who as

lieutenant

LIEUTENANT

-colonel of the King's regiment of foot and inspector-general of infantry drilled and trained that arm in the model regular army created by Louis and Louvois between 166o and 1670. Martinet seems also to have introduced the copper pontoons with.which Louis bridged the Rhine in 1672. He was killed, as a marechal de camp, at the siege of

Duisburg

DUISBURG

in the same year, being accidentally shot by his own artillery while leading the infantry assault. His death, and that of the Swiss captain Soury by the same discharge gave rise to a bon mot, typical of the polite ingratitude of the age, that

Duisburg

DUISBURG

had only cost the king a martin and a mouse. The " martin " as a matter of fact shares with Vauban and other professional soldiers of Louis XIV. the

glory

GLORY (through the O. Fr. glorie, modern gloire, from Lat. gloria, cognate with Gr. KXebs, abets)

of having made the French army the first and best regular army in Europe.

Great

GREAT

nobles, such as

Turenne

TURENNE, HENRI DE LA TOUR

Conde

and Luxemburg, led this army and inspired it, but their fame has obscured that of the men who made it manageable and efficient. It was about this time that the soldier of fortune, who joined a regiment with his own arms and equipment and had learned his

trade

by varied experience, began to give place to the soldier regularly enlisted as a recruit in permanent regiments and trained by his own officers. The consequence of this was the introduction of a uniform, or nearly uniform system of

drill

DRILL

and training, which in all essentials has endured to the present day. Thus Martinet was the forerunner of

Leopold

LEOPOLD (M.H. Ger. Liupolt; O.H. Ger. Liupald, from hut, Mod. Ger. Leute, " people," and paid, " bold," i.e. " bold for the people ")

of Dessau and Frederick William, just as Jean Jacques de Fourilles, the organizer of the cavalry, who was forced into an untimely charge at Seneffe (1674) by a brutal taunt of

Conde

, and there met his death, was the forerunner of Zieten and Seydlitz. These men, while differing from the creators of the Prussian army in that they contributed nothing to the tactics of their arms, at least made tactics possible by the thorough drilling and organization they imparted to the formerly heterogeneous and hardly coherent elements of an army.

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