Scribes and Soldiers: A Brief Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Military Manuscripts

The history of early-modern European manuscripts has rarely focused on the use of manuscripts in armies. Some historians have even presented early-modern armies as unconcerned with daily records of the common soldiers under their command. Others have used early-modern handwritten documents as sources of information, without examining them as artifacts. But these documents are interesting works of vernacular art, created under difficult circumstances. They also provide clues to things like the literacy rate of some common soldiers. This article introduces early-modern military manuscripts. The focus is on the army of Electoral Saxony during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).