The Count of Ursel and the financing of the Royal Guard reform (18th Century)

Abstract

This article examines the various attempts to reform the military household of Philip V leaded between 1701 and 1704. Characterized by the creation of several ephemeral military units, the household reform has been considered by scholars from the restrictive perspective of military history without considering political and financial involvements. Focusing on the career of the Count of Ursel, a Flemish military entrepreneur who raised at his expense the company of musketeers, this article emphasizes that each unit created during these years corresponded to a specific form of funding. The proliferation of military units was actually the consequence of the conflicts between the Bourbon ministers to determine the best way to reform the institutions of the Spanish monarchy. This short period thus appears as a time of political and financial experimentation that produced institutional forms that ultimately did not succeed.