2. Political Crisis: Wars in Europe
Wars led to a noticeable rise in government activity to establish large armed forces and to finance them.
The governments devoted a considerable energy to bring into existence large armed forces. In the period between 1590 and 1630, for instance, the Spanish Empire had 150,000 soldiers.
How to find soldiers and how to finance the armies?

3. Increasing Tax Burden and Revolts
To create financial resources, belligerent states were increasing tax rates and introducing new ones.
Increase in the tax burder led to revolts. In France, revolts tended to occur in the heart of the country, where the government’s control was greatest.
Increasing demands of the Spanish government led to revolts in Catalonia and Portugal.

4. Crisis in the Ottoman Empire: Climate
Ottoman Empire began to suffer from adverse weather conditions in the 1590s.
Ottoman chroniclers and statesmen, for instance, regularly mentioned harsh weather conditions in the Habsburg front.
Cold weather and prolonged droughts affected social and economic life negatively. In the period between 1595 and 1604, basic food prices in Anatolia roughly tripled.

5. Crisis in the Ottoman Empire: Warfare
The Ottoman Empire fought exhausting wars against Persia between and
In the western front, the imperial rivalry in the late sixteenth century was suddenly transformed into full military engagement in the period between 1593 and 1606.
Important changes in the military technology. Beginning in the late 1560s, the Habsburgs and their allies began a large scale fortification project in accordance with the requirements of the time.

6. Western Front: Hungary

7. Italian-Bastioned Fortification

8. Military Revolution in the Habsburg Front
The Habsburgs modernized not only the border defense system but their army as well.
The Habsburgs and their allies had significantly increased the size of their armies.
The number of infantry soldiers carrying firearms in the Habsburg army increased dramatically in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In some units, their numbers reached 75% of the total
Ottoman Response?

9. Military Revolution and the Ottoman Army
They adopted the new weapon technology. The Ottoman troops did possess all types of weaponry that were available to their Christian enemies.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cavalry soldiers constituted the majority of the Ottoman armies. There were between provincial cavalry soldiers.
Armed with conventional weapons proved ineffectual against the Austrian musketeers. Thus cavalry soldiers began to gradually lose their dominance in the Ottoman army.

10. Change in the Composition of the Army
In the seventeenth century, the number of cavalry soldiers in the Ottoman army decreased.
The Ottoman government rapidly increased the number of musket-bearing janissaries.
In the mid-sixteenth century, there were some 13,000 Janissaries in the service of the Ottoman army, their number rose to 37,000 by In the 1650s and early 1660s, there were between 50,000 and 55,000 Janissaries.

11. Mercenaries
Another important change in the composition of the army was the establishment of firearm-bearing infantry units, generally known as sekban and sarıca.
Initially, most of the mercenaries were recruited from Bosnia and Albania. Then, an increasing number of Anatolian peasants were also recruited as sekbans.
In the 1590s, the number of mercenary soldiers was estimated to be 20,000.