The Great Army Reorganization

Charles XI was not a great warrior king like his father and his son, but he was a great reorganizer and consolidator. Apart from his centralization efforts and huge reduction of aristocratic land holdings, he also remodeled the army. Most importantly, he devised the genial 'indelningsverk', or military-tenure system. The system was a military organization where the soldiers were given a croft to live on and cultivate (made possible by the reduction), where the harvest served as their wages. Thus, the country could maintain a large army in both times of peace and of war. If a peasant assumed the responsibility of maintaining an enlisted rider, his horse and equipment, he was exempted from conscription and freed from paying taxes. The peasants could cooperate in groups of 2-5 farms and maintain a soldier or a sailor. The soldiers were organized into companies of 150 men, and every county should field a regiment of 1200 men. The new system also made no distinction between officers of noble birth and commoners.