While valour, operational strategic insight receive great attention, financial aspects, drab albeit extremely significant, are mostly ignored by students of military history. This article aims at highlighting the financial aspect of war with a view to show that there is a great deal of truth in Napoleons saying why bigger battalions, other factors being relatively similar, are more likely to emerge as victorious! In ancient and medieval history size of armies was relatively small, munitions and armaments were rudimentary and armies lived off the land! As the size of armies increased and warfare became more civilised financial aspects of war became far more complicated. The period 1550-1650 was a watershed in military history. During this period size of armies radically increased. Around 1631 Gustavus Adolphus commanded armies which were in excess of 100,000. It became difficult to sustain such large armies. The total strength of the Mughal Army of Emperor Akbar was estimated around 38,77,557 matchlockmen and infantry (including militia and zamindars retainers) while the cavalry was estimated to be around 384,758 men.1 In Aurangzeb’s time the strength varied from 240,000 to 300,000 cavalry and around 600,000 infantry.2 In Aurangzeb’s reign Aurangzeb’s Maratha War laid the foundation of financial decline of Mughal Empire. The magnitude of the expenses may be imagined from the fact that Aurangzeb’s military budget was double of Shahjahan’s military budget!3 This expense had serious maritime implications. Because of pre-occupation with the Maratha guerrillas Aurangzeb failed to capture the strategic ports of Bombay and Madras.4 Thus by late 1690s and 1700 Bombay was a prosperous and strongly fortified port and had surpassed Mughal Surat as a port! During this period Mughal land revenue declined due to revolts and civil wars and foreign trade which could have compensated for the shortfall was almost zero, which may be gauged from the fact that custom revenue “yielded less than one percent of the total revenue of the state”.5

1. An Audit of Warfare
Major Agha H Amin (Retired)
October 2001
About the Author
About the Author Agha H. Amin , Retired Tank corps major who served in
five tank regiments and commanded an independent tank squadron and
served in various staff , instructional and research assignments. In his
Pakistan Army tenure he wrote three original tactical papers on
Reconnaissance Troops Tactical handling, Reconnaissance support group ,
and RFS Concept. His writings were published in Pakistan Armys prime
journals , Pakistan Army Journal and Citadel Journal of Command and
Staff College Quetta. His recommendations regarding bifurcation of officer
corps into command and staff cadre advanced in 1998 were later
accepted. In addition his recommendation of grouping various corps into
army commands advanced in an article published in Citadel Journal in
1998 were accepted in 2005 or so. Wrote The Essential Clausewitz in
1993, Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-59 in 1998 , Pakistan Army till 1965 in
1999 ,Development of Taliban Factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2010)
,Taliban War in Afghanistan (2009). Served as Assistant Editor of Defence
Journal ,Executive Editor of globe and Founder Editor of Journal of
Afghanistan Studies . An associate of the think tanks ORBAT and
Alexandrian Defense group. Carried out various oil and gas and power
transmission line surveys in West Asia. Editor in Chief of monthly
Intelligence Review and monthly Military and Security Review. Heads the
think tank Centre for study of Intelligence Operations established in early
2010.

2. While valour, operational strategic insight receive great
attention, financial aspects, drab albeit extremely significant, are
mostly ignored by students of military history. This article aims
at highlighting the financial aspect of war with a view to show
that there is a great deal of truth in Napoleons saying why bigger
battalions, other factors being relatively similar, are more likely
to emerge as victorious!
In ancient and medieval history size of armies was relatively
small, munitions and armaments were rudimentary and armies
lived off the land! As the size of armies increased and warfare

3. became more civilised financial aspects of war became far more
complicated.
The period 1550-1650 was a watershed in military history.
During this period size of armies radically increased. Around
1631 Gustavus Adolphus commanded armies which were in
excess of 100,000. It became difficult to sustain such large
armies. The total strength of the Mughal Army of Emperor
Akbar was estimated around 38,77,557 matchlockmen and
infantry (including militia and zamindars retainers) while the
cavalry was estimated to be around 384,758 men.1 In
Aurangzeb’s time the strength varied from 240,000 to 300,000
cavalry and around 600,000 infantry.2 In Aurangzeb’s reign
Aurangzeb’s Maratha War laid the foundation of financial
decline of Mughal Empire. The magnitude of the expenses may
be imagined from the fact that Aurangzeb’s military budget was
double of Shahjahan’s military budget!3 This expense had
serious maritime implications. Because of pre-occupation with
the Maratha guerrillas Aurangzeb failed to capture the strategic
ports of Bombay and Madras.4 Thus by late 1690s and 1700
Bombay was a prosperous and strongly fortified port and had
surpassed Mughal Surat as a port! During this period Mughal
land revenue declined due to revolts and civil wars and foreign
trade which could have compensated for the shortfall was almost
zero, which may be gauged from the fact that custom revenue
“yielded less than one percent of the total revenue of the state”.5
This trend was not confined to India alone! War was no longer a
question of few charges, a brilliant stratagem but a very costly
affair. In 1552 a single campaign at Metz cost the Hapsburg

4. Emperor Charles the Fifth ten times his normal income from the
American colonies alone!
The British victory at Plassey was decisive because it gave the
English East India Company enormous additional revenue with
which it was able to massively expand its army. Thus within
four years of Plassey the English East India Company had
effectively neutralised its rival French Company once it had
captured the most important French base Pondicherry in 1761.
The English East India Company became the best paymaster in
India after Plassey and no native power could challenge it.
Even on a personal level the British officers made huge personal
fortunes out of war! Thus Clive as a relatively junior officer in
Madras made something like 40,000 Pounds Sterling between
1744 and 1753! In Bengal he manoeuvred Mir Jafar into gifting
him something like 234,000 Pounds Sterling in the period 1757-
66 ! Even more honest British generals like Wellington earned
prize money around the figures of 43,000 Pounds Sterling in the
period 1798-1805!7 The other side of the coin is the fact that
these men exposed themselves to fire unlike our silent soldiers
and many more “GT Road soldiers” (a term coined by one of
our leading military writers) who may have spent 1965 and 1971
war going up and down the GT Road, for no fault of theirs, but
the resultant guilt complex makes them fond of wearing martial
dresses, a clear violation of “Army Dress Regulations” with a
macho outlook without having been through the baptism of fire!
On the other hand wars, most of which were initiated by the
highly ambitious Viceroy Marquis Wellesley brought losses for
the English East India Company! Thus by 1815 three quarters
of the budget of the English East India Company was gobbled

5. by its 150,000 strong standing army alone! In 1815 the total debt
of the East India Company stood at 40 Million Pounds
Sterling!8 Wellesley was thus forced to extort money from
States like Oudh whose more than half territory he annexed in
1801 citing political compulsions! This was not enough. In
1814-16 the English Company once again forced the Nawab of
Oudh to give it a loan to finance part of the bill of the Anglo
Nepal War! 9
Few people understand how the First World War bled Britain
white in financial terms. This in turn weakened British resolve
to hold on to the colonies and accelerated the process of grant of
self-rule to the British colonies after the First World War. The
British never realised how the First World War would affect
them and financially destroy them! They were a victim of self-
hypnosis about the sun never setting on the British Empire!
Their historians had distorted the fact that Napoleon was not
defeated by Nelson at Trafalgar alone but by Russian Spanish
Austrian and Prussian blood in many wars fought between 1805
and 1815! Table No 1 illustrates the financial potential of
Europe’s leading powers as it stood in 1914:—10
This was not all. As a matter of fact USA advanced huge loans
to all allied countries which made their economy far more
weaker than it was in 1914. The following table illustrates the
war loans advanced by USA to various allied countries:—
The British financial position was made worse by the fact that it
had also advanced loans of a total amount of 8,695,000,000/-
USD to its allies.13 Thus Britain with a total pre- war annual
income of 11 Billion USD had spent something
like 44,000,000,000/- USD as direct cost of the war (excluding

6. indirect costs) as compared with US whose pre-war income was
some 37 Billion USD and which had spent only something like
31,000,000,000/- USD as direct cost of war!
Such was the British war weariness that it concluded a treaty
with Afghanistan which had attacked India without fighting
anything more than a few minor border actions! Thus British
losses in the First Great War resulted in Afghanistan’s
diplomatic independence, which it got by signing the Treaty of
Rawalpindi in the aftermath of the Third Afghan War! Britain
had won the war but its victory was a Pyhrric one !
The Japanese fought heroically against the USA in the Second
World War. However, certain financial indicators show why the
USA emerged victorious in the Second World War.
Table No 4 shows the armament spendings of various countries
in the period 1935-45 in Billions of USD at the rate as it stood in
the year 1994:—14
As a matter of fact Table No 4 explains how the allies won the
war against Japan and Germany! US money combined with
Russian blood won the war since the Red Army sustained some
90%15 of the total casualties sustained by all allies!
Japan was industrially too outmoded to fight USA. The fact that
despite all these shortcomings the Japanese did well is no
compliment to the US military role in WW Two! The Japanese
industry took much longer to build aircraft carriers,16 the most
important weapon of the war as compared to US industry. Thus
Japanese cause was doomed after they lost four carriers at
Midway. Industrially they could never recover from this loss.

7. The industrial potential of the US armaments industry may be
gauged from the fact that during Second World War US industry
alone produced some 52% of world wide (including both allies
and the axis powers) aircraft production, 36% of all artillery,
48% of all vehicles and 61% of all ship building!17
Recently in an article Lieutenant General Hameed Gul (Retired)
called the US soldiers chocolate cream soldiers! Some pedants
in order to indulge in the exercise of “Hazoor ka Iqbal Buland
Karna” (Endless Sycophancy) criticised Hameed Gul for saying
so! Logistically Hameed Gul’s point is valid. Even in WW Two
the US soldier was a thoroughly spoilt soldier. This may be
gauged from the following statistics. In WW II on the average
each US fighting division consumed something like 720 tons of
supply per day as compared with barely 200 tons of supplies per
day of its German counterpart division. This included a scale of
one ounce of sweets, two ounces of biscuits, and one packet of
chewing gum for every man per day totalling something like
6,250 pounds of sweets, 12,500 pounds of biscuits and 100,000
packets of gum!18
The 1965 War certainly played a major role in derailing
Pakistan’s economy and the 1971 War certainly proved too
costly for Indira Gandhi and she was booted out within four
years of a victorious war. The human mind works strangely!
Increased expectations lead to bitterness and sometimes
ungrateful behaviour and defeat results in increased resolve to
vindicate one’s honour!
In the present situation with a long low intensity war impending
some readers may draw wrong conclusions and think that
material might cannot be defeated with anything. This is

8. incorrect provided the guerrilla or unconventional forces receive
some kind of aid like the Viet Cong got in Vietnam War from
USSR and the Afghan Mujahideen from USA! Fortunately
guerrilla war turned out to be something totally different from
conventional war. Thus in Vietnam despite spending something
like direct cost of 515 Billion USD and a total cost of
something like 900 Billion US Dollars19 the USA failed in its
self-professed object of detainment of communism! This is
despite the fact that over 13 Million Tonnes of bombs equivalent
to 450 times the energy of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima
were dropped on Vietnam! This comes down to an average of
265 KG for every man, woman and child in Indo- China! Indeed
one optimist has estimated that had the Americans showered the
Indo-China residents with the money spent on making all these
bombs they might have won the war of hearts and minds!20 But
then men, at least the vast majority of them are highly irrational
creatures!
Conclusion
War whether conventional or unconventional, high or low
intensity is a combination of moral and material factors! In the
first strike, audacity wins but long-term wars cannot be fought
on audacity alone! Nations, especially those based on
democratic institutions are not one man shows! Their decision
making and executing processes are highly deliberate and well
organised affairs! On the other hand every empire has gone
through a process of rise, decline and fall and the same applies
to USA! On the other hand, sentimental people which we are,
we must not forget that US aid apart from Islamic fervour
played a major role in the Afghan War or Jihad, which has

9. been described as “the largest covert action programme since
Second World War”!21 Some 2 Billion US Dollars were
pumped in Afghanistan by the USA, a far cheaper business than
Vietnam! No one knows how much of the Vietnam War was
financed by exports of high-grade narcotics from the Golden
Triangle or how much of the Afghan War was financed from
exports of Heroin and Dope from the Golden Crescent!
The danger in today’s war is that it has no rules! It has too many
shades, variation in which it is not easy to make out! Too many
notes, too many flavours! It is far more complicated than any
conventional or unconventional war which has been fought to
date! The danger lies in the fact that hatred will become as
intense as it was in the 30 Years War or in the Crusades! The
power of state would increase at the expense of individual
liberty and citizens of all countries, big and small will suffer!
Indeed the foundations were laid once civilians were
indiscriminately killed in Vietnam and when Operation Phoenix
had authorised killing by assassination!
Just last year this scribe had stated in one of the articles
published in the Defence Journal,
“Similarly the Americans must remember that the Muslim
Jehadi Count Dracula that they resurrected many centuries after
the crusades with CIA Dollars and modern US military
hardware in Ningrahar and Paktia is definitely far more
dangerous than the older original Transylvanian version of Bram
Stoker which was only confined to the London journal in which
it was serialised! This new Muslim Dracula may one-day travel
in the hidden vaults of a merchant ship across the Atlantic or
Pacific to USA! The reader may note that as per one respectable

10. authority only five out of 100 containers arriving at US ports are
checked thoroughly! Ironically the result would be the re-
creation of a medieval or pre-medieval religious rivalry, for
vampires can only be destroyed by recourse to religion! As in
Indo-Pak religious extremism in India was intensified once
religious extremism intensified in Pakistan from the post-1977
period. The case in Europe and USA may be almost similar.
Fears of Islamic resurgence may give rise to another similarly
absurd reaction in shape of Christian military resurgence!”
One lesson in finance for unconventional forces fighting larger
forces in today’s world is that they must have allies! One cannot
gamble on any single card, may it be ideological fervour or
martial races theory or sheer material superiority! A lesson for
both the US and its present and potential enemies in the war
against terrorism! There was a time when a man named Nixon
had bragged “The bastards have never been bombed like they
are going to be bombed this time”!22 The bastards were bombed
but their resolve was not erased and USA had to finally
withdraw from Vietnam! But USSR supported them to a great
extent and China to a much lesser extent and the Cold War had
not ended! May be the recent situation dating from 11th
September restarts the Cold War or a hotter War!
The worst war and the most costly war is one in which the
enemy does not wear a uniform ! We saw one in 1971! It
makes all including non-combatants vulnerable to attack
and atrocities ! The war which began on 11th September
2001 is one without precedent in the history of mankind!
This war will be the worse civil war cum crusade cum jihad
fought on a global scale! The other day we heard someone

11. saying “USA will never be the same again”. I am afraid that
I disagree with this a bit myopic view! I assert with all my
strength that after 11th September 2001 this world will
never be the same again! God help us! To rephrase Lord
Greys phrase made on the outbreak of First World War
one may say that “lights around us are going out! Who
knows whether the future generations will ever see them lit
up again”!
Table No 1
Country
National
Income in
billion USD
Population in
millions
Per Capital
Income in
USD
United States
of America
37 Billion 98 377
Britain 11 Billion 45 244
France 6 Billion 39 153
Japan 2 Billion 55 36
Germany 12 Billion 65 184
Italy 4 Billion 37 108
Russia 7 Billion 171 41
Austria-
Hungary
3 Billion 52 57

12. Table No 2 shows the financial meaning of First World
War11:—
Country/Dominion/Colony Direct Cost of War in USD
United States of America 22,625,253,000/-
Great Britain 35,334,012,000/-
Canada 1,665,576,000/-
Australia 1,423,208,000/-
New Zealand 378,750,000/-
India 601,279,000/-
Union of South Africa 300,000,000/-
British Colonies 125,000,000/-
France 24,265,583,000/-
Russia 22,593,950,000/-
Italy 12,413,998,000/-
Belgium 1,154,468,000/-
Romania 1,600,000,000/-
Japan 40,000,000/-
Serbia 399,400,000/-
Greece 270,000,000/-
Other Allied Countries 500,000,000/-
Grand Total 125,690,477,000/-

13. Table No 3 showing advances made in The First World War
by the USA to its Allies12
Country Loan advanced in USD
Great Britain 4,316,000,000/-
France 2,852,000,000/-
Italy 1,591,000,000/-
Russia 187,000,000/-
Belgium 341,000,000/-
Serbia 27,000,000/-
Czechoslovakia 50,000,000/-
Greece 43,000,000/-
Rumania 30,000,000/-
Cuba 10,000,000/-
Liberia 5,000,000/-

14. Table No 4 Showing Spending on Armaments in Billions in
US Dollars
COUNTRY
1935-
38
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944
USA 13.5 5.4 13.5 40.5 180.0 342.0 378.0
Canada ? ? ? 4.5 9.0 13.5 13.5
Britain 22.5 9.0 31.5 58.5 81.0 99.0 100.0
USSR 72.0 30.0 45.0 76.0 104.0 125.0 144.0
Germany 108.0 31.0 54.0 54.0 77.0 124.0 153.0
Japan 18.0 4.5 9.0 18.0 27.0 42.0 54.0
End Notes
1Page-61-The Army of the Indian Mughals-Its Organisation and
Administration-William Irvine-1898. Reprinted by Eurasia
Publishing House-Ramnagar-New Delhi-1987.
2 Ibid.
3Page-316-Cambridge History of India-The Mughal Period-
Lieut Col Sir Wolseley Haig and Sir Richard Burn-Reprinted by
S.Chand and Company-New Delhi-1987.
4Page-242-The New Cambridge History of India-The Mughal
Empire-John.F.Richards-Cambridge University Press-1993.
5 Page-317-Haig and Burn-Op Cit.
6Page-59-The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers--Paul
Kennedy-Fontana Press-London-1988.
7Pages-129 & 130-The Rise and Fall of the British Empire-
Lawrence James-Abacus Books-UK-1995.

15. 8Page-133 & 134-Ibid.
9Page-239-A Popular History of British India-W.Cooke Taylor-
1855-Reprinted by Mittal Publications-New Delhi-1987.
10 Page-314-Paul Kennedy-Op Cit.
11Page-364-A Concise History of the First World War-Edited
by Brigadier Vincent.J.Esposito-Pall Mall Press-London-1964.
12 Page-369-Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Page-515-The Pacific War Encyclopedia-Volume Two-
James.F.Dunnigan and Albert.A .Nofi-Facts on File Inc-New
York-1998.
15Page-987-Hitler and Stalin-Parallel Lives-Alan Bullock-
Alfred. A. Knopf-New York-1992.
16Page-421-Pacific War Encyclopedia-Op Cit.
17Page-423-Ibid.
18Pages-33 & 34-Overlord-Max Hastings-New York-1984.
19Page-109-The Economic Consequences of the Vietnam War-
Anthony.S.Campagna-Praeger-New York-1991.
20 Page-35-Vietnam-A Travel Survival Kit-Robert Storey and
Daniel Robinson-Lonely Planet Publications-Australia-1995.
21Page-186-Superpowers Defeated-Douglas. A. Borer-Frank
Cass Publishers-London-1999.
22 Reported in New York Times-