La contromarcia olandese: un mito?

The essay discusses the historiographical significance of the tactic called counter- march, pointing out that its use arose, in some cases, well before the end of the 16th century and in areas other than the Netherlands, i.e. in southern Europe as well as in the easternmost part of Asia. From this, it follows that the originality of this alleged ‘innovation’ in land warfare should be ascribed neither to the intellectual milieu of the Orange-Nassau family nor, even less, to the West itself. Secondly, the example of the countermarch is useful in revising the historio- graphical category of the ‘little divergence’, which hypothesized a growing gap, in both socio-economic and military terms, between north-western Europe and the rest of the continent.