The early part of the seventeenth century saw a considerable alteration in the armament of the soldiery, and, notwithstanding the increasing use of gunpowder, body armour long continued to be worn. On it was lavished the highest skill of the artisan in its workmanship, and the highest taste of the artist in its decoration by engraving and inlaying. But the firearm, a matchlock, had, to all intents and purposes, everywhere superseded the bow, so that even in Elizabeth’s reign leg-armour was falling into disrepute, and, except in the corselet or cuirass, was steadily lessening in weight. Buff coats with sleeves, leather gauntlets, and leather boots were lighter than iron; just as useful against a sword-cut, and no worse against a shot. What little armour was left soon became too heavy to wear.
Even James I. thought that the heavy armour of his time was “an excellent invention, for it not only saved the life of the wearer, but prevented his hurting anybody else”;9 while “Dugald Dalgetty” found the metal thigh-pieces were powerless to stop the bullets of the firearms used by those who pursued him when he escaped from “that high and mighty prince,” the Duke of Argyle. To summarise the gradual disuse of arms from Tudor times to those of Anne, it may be stated that though body armour and the helmet were long used, the former had become but a cuirass to which a short skirt of metal was attached. The helmet became more open; still36 covering the head, the back of the neck and ears, but the face was only guarded by a “nasal” (like that of the time of the Conqueror somewhat), which could be moved up or down, or by a triple bar attached to the peak, which could be raised bodily like the visor was. This soon gave way to the mere iron “pot-helmet” without any face guards; and when this went, the cuirass soon followed. Last of all, the neck-piece or gorget was worn finally as a mere ornament. For mounted men the lance disappeared, and the sword, pistol, carbine, or “dragon” took its place. On foot, as the musket became general, the ammunition was long carried in a bandolier. But in addition to the firearms, or “shot,” there were pikemen carrying plain pikes eighteen to twenty-four inches long, and forming an important part of the infantry.
Naturally, therefore, by degrees the proportion of firearms in the battaglia (whence comes our modern “battalion”) increased, and the formation of definite fighting units, such as brigades, by Gustavus Adolphus, Maurice of Nassau, and others, began to make the force more capable of direction and control. De Rohan in France, too, devised regiments on what were then scientific principles. His were composed of 600 pikes, 600 musketeers, and 240 swordsmen, and, later, cavalry were placed between these massive battalions. Speaking generally, the artillery was little moved, and remained stationary during a battle. The cavalry charged sword in hand or with pistols, and the infantry received the charge with the pike or partially met it by fire. But with an improved artillery arose also the necessity for ammunition and other supply trains from fixed magazines, and hence more careful strategy based on care for these magazines or “bases of operations,” and regard for the roads “or lines of communication” leading from them to the army, influenced the conduct of campaigns; so also did the introduction of superior organisation.
For food supplies, armies on the move were still dependent on the good-will of the people, open markets, or plunder. It was long before the supply of troops formed part of the37 serious study of the art of war. There was yet but little change in the method of fighting. Artillery as an “arm” was not. Rupert thought still that cavalry was the principal arm and could do anything. Cromwell alone recognised what trained infantry could be made to do.
It is only here and there that strategical enterprise is apparent, while the old tactical methods too were changing, but very slowly. Mr. Ward in his Animadversions of War, dated 1639, shows the cavalry formed five ranks deep, and (as the battles show) an undue dependence was placed on this arm, though in the early battles it, seriously, effected little, and was rather a cause of disaster than of victory. They were armed with firearms of sorts and the sword, the lance of the Middle Ages having fallen into complete disuse. They were classed as cuirassiers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons; but all fought much the same way, and were, taken altogether, rather mounted infantry than true cavalry. Each battaglia, even as late as 1677, so says Lord Orrery in his Act of War, had still one-third of its number “pikes”; the remainder, as “shot,” were assembled in groups at the four angles of the mass of pikes, which were ten ranks deep; but at the beginning of the Civil War the proportion of pikes to shot was about one-half. No wonder that the weapon “which never missed fire,” and was sixteen feet long, for many a year was all-important, and that the heavy arquebus, a matchlock with a rest which trailed, was long looked on as an adjunct, not as the primary weapon of the foot-soldier. The weapon was fired by a slow match, and one common stratagem at night, in retreat, was to leave these matches attached to the branches of trees in a hedgerow, to make believe that it was still held after the defenders had actually fallen back.
The general “order of battle” was two or three lines of these battaglia (named the “main battle,” the “battle of succour,” and the “rear battle”) at close intervals, with the cavalry on the flanks, and the guns dispersed along the front. In the beginning of the battle small bodies or “forlorn hopes” were pushed to the front to draw the enemy’s fire,38 much as the deployment of lines or columns later was covered by light infantry skirmishers. The guns, immobile, badly mounted, and badly horsed as they were, were not to be despised as far as size went. There were “cannon royal” of 8 inches calibre, firing a 63-pound shot, down to “sakers” with 6-pound projectiles, and “bases” of half a pound, and the range varied from 500 to 1500 yards; and the “demi-culverin” with a 10-pound shot was a not uncommon field gun. Of course their rate of fire was slow. There were no cartridges, and the gun was fired, after being primed, by a linstock with a slow match. Curiously enough, the first cannons were breech-loaders, and were simply securely fastened into wooden slabs on low wheels by way of carriage, and so were capable of very little elevation; but later on they were furnished with trunnions on which the gun pivoted.
The colours worn by the men seemed to have followed the armorial bearings of their leaders. Orange, the colour of Essex, was generally worn by officers; Lord Saye’s men wore blue, Hampden’s green, and so on.
The opposing armies formed opposite one another at about 400 yards range, and after due consideration one side attacked, and without any real tactical plan the battle became a series of independent combats, in which, practically, the last unbroken body remained master of the field, and called it victory. Still this was a great advance on the tactics of earlier days. The idea of “tactics” was there, but, like the Caroline “strategy,” it was of a very feeble description. There was plenty of bravery, little of the combined effort which “tactics” implies.
Artillery.
Early B.L. Cannon
Culverin
B.L. Ship Gun, 1545 (Recovered 1836).
M.L. Burgundian (without trunnions) 1477.
M.L. Spanish (with trunnions & dolphins) 1800.
R.B.L. Field Gun 1896
But with the Stuarts had arisen a new power. To loyalty to the head of the State was to be added reverence for an asserted divine right to govern, of which little had been said before. With James I. arose the theory of the divine right of kings. How it came to be that his people, or a section of them, acquiesced in this assumption,—if they ever really did,—is one of the unexplained wonders of the time; but that the idea grew up and grew into full strength when39 Charles I., the best, if not the ablest of the Stuarts, was king, is clear.
With him the idea of the personal sacredness of majesty came to a head, and died with him, as men died for his “idea.” Again another stage in the army’s growth. Before this brave soldiers had died for “ideas” in battle; now they were to die for an idea translated, or crystallised, into a king. Out of this feeling came the men who fought for the cause and the country as well as the sovereign, and less than before for the personal duty due to the military chief or leader of a feudal family or clan. There were several reasons for this alteration in the causes that made men then join armies. During the Tudor dynasty there had been a vast extension of foreign trade, with foreign travel, which opened men’s minds and induced freedom in political thought. The theological revival which culminated in the Reformation had aroused a spirit, first of intolerance, and then of a desire for freedom in religious belief. To the latter a hatred to Roman Catholicism, a dread of popish interference in secular matters, the example given by the religious conditions of our great commercial antagonist, Spain, and the cruelties attributed to the Inquisition, largely contributed. To the former the increase of commercial wealth, with a corresponding decrease in the feudal power of the nobles, and a greater dependence on general taxation to support the Government and foreign wars, lent their aid. When Charles I. became king, he represented, in person, these conflicting elements; for though not a Roman Catholic himself, he was a High Churchman, his wife a Roman Catholic, and to an autocratic belief in his own divine right he added an untrustworthiness which was one of the many causes that led to his downfall. “From this inordinate reverence for the kingly office grew a great evil, for with a perverseness of reasoning which we name Jesuitical, Charles held that for the advancement of so holy a cause as that of the king must ever be, no means, however vile or mean to the common eye, could be in verity aught but virtuous and true. To this Moloch he sacrificed his children, as he had previously40 surrendered his home, his wife, and his happiness; to this idol he offered up the love of his subjects, the hope of his house, and the good of his country; for this he became an outcast, a vagrant, and a prisoner; and when love, friends, and liberty had been swallowed by the burning fiery furnace, he flung in with them his honour and his fair fame for ever. It was then no hard matter to die for the god. Let those only judge him for whom there exists a Truth so living.”10
The coming recrudescence of civil war differed somewhat, therefore, in its origin from that between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. In these, political rancour was fostered by great nobles, and armies were formed on the feudalistic principle of personal servitude to these chiefs; while on the other side was the trading spirit openly fostered by Edward the Fourth. The Stuart wars are much more personal and individual throughout. The men, the rank and file even, fought with interest in the cause, and—as a rule, not as an exception, as before—joined either side from feelings of personal predilection. Hence it was that when the Restoration came, there was less bitter antagonism between the factions than when Warwick fell at Barnet. Then the king or queen or the feudal lord decided the measure of slaughter. In the Stuart wars no such order as that of Edward, before Barnet, “to give no quarter,” would have been, save in the most exceptional case, obeyed. It was only when the purely theological animosity was paramount that needless cruelties followed victory. The Covenanters at Bothwell Brig were personally hateful to men like Claverhouse, for religious as well as other reasons; so also the massacres at Drogheda, of which more anon. Stern repression of the severest kind in such cases was both the law and custom in those days.
The actual outbreak of hostilities was preceded by minor outbreaks, which increased the growing antagonism. Ships were lent to France and used against the Huguenots of Rochelle, and the failure of an attempt at Cadiz increased the irritation; and when the troops returned from the Continent, they were not disbanded, as was customary, but billeted on41 the population, and martial law was introduced during a time of peace. Lastly, the efforts of the Star Chamber to raise fresh loans accorded but little with the English spirit, and the direct tax of ship-money on inland as well as coastal towns, together with the attempted arrest of the five members of the House of Commons hostile to the king’s policy, brought matters to a climax.
Thus the Civil War began, much as in former times, without real strategy. At first, certainly, there was little or no plan of campaign. When an army formed, it moved on some point that seemed locally of value, or to some town or garrison that wanted help. The only broad principle of a very feeble strategy seems to have been to threaten (or protect) London, and on the Parliament side to keep free for use the road from London to the West.
Practically, as in the Wars of the Roses, the political situation was this. The north part of the Midlands and the west favoured the Royalists, the east and south the Parliamentarians. But in both cases there were numerous centres of disaffection in each area, and the commercial spirit of the great towns and seaports in the south and east was hostile to the king.
Speaking generally, too, the nobles and gentry favoured the royal cause, the middle classes that of the Parliament; though of course there were many exceptions on both sides. The fashionable, worldly, and gay were with Charles, the serious-minded, austere, and visionary with the Parliament. But there was more than this: even the “people” found a recruiting ground, for London trained bands and peaceful traders donned buff and bandolier to fight in the national cause. As at Barnet, though now much more so, the commercial class stood side by side with that which deemed itself, by birth and education, more military.
The gradual introduction of the supply train had introduced the elements of strategy, though the study was still in its infancy. The strategical objectives were rather more distinct, but even now there is little trace of a connected serious strategic plan. The isolated armies did not yet42 unite to a definite strategic end; the plan of campaign was much the same as before, though a little less so. The king assembled an army at X, the Parliament formed one at Y to beat it. The main difference is, that in the Wars of the Roses defeat generally meant dispersion, in this Civil War it meant more or less retreat to re-form. The art of war was growing up, that was all.
Briefly speaking, the only noteworthy points of military interest are these which follow; as the most instructive tactical example is that of the battle of Naseby.
The early campaigns merely tell the usual tale of disconnected skirmishes and resultless battles. Nominally the Parliament guarded the capital, their opponents wanted to seize it. But they rarely tried, and never seriously. In 1643, when Essex was retreating from the relief of Gloucester, he was intercepted by the king at Newbury, where strategically and tactically the royal forces were skilfully posted. But the battle partakes of the nature of chance rather than intent. Nothing practically came of it; but it showed the Cavaliers that if infantry stood firm, the most reckless gallantry of cavalry could do nothing.
In that same year two political steps were taken that led eventually to serious results. The Parliament allied itself with Scotland, and increased Cromwell’s innate dislike to that nation; on the other hand, Charles, to all intents and purposes, allied himself temporarily with the Irish, and raised the theological hatred of his British foes to fever heat. But constant war was hardening and teaching Cromwell and his men, if it taught their opponents nothing. The handling of the three armies in 1644 was skilful. Throughout the whole contest, too, the better and steadier pay of the Parliamentary army told; they plundered less than their harder-up adversaries, and as the rank and file improved, so did their leaders, when the “self-denying ordinance” eliminated incompetent soldiers, and handed over the conduct of the war to those who meant to bring it to a successful issue. The true professional soldier was being made. The superior and more intelligent strategy of the end of the campaign of43 1646 clearly shows this, and by the end of the following year hostilities had practically ceased.
FORMATION OF THE LINES OF BATTLE AT NASEBY 14th JUNE 1645
Though there was at first much similarity between the conduct of all the battles, there was an observable improvement on the Parliamentary side as the years rolled on; and the battle of Naseby is perhaps the best evidence of the better tactical appreciation of the situation than that of any early combat. It evidenced how little the Royalists, how much the Parliamentarians, had learned of the art of war in this the fourth year since hostilities began.
Of course the armies met haphazard, as such forces must do with little or no strategic plan; so that when the king’s levies met at Daventry, it was surprised, when contemplating the relief of Pontefract and Scarborough, to find itself in touch with the army of Fairfax, which, abandoning the siege of Oxford, had moved north to engage the royal army. With it was Cromwell as lieutenant-general of horse. But if the king was ignorant as to the whereabouts of his adversary, Fairfax was not. The use of cavalry was being understood; “every step of the army of the Parliament was guided and guarded by the action of detachments” of this arm.11 Ireton watched and threatened the enemy’s retreat on Market Harborough, and on the evening of the 13th drove the king’s rearguard out of Naseby, the main body of the army being then south of Harborough. The next day the very casual and careless reconnaissance of Rupert’s troopers reported that no hostile bodies were in sight, and with the false impression that Fairfax was retreating, the royal army advanced to the attack of an enemy superior in number, more highly disciplined, and strongly posted on Mill Hill, north-west of the village of Naseby. The king’s army was in three lines: the first of four regiments, the second of three regiments, the third of the king’s and Rupert’s regiments. Lord Astley commanded the infantry (about 5500 men), Rupert the right, and Langdale the left, wing of cavalry, or “horse,” each about 2500 strong.
The army of the Parliament was thus disposed: right44 wing, six regiments of cavalry under Cromwell in three lines, with the right flank echeloned back. Ireton commanded the cavalry of the left wing, of five regiments of cavalry and one of dragoons arranged in two lines, while the latter lined a hedgerow to protect the left flank. The infantry under Skippon was in two lines: the first, five regiments strong, the second or reserve, three regiments. The baggage, with a strong guard of “shot,” was posted in rear of the left flank.
The battle began by the attack of Ireton against the opposing cavalry “in echelon right in front”; but as this exposed his right flank to the fire of the infantry squares of the first line, he turned his right squadrons upon them. In this he was dismounted and wounded. Whether from this cause, or what not, Rupert routed this wing, pursuing them as far as Naseby, and then wasting time in attacking the baggage train, while Ireton’s broken squadrons rallied. This is a perfect example of the reckless and unskilful way in which the Royalist charges were always made.
The Royalist first line next advanced, and, breaking Skippon’s left and centre, forced it back upon the second line or reserve; but by this time Cromwell’s cavalry had broken that under Langdale, and with a true appreciation of the situation, had then despatched but two regiments in careful and guarded pursuit, and turned with the remainder on the king’s still unbroken centre. This relieved the pressure on Skippon’s infantry, and these, thereupon, rallied, and in a combined attack broke the king’s remaining square. The battle was virtually over. Rupert returned, all too late and all too exhausted to be of service. The king in person tried to rally and employ the reserve, but the force was already beaten and demoralised, and the retreat became a disorderly rout. The prizes of the victors were 5000 prisoners, 8000 arms, and 100 colours; but, most of all, this severe defeat was a death-blow to the royal cause, and was the last in which Charles I. engaged in person.
One curious result of it was that Lieutenant-General Cromwell himself reported to the Speaker of the House of45 Commons “how the good hand of God” had fought for them.
There was little after Naseby in the year 1648 to disturb the victorious army of the Parliament. There were sundry small fortresses and castles to reduce, and these soon fell. To Cromwell was deputed the task of capturing Devizes, Winchester, and Basing, and the latter is especially noteworthy for the tenacity with which it was long defended, and the rapidity of its final fall. The seat of the Marquis of Winchester, whose motto of “Aimez loyauté” gave the name of “Loyalty” to his mansion at Basing (to which also “the jubilant Royalists” had given the name of “Basting” House), was a large and important group of buildings, consisting of four great square towers linked together by a wall, and with inner buildings of sorts. The main importance was, that it closed the Great Western Road, south of the Kennet valley, as Donnington Castle did on the north bank of that river. It had been several times attempted during the past four years—first by Sir W. Waller in 1643, who suffered heavily in his attempt to storm; and other very partial attempts followed, until Cromwell himself was sent to settle, once and for all, in whose hands the road by Basingstoke from London should rest.
So the lieutenant-general laid formal siege to it, and, on the morning of 14th October 1645, stormed it, and carried it in three-quarters of an hour. “He had spent much time in prayer,” says Mr. Peters, “the night before the storm, and was able to write that night to ‘the Hon. William Lenthall, Speaker of the Common House of Parliament,’ to the follow-effect: ‘Sir, I thank God I can give a good account of Basing.’” The marquis and two hundred prisoners were taken, and so speedily was the capture completed, that there is some reason for the tradition that the attack was a surprise, and that the garrison were playing cards. Hence the local saying, “Clubs trumps, as when Basing was taken.” Here, too, was slain Robison the player, who was mercilessly shot after the surrender by fanatical Harrison, who shot him through the head with the wild quotation, “Cursed is he that46 doeth the work of the Lord negligently.” The action and the remark evidence, better than anything else could, the increasing embitterment of the controversy, and the real, or pretended, religious fervour, or rather rancour, that accompanied its continuance. That the feeling was honest, however strained, with many who fought against the king, is undoubted; as undoubted as the religious fervour of the Jews when “Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord”; or when a modern Mohammedan charges home upon a British square with “Allah” on his dying lips. Incomprehensible to some, it is a feeling that has to be taken serious account of in the last great Civil War in England.
So Basing fell. It was “now the twentieth garrison that hath been taken in the summer by this army; and I believe most of them the answer of the prayers, and trophies of the faith of some of God’s servants.”
So thought Mr. Peters in that year of grace 1645, and so thought many who, in the Commons House of Parliament, heard him tell his story of how Basing fell.
With the death of the king in 1649 came the real beginning of the end. This is no place to discuss the merit or demerit of a step so serious that it only finds a partial parallel in the action of Elizabeth towards Mary of Scotland. But two great results grew out of it: the proclamation of Charles II. as King of Scotland, and the invitation of Ormond to Ireland, where also Charles was hailed as the new sovereign. From this came the last two wars of the Commonwealth, the first of which was fought in Ireland. There anarchy reigned. Petty war was the normal condition of the rather more than half-savage clans. There had been a massacre of Protestants, variously estimated at from forty thousand to a hundred thousand, under circumstances of the “most revolting barbarity; ... men, women and children they indiscriminately murdered, in a manner of which the details recall those of the massacre of Cawnpore.” This fact must be gravely borne in mind in considering the English invasion, and must be added to the fierce religious hatred and the increasingly intense political47 antagonism which the latest events had once more brought to the front. There is much to be said for the bitter revenge taken by the stern Protestant party, which composed the army sent to destroy the Irish people who had done their utmost to aid the monarchical cause in the late war.
To the sectaries it was no mere word-painting to say that Papacy was “Anathema,” and the Pope “Antichrist.” To break down the “carved images” was infinitely less a figure of speech in Irish churches than it was in English fanes. War in Ireland was to them a crusade, a religious war, a war of creeds as well as people; and the antagonism of peoples was little less than the antagonism of creeds. So alien were the Irish deemed, that, long before this, Pigott of Clotheram disinherited his eldest son merely for marrying an Irishwoman! Often conquered before, never had this unhappy land been more completely subdued than now. Yet even with this “curse of Cromwell” came peace and prosperity. “Districts which had recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the red men, were in a few years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings and new roads were everywhere seen.” Rightly or wrongly, he held that war was not made with rosewater any more than omelettes without breaking eggs. He may have been, and probably was, quite conscientious when he wrote: “Truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood.”
It is not just to severely condemn Cromwell for his action in Ireland. He lived in the seventeenth, not the nineteenth century, and acted according to his lights. His Irish campaigns have been described as “a series of blood-massacres, the just punishment of atrocious deeds, or as the fanatical orgie of a tyrant. This was a complete perversion of fact, and Cromwell’s conduct in Ireland had yet to be judged impartially by a candid historian and by a competent thinker on war. No doubt he was a stern and severe conqueror; no doubt they turned their eyes away from Wexford and Drogheda; no doubt Cromwell and his avenging host regarded Celtic Papists as accursed idolaters,48 dripping with the carnage of 1641, and to be trodden under foot, like the doomed tribes of Palestine were crushed ‘at the bidding of the Lord’; but when he set foot in Ireland, he had to deal with a nation in armed and furious revolt, which had a country difficult in the extreme to penetrate. The experiences of previous Irish wars had shown, that under conditions like these, it was essential to strike hard at once, and the peculiarities of the Irish climate, fatal in the seventeenth century to British troops, made it necessary to avoid the inland districts, and, if possible, to obtain immediate success. These considerations explained his deeds in Ireland. He was pitiless and inexorable, but he acted upon a far-sighted policy, and his generalship was bold, decided, and brilliant. His severity at Drogheda, he told them himself, was calculated ‘to prevent the effusion of blood.’ Just as Villars deliberately starved Fribourg, just as the garrison of Pampeluna would have been put to the sword had it not yielded to the summons of Wellington.”12
Whatever be the criticism of the means he employed, the end was that all open rebellion had ceased by 1653.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, too, the war-cloud had again burst; and though Fairfax resigned rather than invade that country, Cromwell either had less scruples, or was more firmly determined to put down all armed insurrection to the Republic, and assumed command of a fresh army of the North.
But the actions were, except that at Dunbar, disconnected and inconclusive. There were the usual small affairs, minor sieges and operations in an exceptionally difficult country. Whether Cromwell wilfully left the doorway into England open or not is doubtful, though Colonel Walford is of opinion he did; but be that as it may, the Scotch army fell into a trap, marched into England as far as Worcester, and there met what Cromwell and his party thought the crowning mercy of defeat. His army had marched to that victory for twenty-four days, and had covered in that time 350 miles.
49 Thus in Scotland, as in Ireland, the stern discipline of Cromwell’s army, though the religious feeling was in this case more or less common to both, prevailed when the time came. Notwithstanding the theoretical, and to a certain extent practical, sympathy which linked the two nations of Great Britain together, all the wild and undoubted bravery of the Northern Celt availed the royal cause at the end as little as, or even less than, that of his more emotional brother across the channel of St. George. But it must be remembered that the racial antipathy between the two great branches of the inhabitants of Britain had never been so accentuated, certainly not for half a century, as that which existed then, and long after, between the Irish and the British.
What is clear in this last campaign is, that Cromwell had little in common with those who governed the sister kingdom. “You ken very well,” said the Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1645, “that Lieutenant-General Cromwell is no friend of ours.” He knew this, and his personal and possibly religious antipathies were therefore in no wise lessened.
But with the general and steady improvement in the systematic conduct of war that is increasingly apparent as time went on, there is evidence of an attempt at organising a system of supply; an attempt that, though in a very sketchy and elementary way, foreshadows the higher strategy that is more and more noticeable as the eighteenth century grew from youth to old age.
There is no doubt that in many of the battles the baggage trains were more considerable than heretofore, and formed an important element in the operations of the campaign. Instances of their presence, in sufficient strength to be mentioned in the contemporary accounts, are shown both in the first battle of Newbury, where they were collected at Hampstead Park; as also at Naseby, where, far in rear of Mill Hill, Rupert attacked Fairfax’s baggage train and its guard. Essex, in his march to Newbury in 1643, complains of the want of food and the difficulty in foraging, owing to the small amount of supplies they could carry; and in passing50 through Aldbourne two ammunition waggons broke down, and were consequently blown up. Doubtless they were even then only improvised from private sources, and only the ordinary vehicles used in the districts where war was being carried on were employed. Even then, be it remembered, roads were still few and bad, though probably more numerous and somewhat better than when Barnet was fought. But firearms and what not had increased the importance of not being dependent for supplies on what could be locally collected in towns and villages, or what the soldier could himself carry; and thus with the need for their replenishment at recognised bases, and their protection before, during, and after a battle, began the true strategy of modern war. Supply trains, organised supply trains, alone render an army really mobile and capable of carrying out a connected serious plan of campaign.
Again, comparing the time that was to come with that at this time existing, Marmont writes to Berthier in 1812: “I arrived at the headquarters of the north in January last: I did not find a grain of corn in the magazine; nothing anywhere but debts; and a real or fictitious scarcity, the natural result of the absurd system of administration which has been adopted. Provisions for each day’s consumption could only be obtained with arms in our hands. There is a wide difference between that state and the possession of magazines which can enable an army to move;” and later on: “The army of Portugal at this season is incapable of acting, and if it advanced beyond the frontier, it would be forced to return after a few days, having lost all its horses. The Emperor has ordered great works at Salamanca; he appears to forget that we have neither provisions to feed the workmen nor money to pay them, and that we are in every sense on the verge of starvation.”
What was true in Spain in 1812 must have been infinitely more so in 1644. The country was not rich in any way, and the armies were, for a poor country, considerable. But another step forward in the art of war is faintly indicated in the greater mobility, because more regular attention to supply,51 that characterises the armies of the Civil War as compared with those of York and Lancaster.
Thus the great Civil War terminated in a considerable change both in the tactical and strategical condition of the army. It left behind a true “army of the people,” such as England had never seen before, and probably will never see again. If in previous wars the mass had followed the lead of the few, in the middle of the seventeenth century the Civil War had affected the mass and not the few only. There was a greater feeling of individualism; and, unlike previous armies, either of feudalism or of Saxondom, which was essentially more or less the compulsory service of a militia, it was a force recruited by a voluntary system. But this was of two kinds.
The soldiers of the king were essentially volunteers, serving very largely without pay, or even contributing to the royal military chest; those of his opponent were also voluntarily enlisted, but received pay from the resources of the State, over which Parliament had the chief control.
At first, therefore, the former afforded far the best fighting material. They were largely—and entirely, as far as their leaders were concerned—gentlemen and men accustomed to the use of arms, but there they remained, and showed little aptitude of infusing into their natural martial ardour the stern and necessary tonic of discipline. On the other hand, the early armies of the Parliament were “hirelings whom want and idleness had reduced to enlist.” Even Hampden’s regiment, one of the best of any, was described by Cromwell as a “mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place.” No one saw this more than Cromwell, and it is that instinct which makes him stand out among the leaders of the Civil War. No one more fully recognised than he that “you must get men of spirit: of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still.” The metal might be there, but it wanted tempering, and the opportunity for this the “self-denying ordinance” gave. By means of this the army was purged of all its weaker parts. As Cromwell52 had organised his own special regiment, so did he infuse into the rest of the force some of the stern enthusiasm that made his Ironsides “very devils”13 in battle, fearless and fearful factors in the fight. They “prospered because they were much in prayer and reading Scripture, an exercise that till of late soldiers have used but little.” They “were constant, conscientious, sober, strict, and thus conquered much upon the vanity and looseness of the enemy. Men fought on principle as well as for pay; they were little mutinous in disputing commands, fair in their marches, to friends merciful in battle, and in success to their enemies.” Finally their commissioners were “wise, provident, active, faithful in providing ammunition, arms, recruits, of men’s clothes, and that family must needs strive that hath good stewards.” It was inured to war, therefore, by a series of campaigns in which strategical as well as tactical conditions were beginning to be foreshadowed. Its organisation was more complete and thorough than heretofore, its men were imbued with the stern religious enthusiasm which has ever rendered such armies dangerous. It knew its strength and had gauged it by its continued success; what it had had to do had been God-directed (so its leaders and rank and file thought, or professed to think), and bore the imprint of immediate divine direction.
Thus it was, when the great Protector died, that the army he left was probably the most formidable body of armed men the world had ever seen.
Socially and morally, pecuniarily and theologically, it was peculiar. “The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people,14 and if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and licence, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of53 distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but free-born Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.”15
Such a body was none the less a distinct menace to the State it had armed itself to protect. So strong an engine for defence against the tyranny of monarchy was equally a possible engine of oppression to the rest of the body politic in the hands of an autocratic or incapable ruler.
It had compelled Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament, and by “this act left the people at the mercy of an irresponsible authority, and without representation or means of appeal.”
It is curious to see, therefore, how the first voluntary national army, long embodied, produced an antagonism, among the mass of the people, to standing armies altogether, a feeling which lasts even until now in theory, if not in fact.
When Charles II. entered London in triumph, the sombre Ironside soldiery must have felt their reign was over. If they did not, the people did. For with the “Happy Restoration” of the monarchy, the dread of a military supremacy, whether of king or dictator, was strong enough to decree that the army of the Commonwealth should be totally disbanded.
So, for a short time at least, the army ceased to be. Its men soberly disappeared as a mass into private life; but so good was its warlike material, that “the Royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver’s old soldiers.”15
54 Of the royal force there is nothing to be said, except that in displaying the national bravery they added nothing to the military knowledge and strength of the country when the sword was sheathed. It is not from them, but from their stern, more resolute, and better trained adversaries that we have to look for the germs of the future army of the State. After the war in 1652, the total force of the Protector’s army was 31,519 men in England, and about 20,000 in Ireland, though during the war it seems to have numbered at the highest about 80,000 men.
So, till Richard Cromwell disappeared, Great Britain not only possessed a standing army, but was practically governed by it. To the very fact that this was so may be directly traced its nearly entire disappearance; and, curiously enough, to the dread of it, when Charles II. returned, may be confidently attributed its reluctant restoration to safeguard the State he ruled.