Victory by Amateurs
Battles of the English Civil War. By Austin Woolrych. (Batsford, 21s.)
THE English Civil War is a disappointing affair for the military historian. The numbers engaged on either side in any engagement were small, rarely more than 15,000. Loss of life among combatants and civilians was insignificant when compared with contemporaneous wars on the Continent. Relatively few of the commanding officers on either side had had any military training or experience, and—aggravatingly enough for the military specialist—it was the amateurs who turned out to be good at winning battles. The professionals, whether slow, stolid and unimaginative, like the Earl of Essex, or dashing non-co-operators, like Prince Rupert, proved equally incompetent at solving the special problems presented by a civil war, in Which pay and plunder were not the only incen- tives. Political factors—morale, determination, popular support—as well as the weather and the food situation were often more important than questions of strategy and tactics. Hence the history of the Civil War is too serious a matter to be left to the military historians.
It is one of the virtues of Mr. Woolrych's book that he is fully aware of the war's political character, and that he tries to make his readers aware of it too. He had to compete with a recent study of the campaigns and battles, The Great Civil War, by Colonel Burne and Brigadier Young. Mr. Woolrych's more political approach has advantages for the general reader who wants to understand why the Parliamentarians won the war; and on occasion it even gives his military analysis greater depth. Thus he rightly stresses the unique character of the New Model Army, its 'revolutionary dynamism' and 'unique sense of mission.' But he ridicules the caricature which depicts its officers as fanatics with 'cropped hair and black Puritan garb.' Fairfax at Marston Moor could pass through the Royalist ranks un- noticed once he had removed a coloured band from his hat. Mr. Woolrych draws our attention to the civilian backing which made the New Model Army's task at Naseby so much easier, and to the greater efficiency of its intelligence service which enabled it to make full use of this support. He notes that in 1645 'the war itself was getting harsher. Brutal and vindictive ac- tions were commoner now, the slaughter in captured towns more indiscriminate, quarter less promptly granted.' The Parliamentarians killed Irish Catholics and their women in cold blood; unpaid Royalist troops plundered mercilessly. This, too, helps to explain the speed with which the New Model Army was able to finish off the war, and the bitterness felt on the Parlia- mentarian side when Charles I forced a renewal of fighting in 1648.
Instead of trying to deal with all the engage- ments of the two civil wars, Mr. Woolrych singles out three—Marston Moor, Naseby, Preston. He sandwiches them between accounts of the background of the war, of the unfought battle at Turnham Green when the civilian London trained bands foiled Rupert's advance oh London, of the rise of the New Model Army and its decisive intervention in politics in 1647. He concludes with a second visit to Marston Moor, in January, 1660, when the Parliamen- tarian General Fairfax again mustered troops there for another march on York, this time with the object of restoring Charles II to the throne from which the New Model Army had toppled his father. So Mr. Woolrych neatly makes the point that whoever restored monarchy in 1660, it was not the Royalists: the outcome was decided between two groups of the victors of the first battle of Marston Moor. On the battles themselves Mr. Woolrych has some new points to make. He has taken the trouble to look at a number of unprinted local maps, and these have helped him to clarify aspects of Marston Moor and Naseby which have confused previous historians. His book has a splendid dust-cover, useful maps and plans and lavish though rather familiar and conventional illustrations.
CHRISTOPHER OPHER HILL
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