Firth Charles Harding. Cromwell's Army: A History of the English Soldier

Methuen, 2016. — 507 p.This is a marvelous work. As he explores his hypothesis, Firth skillfully and in depth explores the history of the Tudor and Elizabethan armies, judging them close to useless, more worshipers of Bacchus, not Mars. While during this period and the early years of Stuart rule a number of English officers went abroad as mercenaries and thus had good experience, the rank and file was often decimated by disease and battle, leaving no true core of well-trained soldiers. Thus when the English Civil War broke out in 1642, "neither party had an army, neither party had an advantage." The key to the war, Firth argues, was the race to create such an army and he details the process with skill and dispatch, ultimately deciding that Oliver Cromwell's "New Model Army" created after 1645 eventually won the day and the struggle. But this work is so much more than a most useful examination of the war in question. In addition, it opens up a truly magnificent examination of all aspects war and war change in the mid 17th century. Providing the reader with in-depth looks at the role of discipline, armament, artillery, sieges, pay, commissariats, old soldiers and religion in the army, the author details the evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the army itself as the English followed many of the previous military trends on the continent. Billmen and bowmen are replaced by pikemen and musketeers, the advantage shifts from cavalry (where it had stayed for much of the medieval period and beyond) to the infantry, with the ratios changing to match, cavalry falling to 1-2 (and indeed 1-3 during sieges). The work also underscores the difficulties in maintaining the size of armies, the need for impressments to augment volunteers and the fact that as the war wore on, the size of the armies both sides could bring to a particular battle dwindled. Anyone interested in military history, let alone the English Civil War or 17th century warfare, will find this work not only invaluable, but a wonderfully interesting and even entertaining read. It is nothing less than a true treasure trove of military insights.