A Military History of the English Civil War (review)

Wanklyn and Jones aim to open the deterministic view of "why Parliament rather than the king won the First Civil War" (p. x) to "rigorous reappraisal" (pp. 11–12). In this they are essentially successful. While they do not deny the importance of Parliament's resources (the determinists' central argument) their work does illustrate the importance of military strategy to Charles I's defeat.

This book is clearly written with no resort to jargon. Reference is made to a range of secondary material, including recent detailed studies of individual battles. While I disagree that S. R. Gardiner's work has passed its "sell-by date" (p. 22) the argument that his account of the military strategies pursued is flawed is valid. In highlighting Gardiner's misconceptions the authors emphasise, as does their whole work through its appreciation of strategy, the difficulty of writing military history, as well as its importance in attempting to understand "Britain" between 1642 and 1660.

While the wider context of the war lies beyond their remit and they disagree with the "term" British wars (p. 4) the authors clearly appreciate that events in Charles's other kingdoms had an impact on the English conflict. While they also appreciate that the civil war was not just confined to southern England their treatment of Parliament's Northern Army, while justifiably limited by their aims, may account for a generally negative view of Fairfax, who came from this army to lead the New Model.

The structure of the work, chronological with description and analysis combined, is justified. The book covers the four years of conflict in less than three hundred pages, but this is not a scanty treatment for the battle narratives are still precise enough to support the comment on strategy. The text is reinforced by twenty-nine maps/figures and both reflect the authors' genuine feel for the battle terrain. The feeling of depth is reinforced by this study being based on a range of manuscript and printed primary sources, although it would have been helpful to have full references to material from the Thomason Tracts. The authors are critical of recent military accounts that do not appraise the source material they use. Their own engagement with the sources is the book's real strength (for examples, see pp. 59, 61, 93– 94, 137, 178–80, 200–201).

The book offers incisive views of the characters of Waller and Essex and has an excellent overview of "battlecraft." Of Charles's London strategy the authors state "the threefold attack continues to haunt the textbooks" (p. 92). They conclude that there was "not a threefold advance on London"; Charles planned to "assemble all his armies at Oxford before carrying out a direct attack on the capital" (pp. 92–94). More fundamentally the work also illustrates that there is much that can still be done in this field. The book admirably achieves the authors' intention "to initiate a revisionist debate" (p. 281) and it will hopefully spur others to continue to engage seriously with the military aspects of the civil wars. This book is certainly of value for the general and academic reader at a very reasonable price.