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  • The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645
  • Gervase Phillips
The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645.By David R. Lawrence. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. ISBN 978-90-04-17079-7. Abbreviations lists. Note on dates. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xix, 439. $221.00.

Lawrence's foray into the dissemination of military theory and practice in the late Tudor and early Stuart period is a fascinating and useful addition to the, currently rather dynamic, historiography of warfare in early modern England. It is an exercise not merely in military history but intellectual history too, with a focus on the relationships between authors and printers; theory and practice, and experienced 'men of warre' and 'paper soldiers.' He places particular emphasis on the lessons learned in the Low Countries by Elizabeth's veterans, men such as Robert Barrett, Roger Williams and Thomas Trussell; they fostered a progressively-minded military culture, as avid readers of both domestic and foreign military theory (the Huguenot general François de La Noue was one favourite) and as authors themselves of books and treatises that aimed to educate 'the complete soldier': drill-master; tactician; infantryman; cavalryman and field engineer. The importance of 'military circles' (groups of veterans and theorists enjoying the patronage of prominent households, such as that of the Veres or Henry, Prince of Wales) is noted too, in sustaining a vital military culture between Elizabeth's wars [End Page 939]and the civil wars of the 1640s and in 'remilitarizing' the English aristocracy. For the common soldier, militia organisations, such as London's Honourable Artillery Company ('the incubator of English military practices'), allowed veteran professionals and amateurs to drill and train together, forging a positive relationship that encouraged some militia captains, most notably William Barriffe, to enter the theoretical fray and publish their own studies of 'moderne' warfare. The most significant manifestation of this lively early Stuart military culture was the codification and regulation of military practice; heavily influenced by the Dutch example and drawing productively on Jacques de Gheyn's Wapenhandelinge, the Instructions for Musters and Armesauthorized by the Privy Council in 1623 was a particularly important step in standardising English drill.

Among the difficulties of studying military theory, drill-books and manuals are analysing the extent to which they actually reflected contemporary practice in the field and, on the other hand, understanding the time-lag between the adoption of a particular practice and its emergence in the literature as a topic worthy of note. Lawrence is generally very aware of these issues; when discussing Maurice of Nassau's reforms in infantry drill in the 1590s he follows Harald Kleinschmidt's suggestion that the Dutch drew upon established English infantry drills and that the countermarch, by which Dutch infantry maximized its firepower, actually echoed early sixteenth-century Landsknechttactics. However, in other areas, it is possible that Lawrence has not always recognised some important precedents. For example, Lawrence suggests that sixteenth-century English soldiers 'were never enamoured with [ trace italienne] fortresses' and it was only having encountered them in Holland in 1585 that they began to pay serious attention to siege-craft (reflected in the publication of Paul Ives's The Practice of Fortificationin 1589). This is clearly wrong. Lawrence seems unaware of the scale and nature of the fighting in France and Scotland, 1542-50 (which he dismisses as 'occasional battles with the Scots') and the significance of the trace italienneto those campaigns. The first such fortification in the British Isles was constructed by the English at Eyemouth in 1547; others followed, including the massive earthwork fort at Haddington that twice resisted French sieges, 1548-49. Two of the veteran authors Lawrence discusses, Humphrey Barwick and Thomas Churchyard, fought in these campaigns. The former must certainly have seen modern artillery fortifications at Boulogne in 1545; the latter was defending one, at Lauder, when the English war effort collapsed in 1550. This tendency to ignore important early sixteenth-century precedents does not distract from Lawrence's overall thesis, but neither is it a wholly insignificant point; Lawrence, like others before him, rather...

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