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The Great Siege of Chester, and: The Siege of Colchester 1648 (review)
- The Journal of Military History
- Society for Military History
- Volume 67, Number 4, October 2003
- pp. 1274-1275
- 10.1353/jmh.2003.0284
- Review
- Additional Information
The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1274-1275
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The Great Siege of Chester. By John Barratt. Stroud, U.K., and Charleston, S.C.: Tempus Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7524-2345-2. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 192. $ 24.99. [End Page 1274]
The Siege of Colchester 1648. By Phil Jones. Stroud, U.K., and Charleston, S.C.: Tempus Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7524-2552-8. Maps. Illustrations. References. Chronologies. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 192. $ 24.99.
The academic field of siege warfare has only recently begun to open up to historians of the civil wars in Britain, yet there is an increasing realisation that such confrontations were fundamental in defining the character and outcomes of the different conflicts. As a result, the trickle of studies of individual sieges has recently become a flood and with a willingness to produce and market such studies at Tempus, the tide is unlikely to abate. These books deal with two of the most important sieges of the era in England. One, at Chester, was the longest and most complex of the first civil war and the other, at Colchester, in many ways marked the apogee of British siegecraft in the period and determined the outcome of the second civil war.
What is most welcome in these two books is the balance struck between scholarship and the production of an attractive and well-presented series. Both books are illustrated in a manner that can only be described as lavish, with John Barratt's study of Chester benefiting from extensive black and white and colour illustrations. These are a mixture of contemporary prints, reconstructions and modern photographs, which punctuate and illuminate the texts of both books. Both studies include significant primary research, with Jones relying heavily on contemporary tracts and Barratt able to utilise the materials in the significant local archives in Chester.
Both studies are well written and engaging in style. Inevitably the authors are forced to adopt a narrative structure, but both works are careful to take account of the wider ramifications of the events they describe, a task easier in the case of Colchester, where the siege became the final act of the second civil war and the execution of the royalist leaders a turning point in attitudes during the wars.
These two works both provide well-constructed examples of what can be done with the events of the wars, how warfare was conducted and its impact on the populations of these two unfortunate towns. These studies also provide examples of how good scholarly works can be produced that have the potential to appeal to a wider audience.
De Montfort University
Bedford, United Kingdom
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