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REVIEW BY DAVID FLINTHAM
History knows many more armies ruined by want and disorder than by the efforts of their enemies, and I have witnessed how all the enterprises which were embarked on in my day were lacking for that reason alone.’ So wrote Cardinal Richelieu at the height of the Thirty Years’ War. But the significance of logistics is not often borne out by histories of the British Civil Wars. The latest in Helion’s Century of the Soldier series is thus welcome – as is the publisher’s recognition of the subject’s importance by giving it the full hard-back treatment.
Author Glenn Price delivers a thorough analysis of this subject, dividing the book into four broad themes: the transportation by both land and water of arms, munitions, and equipment; how the armies were recruited; and how they were provisioned. Internal procurement is also considered at some length, but less space is devoted to the importing of arms and munitions from abroad. Another apparent omission is the actual production of armaments, particularly by the Royalists, who had to build an armaments industry virtually from scratch (and did it so successfully that their greatest challenge proved to be not the production but the transportation).
Garrisoned fortresses are discussed. In addition to controlling the local area, these had a myriad of functions, including as magazines, recruitment and tax-collection hubs, and waystations. The author also stresses the importance of ‘protected corridors’, where communication between key towns was maintained via smaller garrisons – a key aspect of the fighting, particularly during the First Civil War.
The book is based largely on the author’s PhD submission, and there are glimpses of this throughout, such as in the separate conclusions at the end of each of the book’s main chapters, in addition to the main conclusion. The author employs archival and manuscript materials from national and local archives across the British Isles, from both civilian and military sources, and in so doing reveals the regional and geographical disparity in the logistical chains – a consequence of reliance on pre-existing civilian structures and methods. The book is a good example, too, of the challenges of finding contemporary British views of the wars: out of the book’s 21 illustrations, only one is of a British view, the rest being from the Netherlands.
The text is accompanied by four maps, including a useful depiction of the garrisons in and around the Severn Valley, which contributes to the author’s reassessment of the Royalists’ Gloucester campaign during the summer of 1643. Unfortunately, the other three are less helpful, and despite the book being about the British Civil Wars, they only feature England and Wales.
One of the author’s conclusions is that Prince Rupert’s decision to fight at Marston Moor in July 1644 was largely due to logistics. York was under siege for several weeks prior to the battle, and as a result the surrounding countryside had been stripped of supplies by garrison and besiegers alike. Simply, there were insufficient resources to support Rupert’s army if he remained in the area. This is an appealing conclusion, although this reviewer wonders how much impact the besiegers’ ability to supply the siege through Hull had on their need to live off the land.
Unsurprisingly, it is the Civil War’s battles and sieges that capture popular imagination – but no army would have existed for very long unless it was equipped, supplied, and fed. Arguably, therefore, logistics were the single most important aspect of the conflict, and it is an understanding of this that separates the casual observer from the more serious student of the period.
This book challenges the traditional neglect of this topic, and reveals how it relates to strategic and tactical outcomes of the wars. While there are still some gaps in the subject, it is an important and long-overdue study, which should prove compelling to anyone who wants to understand the operational realities of the British Civil Wars.
Soldiers and civilians, Transport and Provisions: Early Modern Military Logistics and Supply System during the British Civil Wars, 1638-1653
Glenn W Price
Helion & Company, hbk, 260pp (£35)
ISBN 978-1804513521
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