The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

There is no doubt that in many of the battles the baggage trains were more considerable than heretofore, and formed an important element in the operations of the campaign. Instances of their presence, in sufficient strength to be mentioned in the contemporary accounts, are shown both in the first battle of Newbury, where they were collected at Hampstead Park; as also at Naseby, where, far in rear of Mill Hill, Rupert attacked Fairfax’s baggage train and its guard. Essex, in his march to Newbury in 1643, complains of the want of food and the difficulty in foraging, owing to the small amount of supplies they could carry; and in passing through Aldbourne two ammunition waggons broke down, and were consequently blown up. Doubtless they were even then only improvised from private sources, and only the ordinary vehicles used in the districts where war was being carried on were employed. Even then, be it remembered, roads were still few and bad, though probably more numerous and somewhat better than when Barnet was fought. But firearms and what not had increased the importance of not being dependent for supplies on what could be locally collected in towns and villages, or what the soldier could himself carry; and thus with the need for their replenishment at recognised bases, and their protection before, during, and after a battle, began the true strategy of modern war. Supply trains, organised supply trains, alone render an army really mobile and capable of carrying out a connected serious plan of campaign.

Again, comparing the time that was to come with that at this time existing, Marmont writes to Berthier in 1812: “I arrived at the headquarters of the north in January last: I did not find a grain of corn in the magazine; nothing anywhere but debts; and a real or fictitious scarcity, the natural result of the absurd system of administration which has been adopted. Provisions for each day’s consumption could only be obtained with arms in our hands. There is a wide difference between that state and the possession of magazines which can enable an army to move;” and later on: “The army of Portugal at this season is incapable of acting, and if it advanced beyond the frontier, it would be forced to return after a few days, having lost all its horses. The Emperor has ordered great works at Salamanca; he appears to forget that we have neither provisions to feed the workmen nor money to pay them, and that we are in every sense on the verge of starvation.”

What was true in Spain in 1812 must have been infinitely more so in 1644. The country was not rich in any way, and the armies were, for a poor country, considerable. But another step forward in the art of war is faintly indicated in the greater mobility, because more regular attention to supply, that characterises the armies of the Civil War as compared with those of York and Lancaster.

Thus the great Civil War terminated in a considerable change both in the tactical and strategical condition of the army. It left behind a true “army of the people,” such as England had never seen before, and probably will never see again. If in previous wars the mass had followed the lead of the few, in the middle of the seventeenth century the Civil War had affected the mass and not the few only. There was a greater feeling of individualism; and, unlike previous armies, either of feudalism or of Saxondom, which was essentially more or less the compulsory service of a militia, it was a force recruited by a voluntary system. But this was of two kinds.

The soldiers of the king were essentially volunteers, serving very largely without pay, or even contributing to the royal military chest; those of his opponent were also voluntarily enlisted, but received pay from the resources of the State, over which Parliament had the chief control.

At first, therefore, the former afforded far the best fighting material. They were largely—and entirely, as far as their leaders were concerned—gentlemen and men accustomed to the use of arms, but there they remained, and showed little aptitude of infusing into their natural martial ardour the stern and necessary tonic of discipline. On the other hand, the early armies of the Parliament were “hirelings whom want and idleness had reduced to enlist.” Even Hampden’s regiment, one of the best of any, was described by Cromwell as a “mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place.” No one saw this more than Cromwell, and it is that instinct which makes him stand out among the leaders of the Civil War. No one more fully recognised than he that “you must get men of spirit: of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still.” The metal might be there, but it wanted tempering, and the opportunity for this the “self-denying ordinance” gave. By means of this the army was purged of all its weaker parts. As Cromwell had organised his own special regiment, so did he infuse into the rest of the force some of the stern enthusiasm that made his Ironsides “very devils”[13] in battle, fearless and fearful factors in the fight. They “prospered because they were much in prayer and reading Scripture, an exercise that till of late soldiers have used but little.” They “were constant, conscientious, sober, strict, and thus conquered much upon the vanity and looseness of the enemy. Men fought on principle as well as for pay; they were little mutinous in disputing commands, fair in their marches, to friends merciful in battle, and in success to their enemies.” Finally their commissioners were “wise, provident, active, faithful in providing ammunition, arms, recruits, of men’s clothes, and that family must needs strive that hath good stewards.” It was inured to war, therefore, by a series of campaigns in which strategical as well as tactical conditions were beginning to be foreshadowed. Its organisation was more complete and thorough than heretofore, its men were imbued with the stern religious enthusiasm which has ever rendered such armies dangerous. It knew its strength and had gauged it by its continued success; what it had had to do had been God-directed (so its leaders and rank and file thought, or professed to think), and bore the imprint of immediate divine direction.

Thus it was, when the great Protector died, that the army he left was probably the most formidable body of armed men the world had ever seen.

Socially and morally, pecuniarily and theologically, it was peculiar. “The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people,[14] and if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and licence, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but free-born Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.”[15]

Such a body was none the less a distinct menace to the State it had armed itself to protect. So strong an engine for defence against the tyranny of monarchy was equally a possible engine of oppression to the rest of the body politic in the hands of an autocratic or incapable ruler.

It had compelled Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament, and by “this act left the people at the mercy of an irresponsible authority, and without representation or means of appeal.”