Having experienced these difficulties myself, both as student and as teacher, I have thought that I might render some service by trying to act as interpreter, and to describe the chief military events of English history in a way which shall not be technical, but yet shall bring out their meaning. I do not write for experts, though it is they who must judge whether I have described correctly. I write for those who do not know much about battles, and would like to understand events which are interesting in themselves, and are great turning-points in history: they must judge whether I have described intelligibly. If I have met the proverbial fate of those who sit on two stools, it is not for want of pains in trying to keep my balance.

I feel that it is prima facie presumptuous for a civilian to write what is in some sense a military book: but after all it is the customer who feels where the shoe pinches. Moreover many of the battles of English history occurred in past ages, in relation to which the professional training of a modern soldier would teach him little beyond the permanent principles of strategy, which every educated man should understand. Given also an elementary knowledge of tactics, which has spread pretty widely in this country since volunteering began and the war-game became popular, a civilian ought to be able to deal adequately with Hastings and Crecy, with Towton and Marston Moor, if not with the campaigns of Marlborough and Wellington. If I have failed, it is not because the subject is outside the province of a civilian, but because the writer has been unequal to his task.

Si vis pacem, para bellum is a sound maxim for statesmen: for ordinary citizens it may be paraphrased thus—the better you understand war, the more you will desire peace. I have found that soldiers' love for peace, and horror of war, is usually in proportion to their experience: they deem no sacrifice too heavy to secure the greatest of national blessings. I think therefore that it is reasonable for one who belongs to a profession pre-eminently peaceful, to attempt to aid his countrymen in realising what war means. The better they understand this, the less they will be tempted to enter on war lightly, the more they will feel how amply worth while is every effort to put their country beyond the risk of attack.

I wish here to acknowledge a great debt of gratitude to my friend Col. Cooper King, formerly Professor of Tactics at Sandhurst, who has not only taken great trouble in drawing the maps to suit my scheme, but has also obtained for me useful information, besides helping me with some valuable suggestions and much friendly criticism. I would not however do him the ill service of sheltering myself behind his authority as an expert. The faults of my work, whatever they are, are mine and not his, though they might well have been more numerous without his assistance.

I have made no reference to the naval battles of English history, hardly less numerous than the great land battles, and, two or three of them at least, even more important. To deal with them adequately would require knowledge to which I cannot pretend. Moreover they might best be treated on a separate plan, similar perhaps to that which I have followed, but entirely distinct from it.

Oxford,
Jan. 1, 1895.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAP.PAGE
I.Introductory[1]
II.Hastings[9]
III.The Barons' War[28]
IV.Falkirk and Bannockburn[40]
Intermediate Note—The Long-Bow[51]
V.Crecy and Poitiers[54]
VI.Agincourt and Orleans[80]
VII.The Wars of the Roses[101]
Intermediate Note—Gunpowder[115]
VIII.Flodden[118]
IX.The Great Civil War[128]
Intermediate Note—Standing Armies[151]
X.Marlborough[153]
Intermediate Note—Line versus Column[175]
XI.The Eighteenth Century[179]
XII.The Peninsula. Part I.—Defensive[197]
XIII.The Peninsula. Part II.—Offensive[215]
XIV.Waterloo[237]
XV.The Crimea[264]
Intermediate Note—Inferior Races[288]
XVI.India. Part I.—Conquest[295]
XVII.India. Part II.—Supremacy[305]
Appendix:Battles Described[323]
" Mentioned[324]
Sieges[324]
Index[325]