An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army 1585-1702

488 Pages·2006·1.84 MB·English

by  Roger B. Manning

AN APPRENTICESHIP IN ARMS
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An Apprenticeship
in Arms
The Origins of the British Army
1585–1702
ROGER B. MANNING
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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Preface
The seventeenth-century origins of the British army as a standing military force
are complex and varied, and draw upon the military experiences of numerous
officers and enlisted men from the British Isles who served in the armies of
theThree Kingdoms as well as in the armies of mainland Europe. The officers
usually began their careers in the French, Dutch or various Scandinavian armies
as gentlemen volunteers, while those who served in the ranks were frequently
impressed and sent into exile by their governments and military enterprisers
who filled the manpower needs of continental armies. English and Scots soldiers
comprised nearly half of the field armies of the Dutch Republic in the age of
Maurice of Nassau, contributed significantly to the successful Dutch struggle
for independence from Spain and continued to serve in the Dutch army until
the beginning of the Age of Revolution. Scots soldiers, who were seemingly
ubiquitous, made their way into the armies of the Scandinavian kingdoms,
Russia, Poland and France, constituted one-sixth of the fighting forces of Gustavus
Adolphus of Sweden and campaigned extensively in Germany during the Thirty
Years War. The Irish were particularly drawn to the Spanish Army of Flanders
following the end of the Irish wars of the late sixteenth century when the earls of
Tyrone and Tyrconnell fled with many of their followers. By the middle of the
seventeenth century these ‘wild geese’ were also to be found in the French army;
following the Williamite conquest of Ireland, when almost the entire Irish army
of James II passed into the service of Louis XIV, Irish soldiers were becoming as
numerous in the French royal army as the Swiss.
The inability or unwillingness of the early Stuart monarchs to maintain
permanent military forces in the Three Kingdoms drove swordsmen to seek
employment abroad in the European religious and dynastic wars. Clearly, religious
fervour explains the motivation for many of these men seeking military service
abroad, but others sought economic opportunity, adventure or the chance to
validate their honour on the field of battle. Others—especially in Ireland and
Scotland—followed leaders to whom they owed fealty or loyalty. The aristocratic
society and culture of England had been remilitarized to a significant degree by
1640, while those of Scotland and Ireland had never been demilitarized in
thefirst place. The continuing vitality of a martial culture and contact with the
European military world introduced the cult of duelling into England and the
Lowlands of Scotland, while cattle-raiding, poaching forays and other forms
offeuding and symbolic warfare continued in the borderlands and Celtic areas
of the British Isles. As government attempts to curb such violence intensified,
those who had committed notorious acts of revenge and violence often found it
viii Preface
convenient to flee justice or prosecution by ‘fire and sword’.¹This apprenticeship
in arms exposed these officers and men to the technological innovations of the
military revolution and contributed to a fund of professional expertise which the
leaders of the various armies that fought in the British and Irish civil wars drew
upon when the veterans of the Thirty Years and Eighty Years Wars returned to
seek employment in their native lands after 1638.
The experiences of the English, Irish, Scots and Welsh veterans of the mainland
European wars were varied and in their years of exile they had formed allegiances
which contributed to religious, political, military and social conflict at home. The
Wars of the Three Kingdoms led to the extensive mobilization of the manpower
resources of the British Isles; after more than a decade of conflict many soldiers found
it difficult to return to civilian life. During the Commonwealth and Protectorate,
the New Model Army continued to be needed to garrison therecently conquered
Celtic kingdoms, and found employment in military adventures on the continent
and in Jamaica. The existence of a large standing army, together with the recep-
tion of Tacitean and Machiavellian modes of thought, helped to revive the old
debate about whether a select militia led by members of the best county families
would not be preferable to a standing army consisting of professional officers or
mercenaries who were devoted to keeping wars going and themselves in employ-
ment. With the Restoration of the monarchy, the political and military settlement
provided only for a small standing army consisting of ‘guards and garrisons’ sup-
plemented by a select militia, but no provision for raising and training field
armies. This, along with similar small-scale military establishments in Scotland
and Ireland, was barely equal to discharging constabulary duties. Since these
minimal standing military forces could provide employment for only a few of the
demobilized officers and soldiers of the Cromwellian and Royalist armies, an exo-
dus of soldiers of fortune resumed. They made their way into the armies of the
Dutch Republic, France, Spain, Venice, Portugal, and Imperial Austria. The
Scandinavian kingdoms provided fewer opportunities in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, but Muscovite Russia had need of experienced officers—
especially Scots.
The officer corps of mainland European armies in the seventeenth century
remained aristocratic, but service in the Dutch and Swedish armies exposed
volunteers from the British Isles to military systems in which merit and seniority
weighed as much as social status in awarding commissions and promotions. As
military theory and practice became more technical and military organization
grew more complex, the conflict between social and military hierarchies intensified.
Amateur gallants frequently sought military action for a few campaigning seasons
in order to validate their honour and to seek personal glory. Such motives could
not always be reconciled with the more rational political and military objectives of
¹ Many of these themes are discussed in the companion volume to this present book, R. B. Manning,
Swordsmen:The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (2003).
Preface ix
the state, and, moreover, these aristocratic amateurs were often not amenable to
military discipline and accepting orders from persons of a lesser social rank. In the
wars of the earlier seventeenth century, military commanders were sometimes
oblivious to the need to conserve resources of military manpower and to avoid sec-
ondary conflicts with civilian populations resulting from plunder or unrestrained
foraging. Later in the century, styles of command evolved in which the ability to
motivate men in battle and to direct and manage violence in a focused and rational
manner and to limit the destructiveness of war came to be valued in military
commanders. All of these needs promoted professionalization among the officers
who served in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. However, the restored Charles II
recognized that his most loyal supporters during the civil wars had been found
among the peers and gentry, and when he conferred commissions in the armies of
the Restoration period, political necessity frequently obliged him to prefer loyal
aristocrats who were military amateurs over more experienced and competent
officers of lesser social stature. Thus the Restoration political and military settlement
caused the decay of a military tradition that had been built up over the previous
eighty-five years since the official English intervention in the Dutch war of
independence, as professional soldiers were obliged to seek their fortunes in
foreign armies.
Some of these officers and men spent their formative years in the British
Brigades in France and Portugal or fighting Moors in Charles II’s new colony of
Tangier. Perhaps the most talented group of expatriate officers—mostly English
and Scots, but including some Irish—was to be found in the Anglo-Dutch and
Scots Brigades of the Dutch army after William III became stadholder of the
United Provinces and captain-general of the States’ Army in 1672. Once again the
Orange court and officer corps of the States’ Army became a ‘nursery of soldiers’ as
it had been in the time of Maurice of Nassau. Many of these same English and
Scots officers and soldiers constituted the core of William III’s invasion force of
1688 when he landed at Torbay, after mounting one of the largest and most
successful amphibious operations ever assembled before the twentieth century.
Augmented with regiments of James VII and II’s army, which because of a dispir-
ited and divided officer corps had failed to oppose William’s ‘descent on England’,
William’s force of English, Scots, Irish Protestants, French Huguenots and
German and Danish mercenaries then subdued Scotland and conquered Ireland
during the Williamite wars. When that task was completed, William II and III
could devote his energies and British resources of men and treasure to halting
Louis XIV’s advance upon the Low Countries during King William’s War or the
Nine Years War. Although the British army was not formally created until after
theAct of Union of 1707, the military successes in the Nine Years War and the
War of Spanish Succession of the English army, augmented by Irish, Scots and
Huguenot regiments, in halting Louis XIV’s advance, gave birth to the modern
British army and restored a military tradition which had been in abeyance for a
generation.