The Making Of The British Army Read Online Free Page A

theirs was not a vast army, the Parliamentarians believed that professional quality would make up for lack of numbers, although ironically Charles himself was never able to muster many more troops than they.
Curiously, attempting to raise more troops was in fact the only Royalist response to a war that was not going their way. Charles and his generals did little to change their tactics, nor did they develop any sound military strategy. There were some loyal and able supporters, such as the estimable Sir Ralph Hopton who raised a formidable little army in Cornwall and almost captured the earl of Essex. Hopton’s
Maxims for the Management of an Army
(1643) would have served the New Model admirably, with the terse injunction to ‘pay well, command well, hang well!’ But paying well became increasingly difficult for Charles, and commanding well, to his mind, remained synonymous with birthright, while capital punishment was no deterrent to a man who evaded service in the first place.
By the beginning of 1645, as the New Model was being readied for action, the Royalist forces were spread thinly about the country in a patchwork of sieges and counter-sieges, none of which was vital, and none of which promised a decision. The arrival in the field of the New Model could easily tip the scales irrecoverably in Parliament’s favour, and Charles’s more astute advisers urged him to attack before it was fully formed. But they urged in vain: Charles’s want of military strategy, especially the planning of campaigns, was as great as his want of political instinct. 9 For without operational art war becomes a set of disconnected engagements, relative attrition the only measure of success or failure. Charles conflated sieges with sovereignty: not only were towns and cities the source of the money and arms with which war was made, they were key elements of his realm. The Parliamentarians, on the other hand, were not viscerally connected with borough or shire; they were intent only on defeat of the King. Raising the New Model Army was therefore a strategic stroke of huge significance – a move of war-winning potential, for an army that could not be beaten was, self-evidently, able to dictate the course of events in the field, and it wasonly in the field, now, that the political issue could be settled. Those of Charles’s advisers who advocated attacking the New Model before it reached its full effectiveness had grasped this essential strategic fact. Unfortunately for the Royalist cause, Prince Rupert, by now general of the army, had not. He proposed instead to recover the north of England and join forces with the Royalists in Scotland.

The
vade mecum
issued to every man of the New Model Army.
     
As the crow flies, from Edgehill where the war began in 1642 to Naseby where effectively it ended in June 1645 is but 30 miles. And in three years of fighting little appeared to have changed in the design for battle, although at Naseby it was the Parliamentarians who would form up on a ridge, with the infantry in the centre (five large regiments in the front line and three in reserve) under the New Model’s admirable serjeant-major-general Sir Philip Skippon. Commissary-General Henry Ireton had command of the left wing of five and a half regiments (predominantly horse), and on the right was his future father-in-law, Cromwell, with six and a half regiments. As at Edgehill the artillery, a mere eleven guns, was ‘penny-packeted’ in the intervals between the infantry regiments, and just as at Edgehill they would play little part in the battle, the first salvoes going high and the two sides soon too closely engaged for the guns to be safely used. But if the deployment for battle was the same, the soldiers of the New Model were very decidedly not. Properly regimented, well armed, well drilled, well motivated and well led, they would be a match for the
élan
with which the Royalists could undoubtedly still fight. And unlike the King’s, the cavalry