The English Civil War has frequently been depicted as a struggle between Cavaliers and Roundheads in which technology played little part. The first-hand sources now tell us that this romantic picture is deeply flawed - revealing a reality of gunpowder, artillery, and a grinding struggle of siege and starvation. As with naval warfare, developments in gun technology drastically changed land warfare in the years leading up to 1642. The Civil War was itself shaped largely by the availability of munitions. A failure to procure them in 1643 and 1644 - combined with abortive attempts on London - ultimately proved the downfall of the Royalists. Moreover a final move away from fortified local garrisons reshaped both the nature of warfare in England, and the country itself.
Author(s): Stephen Bull
Series: Armour and Weapons, 2
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: Woodbridge
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
SELECTIVE CHRONOLOGY
MAPS
INTRODUCTION
1. Of Guns and Gunners
Firing: ‘the Fury of the Ordnance’
2. ‘England’s Vulcan’: Artillery Supply under the Early Stuarts
3. A Scramble for Arms: The War of Ordnance Logistics
Supplying the long war
4. Artillery Fortifications
5. Artillery and Sieges
Basing: sapper, siege gun and mortar in action
Pontefract Castle: the last Royalist stronghold
Gloucester: Parliament stronghold
Lathom: ‘Northern Court’
Sea power and sieges
6. Battle
Examples of battle: Edgehill
Marston Moor
CONCLUSIONS
APPENDICES
I. Ordnance types 1634–1665
II. Shot finds
III. The Parliamentarian artillery train of 1642
IV. The establishment of the King’s ‘Trayne of Artillery’, June 1643
V. Equipment and personnel dispatched from Oxford, May 1643
VI. Ordnance captures at Bristol
VII. Artillery and officers of the New Model Army
VII. The ideal artillery train
IX. The Masters and Officers of the Ordnance c. 1610–1660
X. Typical firing sequence
GLOSSARY
ILLUSTRATIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
