Military Leadership in the British Civil Wars, 1642-1651: 'The Genius of this Age'

by Carpenter; Stanley D.M.

• ISBN13: 9780714655444
• ISBN10: 0714655449
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This work is a study of military leadership and resulting effectiveness in battlefield victory focusing on the parliamentary and royalist regional commanders in the north of England and Scotland in the three civil wars between 1642 and 1651.

Author Biography

Stanley D. M. Carpenter is Professor of Strategy and Policy and the official Command Historian at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Table of Contents

List of figures	ix
Abbreviations	x
Acknowledgements	xiv
Introduction: 'The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone'	1	(8)
PART I The minstrel boy	9	(48)
1 The art of command: concepts of military leadership	11	(17)
'Great Man': traits as the determinant of leadership effectiveness - the traditional view	12	(2)
The chaos of war and the human element	14	(2)
Characteristics of effective command	16	(12)
2 Politics, religion and war in early seventeenth-century Britain	28	(29)
'So dangerous a season': the contextual background of the Civil Wars	29	(8)
Conflict in Yorkshire and the coming of Civil War	37	(5)
Choosing sides and the motivation to fight	42	(4)
The Push of Pike: warfare in seventeenth-century Britain	46	(7)
Pre-Civil War military experience, training and literature	53	(4)
PART II Chariot of fire	57	(108)
3 'Miserable Bloody Distempers': Civil War in the north	59	(31)
Lord Fairfax and the Yorkshire Treaty	60	(2)
Lord Fairfax, Newcastle and the War in Yorkshire	62	(4)
Raising forces: recruitment, discipline and equipping	66	(6)
War in the north	72	(6)
The Scottish alliance	78	(2)
'The Devouring Sword': parliamentary counterattack	80	(1)
The Army of the Covenant	81	(4)
Parliamentary resurgence in the north	85	(5)
4 'In the Ranks of Death': Royalist defeat and the New Model Army, 1644-1647	90	(29)
Marston Moor and its aftermath: the making and breaking of reputations	91	(12)
The New Model Army	103	(7)
Lambert's independent command in the north and the end of the First Civil War	110	(9)
5 'Inexorable things': Civil War in the north, 1648	119	(25)
'Prodigious treason': the outbreak of the Second Civil War	120	(7)
'The Gentleman is in the Briars': Lambert and Langdale	127	(2)
'Very hard atfisticuffes': the Scottish invasion	129	(5)
'There being so much of God': the battle of Preston	134	(10)
6 'My bow and arrows': the Third Civil War, 1650-1651	144	(21)
'Controversie by the sword': the invasion of Scotland	145	(4)
'Signal mercy': the battle of Dunbar	149	(5)
'A dark sad business': the battle of Hamilton	154	(4)
'A very glorious mercy': the battle of Inverkeithing	158	(2)
The Worcester campaign	160	(5)
Conclusion: military effectiveness: a relative assessment	165	(5)
Models of effective military leadership and the study of war	169	(1)
Appendix: Biographical sketches	170	(19)
Notes	189	(25)
Select bibliography	214	(9)
Index	223