ENGLISH WARFARE, 1511–1642 by Mark Charles Fissel

Author:Mark Charles Fissel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Victualling and logistics, 1550–1640

The English practice of arms reached a high level of efficiency in regard to logistics in the years between 1543 and 1550. The gargantuan invasion of France in 1544, coupled with Scottish operations, was followed by Edwardian successes in the North, including amphibious invasions and the victualling of mobile armies and garrisons on a grand scale. After 1550 the Royal Navy evolved further its permanent infrastructure, such as a commissariat, while land armies dispersed without leaving bureaucratic remnants as institutional legacies.54

Clearly the vitality of English agriculture was an advantage, as too were the prosperous port towns and numerous waterways. The English ability to utilise waterborne transport created unusual problems. In a benign and politic attempt to spread the demand for victuals throughout the realm and, perhaps, allow contractors to take advantage of more competitive prices through access to a national rather than strictly regional market, the Crown gathered food throughout England. Although purveyors overcame the Braudellian challenge of distance, they could not guarantee freshness and wholesomeness of their victuals in an age before refrigeration. Thus commanders in Ireland begged Whitehall to compel contractors to purchase cheeses in Cheshire rather than bring them in from the home counties, for too often food spoiled and made ill their troops.

Centralisation of supply was virtually impossible. England managed to fight on many fronts, especially circa 1594–1603, due to the devolution of logistical tasks on a variety of outports and the laying out of a network of land transport routes. The main recruiting grounds for troops for Ireland were London and Yorkshire, and although the western maritime shires also recruited from their inhabitants extensively, the distances involved in getting men and matériel aboard ships from Barnstaple to Liverpool, meant that a varied and difficult terrain had to be traversed from the interiors of those shires to the seacoast. Many outports accommodated the shipping of troops and freight beyond their commercial capacities.

English military might was thus delivered into Ireland through ports whose abilities to accommodate government forces and stores varied widely: Chester (the main outport), Bristol (the runner-up), Barnstaple, Plymouth, Southampton, Rochester, Milford, Weymouth, Fowey, and Padstow. But marshalling municipal resources to store temporarily foodstuffs, gather vessels, and lodge unruly soldiers, was only part of the story. The ‘Irish Road’, or, more accurately, ‘Roads’, snaked through the English countryside. Wagon trains of ordnance and victuals, as well as columns of disgruntled men, made their way through England’s green hills towards an uncertain fate on the other side of the Irish Sea. London contractors and conductors en route to Chester probably followed the post road, to St Albans, Brickhill, Towcester, Daventry, Coventry, Lichfield, and Nantwich. Getting to Bristol, convoys meandered through Hounslow, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Marlborough, Chippenham, and finally, Marshfield.55 Military corridors radiated out from the ports. In 1598 the Norfolk and Northamptonshire contingents surely travelled different routes from, say, the London and Berkshire companies in getting to Chester. Once they were within the municipality, the mayor billeted and fed them, and arranged transport to Ireland.

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