The English Civil Wars 1642–1651 by Peter Gaunt

Author:Peter Gaunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The English Civil Wars 1642 – 1651
ISBN: 9781472810229
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Territory under parliamentary control from spring 1643 until the end of the war in summer 1646. As well as the parliamentary heartlands, naval dominance and control of the seas ensured that parliament also held throughout the war a string of major ports and coastal towns, such as Plymouth and Lyme Regis, Pembroke, Boston and Hull.

In most divided and contested areas, military action was dominated by local fighting, by the raiding and counter-raiding of local garrisons, by small battles and skirmishes fought by local armies and typically involving a few score or a few hundred rather than a few thousand on each side. As both sides sought to control and tie down territory, they committed a growing proportion of the total number of men in arms to garrison duty and to small local armies. As early as the Edgehill campaign, king and parliament were allocating men to garrison duty and by 1644–45 probably both had nearly half their total manpower serving in garrisons and small, county-based units. Splitting their resources in this way represented something of a compromise, for the principal field armies and national campaigns were never as strong as they might have been, but a local military presence ensured that territory was controlled and its resources made available for a long war. Had it been possible to end the war in a single, huge field engagement, garrisoning the country in this way and maintaining a local war effort would have made no sense. But even by the time of Edgehill both sides were hedging their bets by looking to secure strongholds, and the inconclusive nature of that opening battle tended to confirm them in that policy.

In some areas, service in the local war, especially in a well-supplied and well-protected urban garrison, was quite pleasant and easy, preferable to fighting in a peripatetic field army. One newspaper described Newport Pagnell as a ‘warm nest for a soldier in winter’. However, few strongholds were entirely safe – even Newport Pagnell suffered a surprise, night-time raid in summer 1645 that left a dozen or so dead – and many urban and rural garrisons in deeply divided and more fiercely contested regions suffered repeated raids and counter-raids. Small local forces, often drawn from garrisons, would sally out by day or night, clashing with other small enemy units in the open or swooping down on hopefully surprised and unprepared enemy strongholds. Even quite large and apparently well-fortified bases might fall to a surprise attack, such as Leeds, which fell to parliament in January 1643, and Shrewsbury, captured by parliament in a night attack on 22 February 1645. Alternatively, the stronghold might be subjected to a long and formal siege, in the hope that the enemy would eventually surrender through lack of food, the unpleasant and diseased conditions inside, the collapse of morale or the general hopelessness of their position. In the course of the war many towns, including Plymouth, Exeter, Lyme Regis, Taunton, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Portsmouth, Winchester, Reading, Newark, King’s Lynn, Hull, Chester,

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