Not ECW and not WSS
Barry Hilton - Several hugely significant
military factors pre date the Glorious Revolution making the period
quite distinct from the English Civil War era. Many nations had begun
to form large standing armies. The military were turning
professional! Of equal significance, flintlock muskets began to
replace matchlocks meaning that no longer did the musketeer need to
maintain the unreliable, clumsy and dangerous slow match. Someone had
also invented the bayonet but in its first form it plugged into the
muzzle of the musket rather than slid over it in a ring or socket.
The plug made a ‘short pike’ but of course was almost impossible
to remove in battle once fitted. This made the decision to ‘fix
bayonets’ literally a potential matter of life or death. National
armies were starting to introduce a modicum of uniformity of dress
although standardization of coat colours took a while longer. Tactics
were also changing. There had been a gradual move away from infantry
using large numbers of pikes offensively. The massive tercios of the
Thirty Years War were long out of favour as was the complex Swedish
brigade system. Larger armies relied more on simpler linear tactics
and basic manoeuvring.
Wargames in the period
1660 (The Restoration) to 1697 (the end of the Nine Years War) offer
engagements from modest size to biblical epics. In Tangier (an
English colony acquired from the Portuguese as a dowry) the
progenitors of the legendary red coated British armies of 1750s –
1850s fought with Moorish tribes and Barbary pirates. These battles
probably ranged from company level skirmishes to a 2-3 battalion
brigade fielded against a more numerous enemy. The same troops lined
up across the River Clyde in Scotland to battle 5,000 semi civilian
Covenanters in 1679. In 1685 the small Royal Army did bloody
slaughter against the more numerous but civilian mob-like West
Countrymen under Monmouth. British regiments and men from Britain
fought in Flanders for and against the French. The Dutch were not
consistent allies of the English and in fact as recently as 1674 both
countries were at war. Charles II looked more to France as an ally
than to the Netherlanders.
In Europe, fighting was on
an altogether grander scale. The ‘cockpit’ of the Spanish
Netherlands now known to the world as Belgium saw fairly regular
clashes between the legions of Le Roi Soliel (Louis XIV of France)
and the industrious and revenue minded Dutch. The Nine Years War (aka
War of the League of Augsburg, aka War of the Grand Alliance) began
in the year of the Glorious Revolution. It is legitimate to consider
the military phases of the Glorious Revolution as occurring before
and after the actual event of the King’s replacement. The
Protestant rebellions and dissent in Scotland and the West country
1679-1685 saw several battles and skirmishes take place at Drumclog,
Rullion Green, Bothwell Brig, Norton St Philip and Sedgemoor to name
some of the better known. These engagements saw the small Royal Army
of Charles II, then James II take the field against semi civilian
insurrections. Many famous characters whose names would star billing
later made cameo appearances; John Churchill (The future Duke of
Marlborough), James Scott (Duke of Monmouth), Patrick Sarsfield
(Irish Jacobite legend) and Tam Dalyell o’ the Binns, ancestor of
the ex Father of the House, MP Tam Dalyell who was a famous Civil War
vintage Royalist General known to posterity as Bluidy
Tam or the Muscovite
D’iel.
The main event is however
the Jacobite War in Scotland and Ireland 1689-1691 defacto the
military component of the Glorious Revolution. Men of vast historical
reputation stride across these years and offer the most alluring
perspective of the Glorious Revolution for wargamers. The fighting in
Scotland was small scale but spectacular. A tiny Highland Army under
John Graham of Claverhouse known as Bonnie
Dundee, routed a largely Scottish regular
force twice its size under the veteran officer General Hugh Mackay at
Killiecrankie in 1689. In his moment of victory Dundee fell mortally
wounded continuing the tragi-heroic saga of the Graham’s loyalty to
the House of Stuart begun by the even more famous James Graham,
Marquis of Montrose during the Civil War. The highlanders fought a
bloody but inconclusive battle with the soon to be legendary Earl of
Angus’s Regiment (The Cameronians) at Dunkeld a month later. This
battle which was a house to house fight resulting in the complete
destruction of the town was particularly vicious. The campaign ended
with a rout of the highlanders at The Haugh of Cromdale in the Spring
of 1690.
In Ireland the war was far
more than the two or three bits of popular culture that are visited
with monotonous regularity. The campaign had phases, major and minor
battles, sieges, ambushes and pretty much everything a wargamer could
wish for. Everyone thinks they know about Derry, The Boyne and
Aughrim but there was also Limerick, Cork, Athlone, Newtown, Dromore
and a host of smaller and very interesting clashes. In Ireland a
wargamer can field Scots from the Scots Army, Scots from the English
Army, English from the Dutch Army, English from the English Army,
Danes, Dutch, Germans, Irish on both sides, French on both sides and
Walloons. The Battle of Aughrim, July 12, 1691 is the major
engagement and climax of the war and was a very close run thing .
Some say the entire day turned on the Jacobite commander St Ruhe (A
French Bourbon General) having his head taken clean off by a
cannonball at the moment he was riding to order a counter attack by
the Jacobite Horse which would have saved the day and gifted victory
to King James. On the other side great heroism was shown by hundreds
and none more so than the vanquished of Killiecrankie; General Hugh
Mackay. He alone discovered a hidden route to victory on the
Williamite right flank which allowed a bold if semi suicidal cavalry
advance in column of twos along a causeway through a morass. All of
these mentioned actions have an evocative flavour if you are British.
I find it easy to trace the roots of some of our residual societal
problems in the sometimes deliberate misinterpretation and dangerous
oversimplification of the events of this turbulent time. Catholics
fought for Willem and Protestants for James. Nothing is black and
white.
The Spanish Succession War
known only in the Anglo Saxon world as the ‘Marlburian Period’
was yet to come. Warfare changed a little but not too much during
that conflict. The main distinction was the almost universal
disappearance of the pike and some modifications to tactics on both
sides. I have always preferred the 1688-1697 period to that of
1701-1715. Although perhaps contra to popular opinion I find the
achievements of Marlborough’s coalition armies often overstated and
wrapped in patriotic superlatives. Blenheim was without doubt a
spectacular victory but it was a joint effort with the often
conveniently forgotten Prince Eugene of Savoy. Personally I find a
closer connection is easy to make with what can legitimately be
described as a Third Civil War – The Glorious Revolution in which
Scot fought Scot, Englishman fought Englishman, Irishman fought
Irishman and Welshman fought Welshman. Add in the rest of Europe in
the shape of all these foreign mercenaries and Dutchmen and it starts
to sound like the Premiership!