Mark Charles Fissel. English Warfare, 1511-1642. London: Routledge, 2001. 352 pp. $85.00
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-21482-7.
Reviewed by Barbara Donagan (Huntington Library)
Published on H-Albion (November, 2001)
Mark Charles Fissel has undertaken a daunting task
in English Warfare, 1511-1642, namely to survey English
practice and theory of war over one hundred and thirty
years that saw major political and religious changes and
many wars, declared and undeclared, and that encompassed the early modern “military revolution.” His book
covers English involvement in wars in Scotland, Ireland,
and continental Europe and addresses their geopolitical
and domestic contexts. In all this he seeks to find some
characteristically English quality.
changing demands.
Problems arise, however, from failure to impose a
sustainable plan on such a broad and recalcitrant range
of material and from analytical weakness. The book lacks
the clarity and compression of Jan Glete’s Warfare at
sea 1500-1650 (1999), a parallel volume in this series on
“Warfare in History,” and it bears marks of haste. It fails
to solve the difficult problem of integrating continental,
British, and English aspects, and it is overloaded with detail. Fissel can write clearly and effectively as well as
learnedly, as his other publications amply demonstrate.
Here, however, words are too often misused, terms unfamiliar to non-specialists (e.g. kern and gallowglass)
are introduced without explanation, digressions abound,
and arguments lack clarity–all objections that could have
been eliminated with more time and greater editorial
rigor on Routledge’s part.
Fissel begins with the “Tudor art of war” as manifested on the continent and in Britain, and then turns to
military organization and institutions in England, looking in particular at the role of the county lieutenants
and the nature of impressment. Then follow chapters on
Elizabethan and Jacobean wars in the north against the
Scots, in Ireland, and in multiple European venues that
included the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Another
chapter describes developments in siege warfare and logistics. Finally he turns to war in the reign of Charles I,
from the fiascos of Cadiz and the Isle of Rhe to the Bishops’ Wars against the Scots and ultimately domestic civil
war. In these studies he deploys material from an impressive range of sources; his footnotes, particularly his
citations of Public Record Office documents, will be invaluable to future scholars. These sources supply wellchosen quotations, as in Essex’s and Mountjoy’s pointed
explanations of the nature of the war in Ireland to uncomprehending home-bound critics. He also incorporates effective narratives of particular episodes; these include the
Northern Rising of 1569-70, Leicester’s campaign in the
Low Countries in 1585-86, the Rhe expedition of 1627,
and the Bishops’ Wars of 1639-40. There is also welcome
attention throughout the book to logistics, and some discussion of bureaucracy and its evolution in the face of
There are some serious problems of focus, analysis,
and definition. They begin with interpretations of the title, “English warfare,” a capacious phrase applied to military operations conducted by the English, to abstract
concepts about the strategy and tactics that they adopted
and adapted, and to a kind of gestalt of national character. The latter has a John Buchan-esque naivete: even in
incompetence and adversity certain sterling English attributes survive. “English military history,” we are told,
“is individuals doing their duty regardless of obstacles”
(p. 293). Even novice English soldiers displayed “pluck”
and a “keen sense of honour,” while a professional soldier
like Sir Roger Williams, despite an unfortunate temporary lapse into catholic service, “embodied ̂Åthe chivalric
honour of his nationality” (pp. 137, 153). Reassuringly,
Englishness, for all its martial virtue, meant an admirable
refusal “then as now, to become … a military culture.”
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Only a “foreign” ruler, William III, would bring England
“up to its full military potential” (p. 289). This patriotic
and moralistic approach has a certain revisionist freshness, but the need to assert English singularity leads to
some imbalances in the text, notably in the prominence
given to Sir John Smythe, the Luddite advocate of the
longbow in the later years of Elizabeth. Smythe was colorful, vocal, and cantankerous, an undoubted English eccentric and chauvinist, and as such attractive grist to a
historian’s mill, but it is not clear that he and his fellow supporters of the bow deserve more than a passing
mention in Fissel’s context. Their theory went nowhere
and had little effective influence; the practice they advocated was in radical decline in England and continental
Europe. In contrast to the attention given to Smythe, the
treatment of European influence on England is uneven.
If Maurice of Nassau is amply represented, Spinola and
Gustavus Adolphus receive only one or two passing mentions, and the powerful Swedish influence on “English
warfare” and English soldiers in the 1620s and 1630s is
ignored.
good commander of any country or period rather than
an achievement attributable to Englishness.
The manner in which “foreign” practice was naturalized in English armed forces often remains puzzling because native legal and institutional foundations are not
clearly explained. Much remains baffling in the treatment of the county lieutenancies, the militia and trained
bands, and impressment, which provided the framework
within which soldiers were raised and deployed. The
problems arise in part because authority was not distinctly allocated, powers were debatable, and practice
variable. Nevertheless it would have been helpful to lay
out and explain key terms and legal provisions (whether
court rulings or parliamentary statutes), to identify the
chief agents and their powers, and then, once these were
established, to set out changes over time. The reader
would then have had a secure framework into which he
could fit the author’s corrective account of the way in
which the system really operated and of the many ways
in which it failed or fluctuated or changed. The absence
of clear starting points for discussion combined with a
discursive method of presentation may well confuse the
“undergraduates and … students of English history” for
whom the book is designed (p. xiv).
This insistence on admirable English particularity
hinders a clear examination of the precise ways in which
England adopted continental practice and theory of war
and adapted them to local needs (although the account of
“Hibernian warfare” is helpful). The internationalism of
English experience is evident from the sections dealing
with professional soldiers employed in European wars
(they were hardly the “bellicose anomalies” mentioned, p.
xii), but the manner of their integration into national and
local forces, although often mentioned, is not seriously
analysed, nor is the important question of their relations
with civilian English society. Moreover the adaptation
of general principles and “standard” practice to local terrains, populations, and politics is surely the mark of a
Despite these caveats English warfare has much to offer the student interested in the practice of early modern
war and in the interaction between England and continental Europe. Fissel recognizes the irony inherent in
the process he has described in his concluding sentence:
“The tragedy was that, whereas English strategy since the
mid-1500s had concentrated upon preventing foreign incursions, in the end England assimilated the military revolution fully by fighting itself and its British cousins.” We
may hope that he will employ his impressive learning in
a return to this theme.
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Citation: Barbara Donagan. Review of Fissel, Mark Charles, English Warfare, 1511-1642. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5686
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