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The Civil War, 1642-1645
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The Civil War, 1642-1645
In the great Civil War the bulk of the nobility and the gentry and their tenants were on the side of the King, whilst the majority of the townsmen and yeomen fought for Parliament. Yet it would be a mistake to regard the war as one of class against class. Eighty peers fought for the King, thirty fought against him, and 175 members of the House of Commons belonged to the Royalist party. Geographically, a line drawn from the Humber to Southampton roughly divides the two parties: east of that line is, on the whole, Parliamentary; west of that line, with the important exceptions of Bristol, Gloucester, and Plymouth, is, on the whole, Royalist. The real line of division is, however, political-as to whether King or Parliament shall be supreme-and perhaps, above all, religious, the Anglican against the Puritan.
Summing up the advantages possessed by either side, it should be noted that the Parliamentary party had possession of the city of London, and that its cause was probably supported by two-thirds of the population and three quarters of the wealth of the country. Fewer troops also were employed by Parliament in the garrisoning of small detached forts and fortified country houses. Moreover, the navy was on the side of Parliament, and could be employed not only to ward off foreign aid, but also to carry troops and to protect the coast towns. The Parliamentary forces undoubtedly contained the better infantry, but at that time the bayonet had not been invented. Consequently half the infantry were pikemen, and useless beyond the reach of their fifteen-feet pike, and half were musketeers, and therefore useless for hand-to-hand fighting. Moreover, the musketeer's task in those days was a harassing and laborious one, and he took a long time to fire his musket (A musketeer had to extract powder from a flask and pour it into the muzzle of his musket, to put a bullet which he had previously deposited in his mouth into the muzzle, to i.«iii the bullet home, to fit the musket into a rest (it was too heavy and too long to be without one), and finally to ignite the powder with a match (a twisted strand of tow), which had probably in the preceding operations been scorching the back of his hands). Therefore the infantry were greatly handicapped, and we find in the Civil War that the battles were won by the cavalry.
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Chronology
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