Civil War: the wars of the three kingdoms by Trevor Royle

A very British coup

From the moment the last battle was decided, scholars have fought over the causes, course and consequences of the civil wars. Over the last quarter-century especially, waves of revisionists have entered the fray, armed with new perspectives, the latest insisting on the British dimension of what had been studied as an English conflict. Trevor Royle's Civil War: the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660 is the first popular account of the wars in three kingdoms that follows the interactions of Scotland, England and Ireland from the revolt against the new Scottish prayer book in 1638 to the restoration of monarchy and Church throughout the isles in 1660.

Royle's is a full and ambitious narrative that begins with the discontents that simmered beneath the surface tranquillity in each of Charles I's kingdoms during the decade of his (English) rule without parliament. It was the Scots who first rose in rebellion and so forced the king to re-summon a parliament to suppress them; and the Scots who dictated the early agenda of that assembly, not least by ensuring that Charles could not dissolve it.

Just as an accommodation with his Scottish subjects looked possible, a revolt in Ireland raised the political temperature by forcing the question of who would command the army to crush it. When civil war broke out in England, last of the British realms, it was not least on account of the risings in the others.

Royle comes into his own with the story of the military campaigns. As the hopes of men like Sir Edward Dering (he was not the last) for a "third way" faded, Englishmen divided in bloody internecine conflict for the first time in 150 years.

Early honours went to the Royalists, and Royle shows how a bold resolution to march on London might have secured them a swift victory. But such counsels were overruled; and, as the opening salvos turned into long campaigns, both sides looked to Ireland and Scotland for help to defeat their enemies.

Of the three theatres of war in England, the centre, the West and the North, Royalist forces, in large part thanks to Prince Rupert's cavalry and tactics, dominated in two. Desperate, Parliament made terms to secure a league with the Scottish Covenanters and set about refashioning their forces into a "new modeled" army. These measures turned the tide. At Marston Moor, then Naseby, the Parliamentary armies inflicted decisive defeats on the king's troops in England and then secured victory over Montrose in Scotland. As Charles's hopes faded in all kingdoms, the king abandoned the war to play off his enemies in each realm against each other, while endeavouring to rally new support.

While protracted negotiations dragged on, discontents over the war and taxes lent some support to sporadic Royalist risings in what became the Second Civil War, which rattled the victors and hardened them against the king. Moving from the battlefield, Royle tells the story of the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 and the establishment of the republic, before returning to Cromwell's revenge campaigns against old Royalist supporters in Scotland and Ireland, and then his victories over the Dutch and Spaniards.

His success in wars abroad, however, eluded Cromwell in securing peace at home, as one parliament after another subverted his attempts at constitutional settlement. After the Protector's death, Charles II, who had failed to regain his throne by military means, was restored without a battle fought in any of his kingdoms.

Royle's story is a familiar one. But his brisk, well-written narrative skilfully weaves together the events in all three British kingdoms whose fortunes, at this moment, were so inextricably and tragically interrelated. Not least, the British dimension helps explain the long duration of the conflict, which extended beyond the defeat and execution of the king.

There are few errors of fact, the author's judgments are usually sound and quotation is tellingly used to bring personal experience to the story. Several of the minor players in the drama, from Queen Henrietta Maria to Major-General John Lambert, are captured well in a few deft sentences. Most of all, this is an authoritative account of the battles, with a strong sense of terrain, and a love of the detail of tactics, and of acts of resolution and bravery.

Such a focus should remind historians how often a major shift depended on a far-from-certain military outcome; as, for example, at Newcastle in 1640 or Reading in 1643, when different decisions might have changed the course not only of a battle but of history. Moreover, Royle endeavours to be fair to all the protagonists, to understand why they saw things and acted as they did. Not least, he refreshingly reminds readers that the English Parliamentarians were by no means the only combatants who believed they fought for God's cause.

The weaknesses of the book are perhaps those of historical narrative itself. Of the three questions that are as important as the three kingdoms - what happened, how, and why - Royle is less impressive in tackling the last two than the first. To understand the grievances of the 1630s, one would need a deeper understanding of the nature of the Church in England, the Kirk and monarchy in Scotland, and problems of settlement and identity in Ireland.

Royle uses too loosely terms like "Anglican"; and in depicting all puritans as anti-episcopalian flies in the face of evidence. As for Scotland and Ireland, because the relationship of religious divisions to clan and settler rivalries is not made clear, the resurgent support for Charles in both kingdoms remains confusing.

Because Royle does not have the feel for politics that he has for battles, he does not explicate well the various factions within royal counsels or the struggles between presbyterians and independents in parliament and the army. In consequence, we never quite comprehend events like Pride's Purge or the problems that bedevilled constitutional settlement.

Finally, this portrait of civil war is one in which non-combatants are largely missing. Though he mentions a war of words for hearts and minds, Royle does not arrest the narrative to consider the pamphlets and propaganda wars that produced the "paper bullets" that contemporaries judged as powerful as lead shot.

Beliefs and ideologies are relegated to the background, while repeated use of the phrase "parliamentary democracy" discloses an anachronistic sense of what was at stake in the war of ideas. Many of these issues have been the subject of excellent publications, with only a few of which Royle is acquainted. But, for all these limitations, Civil War retells well the story of a conflict that, though still called English, was a war in and for all the British kingdoms.

Kevin Sharpe is professor of Renaissance studies at Warwick University