Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

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Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Rohan Wilmott » Wed Oct 30, 2013 11:23 am

Hello, all.

An item that may be of interest to some is that Professor John Child's book "The Nine Years War and the British Army 1688-1697: The Operations in the Low Countries" has been republished in paperback by the Manchester University Press.

I received my copy from The Book Depository today. This interesting book has been out of print for a while, and only available as very expensive second hand 1st editions.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Nine-Ye ... 0719089961

Enjoy!
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Graf Bretlach » Wed Oct 30, 2013 9:12 pm

I have the Williamite wars and James II army by Childs, all his books are worthwhile getting.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by karamustafapasha » Fri Nov 08, 2013 11:46 pm

Does this have anything on British cavalry tactics during this war?
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Glorfindel » Sat Nov 09, 2013 10:12 am

Very many thanks for the heads up. Just bought the book and am now looking forward to a good read.


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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Rohan Wilmott » Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:17 pm

Does this have anything on British cavalry tactics during this war?
Hello, Kara! Greetings, all!

I don't really know exactly as I've just started reading the book myself. From the chapter headings & a quick browse, I'm not sure if it goes down to the tactical level.

It is different in style & content to his previous trilogy on the British army under Chas II, James II & William III as Prof Childs says himself in the intro. These 3 were "new style military history" looking at the institution of the army itself & its interaction with the society. For this book, he dons the mantle of "an old style military historian"

The chapters cetainly cover the 9YW well and there is a deal of strategic detail. Prof Childs' style does however throw many gems of detail into the broader picture. For example, I've just read some truly wonderful detail on the logistical difficulty inherent to warfare in this time, right down to the number of wagons, how much fodder, bread, etc was needed & how that impacted on the very strategy of the war & battles.

So I suspect that even though his focus is likely at the strategic & grand tactical end, there may well be useful snippets concerning the tactical level. I'll keep you posted, but I'm afraid this may be rather slow as this reading has to compete for my spare time with family, study & professional journals.

I can also recommend his other books - while all these probably do not succinctly set out the tactical detail you might wish in a single chapter, they give an excllent view of the period, soldiers, and society, and there are tactical snippets throughout.

I don't know if anyone has written a book on the tactical aspects of cavalry in this period. There may be articles in various military historical journals on the subject - perhaps others can help here, as I'm not a researcher & in regional Australia, have very limited access to such things. Good luck & happy hunting, but I can thoroughly recommend Prof Childs works for an insight into this period.

Cheers, Rohan.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Adam Hayes » Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:25 pm

Rohan Wilmott wrote:...

I don't know if anyone has written a book on the tactical aspects of cavalry in this period. There may be articles in various military historical journals on the subject - perhaps others can help here, as I'm not a researcher & in regional Australia, have very limited access to such things. Good luck & happy hunting, but I can thoroughly recommend Prof Childs works for an insight into this period.

Cheers, Rohan.
I think Nosworthy (Anatomy of Victory) goes back to the 1690s - my memory is pretty ropey though (I am going to have to dig it out and have a look now... )
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by karamustafapasha » Tue Nov 12, 2013 9:16 pm

Rohan:

Thank a lot for taking the time to reply and so comprehensively. I will probably get round to getting this book at some point in the future. I have some of Child's other books and they are good as you say.

My interest is mainly in the WSS. A friend of mine has been looking for a long time for something on British/Dutch tactics during this war - i.e. what they were doing before they changed to the tactics in the WSS. He has managed to get me interested as well and I was hoping that Child's book might provide so answers. It would also incidentally let me get one up on him :)

Rohan/Adam:

I am afraid my friend, who studies this a lot more seriously than me, has yet to come across anything that covers it specifically. Nosworthy is a good example as he just gives a general overview of all tactics used but doesn't speak specifically about the British/Dutch. I believe that the Nosworthy is often not reliable and he is working on a greatly amended 2nd edition. So hopefully that will have something.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Rohan Wilmott » Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:07 pm

Hello, Karamustafapasha.

Like you, my principal interest is WSS, but Barry & others have been successfully widening my interest. :) I certainly would value an updated Nosworthy - the later 17th century has always been the "poor relation" to the popular ECW/30YW and WSS-SYW periods. My gut feeling is that such tactical doctrine & deployment details if they do exist will be in military journal articles rather than books. I'm unaware of any great number of memoirs of the period either.

As far as the tactics goes, my reading over many years suggest that this was a period of transition in cavalry doctrine. This was also a period in which every unit might have different tactical doctrines, dependant on the whims & experience of the proprietor, unit commander and overseeing general officer on the day. (One needs only consider the different firing drills used by infantry units of the period witin a single army). I also believe that unit commanders might use different tactical approaches and drills depending on whether the unit was newly raised or veteran, how well equipped, how well trained, whether at full strength or depleted, jaded, underpaid, etc., etc..

This may well be a good subject for a dedicated thread, as there are a lot of very knowledgable members of this forum, including folk who have access to material not in English.

Cheers, Rohan
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by karamustafapasha » Fri Nov 15, 2013 2:01 am

AFAIK Nosworthy is not intending to extend the coverage of his work, just correct the various errors in the old book. But maybe it will look in more detail at the earlier period. Hopefully it will be a fresh look at the WSS/SYW period it hasn't really been looked at since Chandler in the 50's/60's.

I think that you are generally right about the tactics but there would still be a 'default' tactic. The armies were not standardised yet but neither were they a mob. I think that there was still room for individual ideas to be tried but these would be variants on the theme rather than something new. Similarly I think it was a period of change but the big changes didn't really happen until after the WSS.

An interesting subject as you say :)
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Churchill » Fri Nov 15, 2013 9:15 am

Ray.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by karamustafapasha » Fri Nov 15, 2013 12:32 pm

Ray,


The short answer to your questions is we don't seem to know. Indeed that was the point of my post - my friend and I have been trying to find answers to those questions for some time and I was hoping this book might have some answers. But know seems to know exactly when the change happened nor what the British/Dutch were doing before. I am not sure I would agree with your idea of French tactics but we don't seem to know if the British/Dutch were using whatever the French were doing or something else.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Motorway » Fri Nov 15, 2013 5:54 pm

According to "Vier eeuwen Nederlandse cavalerie", (Four Centuries Dutch Cavalry), by Lt-General J. Bartels, Vol I, p. 16, it was the Frisian Ritmeester (colonel of a cavalry regiment) of the Dutch States Army, Frederik Sirtema van Grovestins (1668-1750), who was the first to order his curassiers to charge the French "saber in hand, in close order" directly without firing their pistols first, and with great success. One such skirmish is discribed taking place 28th June 1702, routing the French.

As the Dutch were the dominant factor in the Allied army, it is my opinion that the other allies, like the English and the German States followed later.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by Churchill » Sat Nov 16, 2013 9:12 am

Ray.
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by barr7430 » Sat Nov 16, 2013 10:15 am

Ray,

I've tried to PM you but for some reason I cannot get the msg to go so I have to send the msg here as the thread is live and you are reading it. I must respectfully but very firmly ask you to stop posting direct quotations from other people's work on this forum. It is likely that it is a legal copyright infringement and would leave me liable to some kind of action from the authors or their estates if they felt inclined. You have created that problem here before as you know and I won't have that again.
Please remove ALL directly quoted passages from your posts immediately. The alternative (as I don't have the time to trawl 7 years of posts to find quotes) is that I remove all threads which you have posted on. This would mean the end of a lot a large number of key threads. I will do this though if it is the only way to protect myself and the rest of the forum.

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

B
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Re: Child's book on British Army in the 9YW republished

Post by karamustafapasha » Sat Nov 16, 2013 11:26 am

Ray: If you don't mind and also in light of Barry's post I will leave discussion of what the French are doing. There is in any case a lot information on them and I think other discussions.

On the Dutch - thanks for that information Motorway. Does Bartels book say what tactics they were using during the 9YW? The best guess in the English speaking world is that they either used the French or German tactics - see page 60 of the Dutch Army CD by Hall, Stanford and Roumegoux. But this seems to be based on likely choices available rather than a specific source. Also if this was the first time is there any information on when the Dutch cavalry on the whole started to use this tactic?

I agree that probably this tactic was introduced into the army by the Dutch. In the English speaking world it is believed that only the British and Danes used this tactic at this time. The various Germans/Imperialists for example used different tactics. Do Dutch sources agree with this?
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