I've got used to writing reviews of books about late medieval England and having to find new ways of saying how dreadful they are. No more. At least for this one. And it isn't because I've bought myself a new thesaurus. It's because it is very, very, good.
I'd better insert a disclaimer here. I've only read it because I was sent a complimentary copy. This is a full on academic history book, with proper footnotes and bibliography, that has been peer reviewed and all that sort of stuff. So it isn't cheap. The list price is £83.99 - you may find it cheaper by a tenner if you look around - and I would baulk at buying a personal copy at that price. Although perhaps I could have convinced the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society committee to shell out for a copy from our research budget. Any how, none of that was necessary as I'd read quite a few draft chapters pre-publication and commented on them heavily, so this was a thank you gift. David & I have also talked both before and after he started writing it and I have been a sounding board for the various ideas and themes developed in the book. One of those, "Memorialisation" was also the subject of an Open University video lecture in which David interviewed me. You can watch it here:
All of which is to say that I'm possibly not the most neutral of reviewers. However I do have a reputation to keep up, and if it was rubbish I'd find a way of saying so.
Right. Back to the review. Let's start with some background. Military history, generally, doesn't have a good reputation with professional/academic historians. That's probably because it has historically been heavily dominated by the military who teach it in places like Sandhurst so cadets can learn to be better soldiers rather than as objective history. When the books weren't written by professional soldiers they tend to be of the Victorian Imperial History school. And those are often not very good (I'm looking at you, Charles Oman). Which means that most books about the Wars of the Roses written by professionals don't delve in detail into the military side and the battles, but look at why the wars occurred, the effect on society and so on. They are therefore uncritical in respect of the military details in the chronicles, hence the endless repetition of the "Towton is the biggest battle" trope simply because doing the work to prove it is rubbish doesn't support the overall thesis of the book. The popular historian is more interested in telling an exciting story, and whilst many popular histories are well researched and engaging they often lack some of the academic rigour that I like to see, and often the military bits are an excuse for exciting action scenes, regardless of the veracity of the underlying sources.
Into the gap steps David Grummitt, with an academic history of the period with an avowedly military perspective on the period. As I said in my Amazon review, he's put the "War" back into "The Wars of the Roses". The opening gambit, laid out in chapter one, is that the Wars of the Roses happened in a "society structured for war". In one of the most peaceful countries in Europe, whose shores had hardly been scared by a single battle in the preceding century, existed a state perfectly set up to raise armies and go to war. As he puts it "Societies do not need to be ravaged by war, or even to be at war, to be deeply militarized". Whilst the men of military age during the Wars of the Roses, whether of the commons or the nobility, might not have served in France the traditions and infrastructure still existed well into the Wars of the Roses period.
The second chapter is a breezy narrative of the period, focussing on the military aspects. It makes some well known points, around things like how short and sharp the campaigns were, but where it breaks new ground is in the discussion of "civil war" v "rebellion" and how that relates to the implementation of the chivalric code. Those who took part saw the wars not as a civil war but as simple treason and rebellion. That means anyone captured had committed treason, and execution was to be expected. Ransoms of prisoners do occur (we know this because there are records of what happens when it goes wrong) but it was very unlikely that anyone regarded as being part of the opposition leadership group would be offered that option if taken in arms. That's not to say there isn't some simple family v family vindictiveness. Henry VI's "Loveday" didn't help by turning what was thought of by the Yorkists as a dispute of principal over York's "reform" agenda into a set of personal vendettas resolved by people saying sorry..
Subsequent chapters look at thematic issues covering how armies worked in practice. Chapter three covers what we know about logistics and how the ad hoc (and unofficial) nature of the armies meant that they would be restricted in size compared to those that went to France. For the wargamer this chapter contains a lot of useful background if you are planning a wargames campaign! Chapter four addresses the practical aspects of how armies dealt with the management of armies, from training to command and control and "the Art of War". In doing this Grummitt pushes back against more recent ideas that the armies were amateurish blunderers. The armies were assembled with the aim of bringing opponents to battle quickly and avoiding widespread economic damage, and largely succeeded in that aim.
Tactics and "the experience of war" are covered in chapter five, although it is noted that we don't have an awful lot of descriptions of actual fighting during the Wars of the Roses and a lot of what we think is based upon comparisons with other theatres that might not be entirely applicable. Without saying it explicitly the author doesn't have a lot of time for modern writers who have bridged the gap in a way I would describe as "speculative". Andrew Boardman, for example, is footnoted on a number of occasions, and not necessarily in a favourable fashion. Anthony Goodman is treated more gently, but likewise may have issues.
The latter chapters look at the post war experience, and how what happened impacted on those involved and those around them. How battles and the Wars were "memorialised" at the time earns a whole chapter, where the sensible point that battles were seen as events not places (hence Towton being "Palm Sunday Field" initially) is one of the main reasons many of the battlefields are lost or poorly located. The final chapter discusses the "English Way of War" and how it and the Wars of the Roses differed so much from similar conflicts on the continent. There is much of interest and value to be gained from this chapter alone.
So this book is a hard YES recommendation from me, if you have the cash to spend, or if you are near to a university library. Seek it out. You won't be disappointed.
(Final Note: The proof reading is a bit off in places. Nathen Amin appears in the bibliography as "Nathen Amit" and William Herbert is identified as "Walter Herbert" in one entry but correctly elsewhere. Hopefully these errors can be corrected in the paperback edition. If they print one).
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