The Furie of the Ordnance: Artillery in the English Civil Wars

Abstract

Stephen Bull begins with the premise that the artillery of the Civil War period needs re-examination, not from the perspectives of the excellent work done by Ian Roy in the 1960s—i.e., purely logistically—but technically or holistically, and certainly from the perspective of battle rather than sieges. This claim is not without foundation. Many of the books on the Civil Wars have portrayed the artillery in a negative light, if they have portrayed it at all. Why, then (Bull asks quite reasonably), if artillery was cumbersome and of negligible use, did generals persist in employing it in the 1640s (at gun–per–man ratios similar to the Napoleonic Wars), and governments increase expenditure on it? From this premise Bull goes back to basics—the nature of gunpowder developments, manufacture of barrels, gun classification and use, mortars and grenadoes (there is also copious tabulated and illustrative material included at the end of the book). This discussion is followed by an examination of master gunners, their assistants and training. Here lies one of the innovations seemingly missed by many historians; powder charges were likely to be bagged up or made into cartridges for use on the field, rather than, as is sometimes presumed, loose powder: in the case of the New Model Army these were made in central stores, not by the gun teams themselves. The firing of guns is explained with care and with personal insight to convey as far as is possible the effect. As someone who has fired a (reproduction) seventeenth-century piece, this reviewer can vouch for the description. There follows an horrific description of the effects of artillery fire on the human body.