A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

Their advocates must have argued in vain, for two generations,
against the conservatives w^ho trusted in the clothyard shaft alone;
but not a w^ord of the dispute has descended to us.
By the time that the English soldier began to commit his
experiences and his theories to paper, the old school of national
tad:ics was moribund. The men who wrote in the age of Elizabeth
had seen all their service in Flanders and France, and were set on
teaching their fellow-countrymen the Art of War that had been
developed by Spanish and Italian captains since the commencement
of the great struggle between Charles V. and Francis I. The
military books of the period which Mr. Cockle's bibliography
covers
are very largely compilations from the continental authors.
When they are original compositions, they are still mainly inspired
by foreign experience and foreign necessities. England was not
destined for many generations to develop a new national system of
taftics. This was not unnatural : the country was fortunate enough
to escape the sight of battle within her own borders from the day of
Solway Moss to that of Edgehill.
troops often fought on the continent, but it
Between 1542 and 1642 English
was generally in small
numbers, and as the mere auxiliaries of foreign allies. The only
force of really formidable strength that was ever sent abroad was
the army that sailed in 1589 to the ill-managed and unlucky
" Journey of Portugal." Moreover, all the expeditions which were
despatched to the continental wars consisted of men raised
for the
occasion, and disbanded on their return. There was no standing
army in which the professional soldier could find a regular livelihood
and a fixed position. He never got the chance of training
a full army of Englishmen embodied for permanent service: the
only bodies of his countrymen which were held together long
enough to become veterans, were the regiments which were hired
by the Dutch for their struggle with Spain, and afterwards by the
German and Swedish princes during the Thirty Years' War. These
corps were mere auxiliaries, and were naturally trained and exercised
on continental and not on English methods. We were never to
have a professional army of our own till Fairfax and Cromwell
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