Description
Book SynopsisSir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.'' In one of the most famous and moving letters of the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell told his brother-in-law that on 2 July 1644 Parliament had won an emphatic victory over a Royalist army commanded by King Charles I''s nephew, Prince Rupert, on rolling moorland west of York. But that battle, Marston Moor, had also slain his own nephew, the recipient''s firstborn. In this vividly narrated history of the deadly conflict that engulfed the nation during the 1640s, Peter Gaunt shows that, with the exception of World War I, the death-rate was higher than any other contest in which Britain has participated. Numerous towns and villages were garrisoned, attacked, damaged or wrecked. The landscape was profoundly altered. Yet amidst all the blood and killing, the fighting was also a catalyst for profound social change and innovation.
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Table of Contents
CONTENTS List of maps List of colour plates List of other illustrations Acknowledgements Maps Introduction The Faces of War Chapter One ‘One Unexpected Accident after Another, as Waves of the Sea’: The Origins and Causes of the English Civil War Chapter Two ‘And Thus Innocently Began this Cursed War’: The War Begins, a Nation Divides and the Conflicts of 1642 Chapter Three ‘So Many Asses to the Slaughter’: The Nature of the English Civil War Chapter Four ‘War is a Womb Big With Many Miseries’: The Fighting and Campaigns of 1643 Chapter Five ‘Pluck[ing] a Victory out of the Enemies’ Hands’: The Fighting and Campaigns of 1644 Chapter Six ‘Bestrewed with Carcases of Horses and Men’: The Fighting and Campaigns of 1645-46 and the Outcome of the War Conclusion The Impact, Consequences and Legacy of the Civil War Guide to further reading Index
