The Scottish soldier has been at war for over 2000 years. Until now, no reference work has attempted to examine this vast heritage of warfare.A Military History of Scotland offers readers an unparalleled insight into the evolution of the Scottish military tradition. This wide-ranging and extensively illustrated volume traces the military history of Scotland from pre-history to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Edited by three leading military historians, and featuring contributions from thirty scholars, it explores the role of warfare in the emergence of a Scottish kingdom, the forging of a Scottish-British military identity, and the participation of Scots in Britain's imperial and world wars. Eschewing a narrow definition of military history, it investigates the cultural and physical dimensions of Scotland's military past such as Scottish military dress and music, the role of the Scottish soldier in art and literature, Scotland's fortifications and battlefield archaeology, and Scotland's military memorials and museum collections.
This beautifully illustrated military history of the British and Irish Civil Wars offers an integrated account of the conflict that engulfed the kingdoms ruled by Charles I after 1638. On one hand, it studies the interaction between the Stuart kingdoms, comparing and contrasting their wartime experiences; on the other, it outlines the various civil wars which were fought in Scotland, Ireland, and England during the 1640s. Throughout the text, contributors examine how troops were raised, trained, clothed, armed, fed, and paid; the strategies adopted by the protagonists fighting in the various theatres of war; and the tactics used by their generals in combat. What role did siege warfare play in shaping the course of events? What contribution did seapower make to the conduct of combat on land? What impact did ten years of brutal conflict have on the populations of England, Ireland, and Scotland--especially on the women and children? Such are the questions this book aims to answer.
The Scottish soldier has been at war for over 2000 years. Until now, no reference work has attempted to examine this vast heritage of warfare.A Military History of Scotland offers readers an unparalleled insight into the evolution of the Scottish military tradition. This wide-ranging and extensively illustrated volume traces the military history of Scotland from pre-history to the recent conflict in Afghanistan. Edited by three leading military historians, and featuring contributions from thirty scholars, it explores the role of warfare in the emergence of a Scottish kingdom, the forging of a Scottish-British military identity, and the participation of Scots in Britain's imperial and world wars. Eschewing a narrow definition of military history, it investigates the cultural and physical dimensions of Scotland's military past such as Scottish military dress and music, the role of the Scottish soldier in art and literature, Scotland's fortifications and battlefield archaeology, and Scotland's military memorials and museum collections.
The wholesale assimilation of Scots into the British Army is largely associated with the recruitment of Highlanders during and after the Seven Years War. This important new study demonstrates that the assimilation of Lowland and Highland Scots into the British Army was a salient feature of its history in the first half of the 18th century and was already well advanced by the outbreak of the Seven Years War. Scotland and the British Army, 1700-1750 analyses the wider policing functions of the British Army, the role of Scotland's militia and the development of Scotland's military roads and institutions to provide a fuller understanding of the purpose and complexity of Scotland's military organisation and presence in Scotland in the turbulent decades between the Glorious Revolution and the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, which has been too often simplified as an army of occupation for the suppression of Jacobitism. Instead, Victoria Henshaw reveals the complexities and difficulties experienced by Scottish soldiers of all ranks in the British Army as nationality, loyalty and prejudice clouded Scottish desires to use military service to defend the Glorious Revolution and the Union of 1707.
A survey of warfare between England under Henry VIII and Scotland from the death of James IV, identifying its objectives and accounting for its inconclusive nature.
The collection appraises how Scottish soldiers constructed their identities and how these were both distinct from and yet important contributing factors in the development of national Scottish and supranational British idenitites.
Crown, Covenant and Cromwell is a groundbreaking military history of the Great Civil War or rather the last Anglo-Scottish War as it was fought in Scotland and by Scottish armies in England between 1639 and 1651. While the politics of the time are necessarily touched upon, it is above all the story of those armies and the men who marched in them under generals such as Alexander Leslie, the illiterate soldier of fortune who became Earl of Leven, James Graham, Marquis of Montrose and of course Oliver Cromwell, the fenland farmer and Lord Protector of England.Historians sometimes seem to regard battles as rather too exciting to be a respectable field of study, but determining just how that battle was won or lost is often just as important as unraveling the underlying reasons why it came to be fought in the first place or the consequences that followed. Here, Stuart Reid, one of Scotlands leading military historians, brings the campaigns and battles of those far off unhappy times to life in a fast-paced and authoritative narrative as never before.
This volume deals with the entanglement of Scotland in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), discussing the diplomatic and military aspects of the conflict that were interwoven with the fate of the Scottish princess, Elizabeth of Bohemia, the famous Winter Queen.
In the breadth of bitter-sweet Scottish history there is no more poignant, not more important, battle than Flodden. Before Scotland's disastrous defeat at the hands of the English under the Earl of Surrey, a proud country under its dynamic Stewart king, James IV, was emerging as a distinct and flourishing nation within Europe. With defeat the inevitability of Scotland's Reformation and union with England is hard to deny. Flodden was an ignominious and disastrous moment for the Scots, all the more so for being a largely unnecessary encounter, fought with superior numbers and arms, which left the country weak, exposed and leaderless. In this bestselling study of one of the most famous battles in history, Peter Reese recreates the drama and calamity of the battle fought just south of the River Tweed on 9 September 1513. Drawing together the political, military and historical background to the conflict, he examines the two armies and their leaders and explains the crucial tactical moves both before and during the encounter. The result is a thoroughly researched yet always accessible and realistic account of the battle Scotland has tried to forget.
With this work, the author contends that the Highland rebellion was not a despairing last stand by a Celtic civilisation, and that Jacobite loyalties were not solely determined by the Highland line, Gaelic culture, or religion.
