"Scots Covenanters: Rules bias?" Topic

Everything I've read about the Scots Covenanting armies stresses one important point; they benefitted from the return of large numbers of seasoned soldiers from the continental wars in terms of their officer corps. English armies were positively amateur by comparison, being a little like the Warmington on Sea home guard, at least in the early stages of the wars. Yet almost all rules for the period rate the Scots significantly inferior as an army to their likely English opponents. How come? In the later wars, there is an issue of political control and direction on the battlefield at Dunbar, but the 1644 army, for example, seems to have been a good force, and its infantry stood at Marston Moor while Parliament's troops fled. So why are Scots armies constantly rated as being worse than the amateurish English, bearig in mind that a competent officer corps is one of the more important factors in producing an effective fighting force? Is there an unconcious bias against the Scots in the rule writers' (most of whom are from south of the border) minds?

Actually, at Marston Moor a fair number of Scots fled as well, as Lumsden's account admits, and the Eastern Association foot under Crawford did particularly well.

The Covenanter armies in Scotland hardly covered themselves in glory against the Scots Royalists, although they often had the advantage of superior numbers. Nor did they fair well at Inverkeithing or Dunbar against the Parliamentarians.

Well at Marston Moor, the Royalist infantry were outnumbered two to one and still routed Fairfaxes infantry and six regiments of Covenanters. Hardly Scottish veterans against English amateurs. I don't think Covenanter infantry are under rated although their cavalry are decidedly inferior. Possibly their is overspill from the Covenanters that fought Montrose who under their committee leadership underperformed. Some rule writers not seeing these as two different creatures.

I certainly think there is a case for upgrading the Covenanters in the Bishops' Wars, or more likely downgrading the English due to their rather woeful performance and unrest in the ranks.

If the Covenanters had joined the fight in 1642 I could well imagine they should have some morale advantage, but the 2 years of warfare leading up to Marston Moor had produced some experienced and committed units in both the Royalist and Parliamentarian armies.

I just find the issue intriguing. On paper the Scots have an army that is supposed to benefit from years of fighting in Europe, in comparison with English armies which are essentially amateur. Yet they seem to perform poorly wherever they are, be it in England, Scotland or Ireland (Benburb). Why?

Well the question is if they actually did enjoy an advantage in experience. Attrition rates were brutal in the TYW even among officers who might have avoided the worst effects of disease and malnourishment but still suffered much wear and tear from years spent on campaign. Swedish archives have letters from Scottish officers requesting to leave the service because of their poor health while others record the effort of kinsmen and senior officers acting as patrons to secure benefits for officers whose health has been wrecked.

Not only was the number officers who survived to return to Scotland smaller than some books suggest but the question is how many of them were fit enough to serve in the army of the Covenant. Not to mention that a number of veterans chose to join the Royalists rather than serve the Covenanters.

And in the short period of peace between the Bishop's Wars and the ECW some of the veterans would again have entered foreign service while others who might have been fit for service in 1639 were no longer able to join the colours in 1643-44.

When you consider the circumstances in which the army of the covenant was raised I don't think that it's performance in England in 1644 can be considered poor. The troops were all green with limited training facing troops who in many cases were considered veterans by ECW standards. If you compare their performance at Marston Moor to that of the armies at Edgehill 1642 I don't think it looks particularly poor but rather fits well with what could be expected of green troops in their first major battle.

It is worth remembering that it tooks years to create an effective army from the ground up. Even with 3 years of extensive warfare behind them the Royalist and Parliamentarian armies of 1645 did not perform at the same level as the better continental armies. The successfull army of Gustavus Adolphus was the end product of decades of warfare, training and reforms.

A fascinating topic, Father Grigori!

Some very good points made already about the level of professionalism. Also, is "professional" always a good thing? In this period I think professionals would often seek to avoid pitched battles due to the risks. Manoeuvre and siege were the order of the day. Perhaps keen, committed, amateurs could sometime scores victories over the cautious, risk adverse professionals?

The Covenant foot regiments were conscripted by the local authorities who had no interest to send anyone to the army except the dregs. Not good raw material.

The Preston campaign was an utter shambles and surely made up for the English army's appalling showing in the Bishop's wars.

Then we have Dunbar. How did the Leslies lose that one? A masterful (and professional it has to be said) campaign that had the English on the verge of an embarrassing retreat or worse, defeat, thrown away. It could be said that David Leslie was not up to commanding the whole army in a pitched battle. A fine cavalry commander, but didn't deploy his whole army well. On the English side in the same campaign there were several very good generals who could have been trusted to do better (Lambert, Monck).

Perhaps the politicking of the committee of estates ensured that they had an army of saints, but not many good generals. Was it a lack of good leaders that has ended up portraying the Covenanter soldiers in a poor light?

By the 1640's professional commanders certainly regarded large scale pitched battles as being "high risk, uncertain reward"

"There is nothing more hazardous than to venture a battle. One can lose it by a thousand unforseen circumstances, even when one has thorougly taken all precautions that the most perfect military skill allows for."
-Fieldmarshal Lennart Torstensson.

But that is not the same thing as being shy of fighting, manoeuvre and siege warfare involved a lot of small scale engagements which often could be controlled in such as way that the risk was less and rewards more certain. For example Torstensson's famous destruction of Gallas' Imperial army in 1644 involved smaller cavalry 'actions' against foragers and convoys, the use of concentrated artillery crossfire against fortified positions and the battle of Jüterbog which involved at least 10000-11000 cavalry in total.

Given sufficient time professional officers and NCO's could transform even raw recruits into effective combat units, amateurs tended to be brittle and less effective in comparison even if they could start an engagement with high morale.

My understanding of Dunbar is that David Leslie had been promoted above his level of competence and experience and that the army he commanded was not as good on a unit by unit level as the NMA. On the other side Cromwell had better quality troops who he was able to deploy to maximum effect while also having the added advantage of being in "mortal ground" as Sun Tzu called it, the English had to fight or die. Desperation can be a powerfull force multiplier though it can backfire if things go wrong.

Fighting an pitched battle was the wrong choice but inflicting a complete defeat on Cromwell must have been huge temptation to the political leadership and quite possibly to some of the military men as well.

Also regarding the 2nd and 3rd civil war Scots, the regiments were nearly all newly raised and usually got little chance to gain some experience before running into the New Model Army. Only a handful of units were kept at the end of the first civil war. That said the Scots on occasion fought very stoutly in some of the smaller engagements and at Worcester.

I suspect that, at Dunbar, the Scots were unfortunate to be fighting a pretty formidable opponent – a battle-hardened army fortified by a common strong religious belief.

Paul Richardson: Stuart Reid has written that he suspects political purging of the officer corps prior to the battle.

Since posting this topic, I've done a bit of digging (mainly online and courtesy of friends; I don't have access to library facilities in Englsh), and the general impression I've come away with is that the benefit of the professional officers in the Scots armies was mainly logistical and organisational. They could advise on training methods and drill, but the things they seem to consider most important is to make sure that the troops are fed, clothed, housed and paid, in that order(?). They are less prominent in training troops, and, as I posed in the original post, not particularly significant in terms of leadership. But Scots armies do appear to have been well organised and well supllied by contemporary standards, and I think this is where the benefit of a professional officer corps lay. It would also explain many of the 'bad habits' exhibited by Scots armies during the war – officers brought continental habits with them.

As wargamers, we perhaps tend to see military professionalism mainly in terms of improving direct combat effectiveness, but organisation and logistics are at least as equally important.

I agree, Father Grigori, we do have a tendency to focus too much on combat effectiveness. The Scot's professionalism had value in ensuring they had a force to march, take territory, and deny the enemy resources. That same professionalism doesn't necessarily translate into leadership that proves battle winning. Leven, Leslie and Baille were all soldiers of significant experience and I would have been happy to have them ensure my soldiers reached the battle field in a good state. Did they have that special spark on the field of battle? Perhaps they needed a Waller, Fairfax, Hopton or Montrose? I think that the political machinations of the Scot's Covenanting government did nothing to encourage this sort of leadership.

Leven/Alexander Leslie certainly had that spark earlier in his career but sheer lenght of his service (29 years in the Swedish army including being wounded in action) as well as his age (62 at Marston Moor) would have taken a toll. Few men were like Tilly who had the "fury of war" burning inside him almost undimished even in his 70's. If you look at Leven's contemporaries in the Swedish army most were burnt out by the hardships of war at a time when Leven was still commanding an army. Indeed many had died including men who were quite a bit younger than Leven.