An Apprenticeship in Arms The Origins of the British Army 1585-1702 [Hardcover]

This book explores the ways in which the diverse military experiences at home and abroad of the British and Irish people during the seventeenth century introduced modern military theory and practice into the Three Kingdoms of the British Isles and shaped the embryonic British army that emerged during the reign of the soldier-king William III.

I. A Military Apprenticeship 1585-1640
1. The Irish Wars
2. The Low Countries Wars
3. British Manpower and the States' Army
4. Recruiting in the British Isles for Mainland European Armies
5. Military and Naval Expeditions of the 1620s
6. The campus martius: The Domestic School of War
II. The Experience of Civil War 1640-1660
7. Mercenaries and Gentlemen
8. Raising and Organizing Standing Armies
9. Atrocity, Plunder, and Discipline
10. The Civil Wars in Ireland and Scotland
III. The Decay of a Military Tradition 1660-1688
11. Standing Armies in the Three Kingdoms
12. The Decay of the Militia
13. English, Irish, and Scots in Mainland European Armies
IV. The Recovery of a Military Tradition 1688-1702
14. The Descent on England
15. The Williamite Conquest of Scotland and Ireland
16. The Nine Years War
17. Conclusion: Military Professionalism
Select Bibliography
Index

This book can be recommended as a clear, useful summing up of the current state of knowledge of the military history of Britain and Ireland in the long century prior to Act of Settlement of 1702. --Ian Gentles,American Historical Review

A broadly researched and informative study of an important subject. --Sixteenth Century Journal