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First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
List of contents
1. The Actualities of War 2. The Drum's Discordant Sound 3. A sight - the saddest that eyes can see 4. Naming the Parts 5. A Soldier's Life is Terrible Hard 6. The Epitome of War 7.The Miserable Affects of War 8. Tradesman of Killing ... Managers of Violence 9. To Slay or be Slain 10. When the hurly-burly's done 11 More to Spoil Than To Serve 12. I don't want to go to war 13. Then we started all over again 14. Does it matter?
About the author
Charles Carlton is Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His many publications include Royal Mistresses (1990), William Laud: 1573-1645 (1987), Royal Childhoods (1986), and Charles I (1983). For five years he was a part-time soldier in Britain's Territorial Army, serving as an officer in the Welch Regiment, the Special Air Services Regiment, and the Intelligence Corps.
Summary
First Published in 2004. During the 1640s, tens of thousands of young British men set off for the Civil Wars full of that innocent enthusiasm with which so many before and since have welcomed the prospect of battle. Few had much idea of the reality of war. Brought up in a relatively peaceful society, they were totally unprepared for the military discipline, the physical exhaustion, the divided loyalties, the emotional strain, the loneliness, and, above all, the violence of combat. Going to the Wars studies the British Civil Wars as a military experience. It is not a traditional campaign history, a political history of the war, or an analysis of weapons, organization, supply or tactics. Rather it explains how men prepared for combat, how they campaigned, fought battles and endured sieges. Others also endured the horrors of war, and the book pays special attention to those often excluded from a military panorama: women, children and prisoners of war. Combining extensive research in primary sources with the work of the new military historians such as John Keegan and Richard Holmes, Charles Carlton provides a fresh look at the event once described by G.M. Trevelyan as the most important happening in our history.
