I'm a bit of a fan of the Helion Century of the Soldier series as it covers one of my core periods of interest, the 17th Century. I have three or four on my bookshelf already including another by Laurence Spring the author of this book. It is only cost which prevents me having many, many more. They are best thought of as an step up from Osprey's offering as they are of a higher page count so can go deeper into their subjects. I'd normally go with Osprey as an introduction on a topic and then the Helion if I then want to delve deeper. As a bonus Helion have opened a second hand section to their webstore where books both second hand or with minor cosmetic damage (as was the case for this purchase) are offered at a discount. With this book I made an offer of £7.50, which included postage, against a list price of £25.00 for a new copy and it is the latest updated second edition.
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| Looks interesting |
I have wanted this particular volume for a while now as my re-enactment unit within the Sealed Knot has a connection to Bavaria in the Thirty Years war due to our links with the Memmingen Pikeniere who invite us to join them in the four yearly 'Wallensteinfest'. If I'm going to take part in a Bavarian Thirty Years War event I felt that it would be nice to have some background information. This book gives me that, in spades.
My copy is softback but quite robust. Excluding the rather useful bibliography the main text runs to 212 pages including 16 pages of colour illustrations. the contents page shows the main areas covered.
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| There is a lot of information crammed in here |
From a tabletop wargamers perspective not all of those chapters are of key importance although for creating a living history background for a re-enactor the information is a gold mine of detail. So for example Chapters 8,9 and 11 and 12 cover things that don't see much coverage when the dice are being rolled but will add a lot of depth to a living history persona. On the plus side the plates have some lovely illustrations of colours carried by the Bavarians. The chapters on "The rank and file and "Organisation" give clues on unit headcounts at various points in the war. The appendix on Regiments of the Bavarian army gives a potted biography of every unit, even the minor unit we recreate (not brilliantly it has to be said) when over there. The bibliography is useful even if it does cite a couple of Osprey titles amongst the primary sources.
Now for the not so good points. For a book subtitled 'The backbone of the Catholic League" it doesn't give a chronology of the League or any information on it's composition. I had to turn to Wikipedia to for that. There isn't an index, to me this is a major omission in what is significant reference work. Then, despite having chapters on Organisation and Tactics it doesn't give me all the detail I had hoped for to allow me to create a table top representation of the units that make up the Bavarian army and to show it's combat deployments, unit formations and battlefield tactics. I was hoping to have a run down on how Tilly organised and fought his forces and how those things changed after his death. After all we know Tilly favoured larger infantry combat formations but very little detail is provided. In fact Tilly is hardly mentioned after the short biography in Chapter 1! I'd tell you exactly how few but there isn't an index to let me easily do that. Some information on how the Army fought is there but it is a pretty broad brush approach over all. We do get some data on unit sizes and pike to shot ratios but very little of the depth and width of infantry formations. Period military textbooks are quoted but these range from late 16th century material, Gerat Barry's description of the Spanish formations from the early 1630's, through to English sources and post Thirty Years War material without any explanation of what might be relevant and why.
I know hard information is difficult to come by but it would be nice to have comments to say this author writing in 1600 gives us an idea of where tactics stood at the outset of the war, this from 1632 despite detailing Spanish doctrines may show what influenced Tilly. Such and such a source although written in 1650 may be showing us the final tactical developments. From a wargaming perspective I have seen this stuff done in much better ways.
Like the other Helion book I have by this author (In the Emperor's Service which covers Wallenstein's armies) it has the feel of an academic paper rather than a book aimed just at wargamers alone. For anyone doing living history it is a treasure trove of background information on Bavarian forces. For the pure wargamer it is a little light on the nitty gritty of formations and tactical usages, but still a good source. I suppose I bring my own bias to the book as what I really want is guidance on how to portray the army on a wargames table and which tactics to use with it. After reading it I'm still unclear on how (for example) Tilly deployed a foot Battalia and how this changed after First Breitenfeld, There is too great a relance on sources that even at the time would have been considered a secondary source and there are sources used that have no direct bearing on the Bavarian army. Those are used to show general trends in tactics but if you are buying a book about a single army in a single period it's likely that the reader knows that stuff already. Overall I'd score this book as a 7/10 and I'm glad I obtained it at a deep discount.
