Civil War - The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660 - Trevor Royle [EPUB & PDF]

On a warm late-summer’s day in 1642 two rival English armies faced each other across the rolling Warwickshire countryside at Edgehill. There, Royalists faithful to King Charles I engaged the supporters of parliament in a battle that left 1500 dead and many more wounded. Ahead lay other even more desperate battles such as Newbury, Marston Moor, Lostwithiel and Naseby that would take the fighting also to the north and west, creating heavy casualties, dividing families, ruining lives and destroying property.
But in both armies there were Scottish and Irish soldiers and, although Edgehill began the conflict, the fighting was also to rage through Scotland and Ireland, notably during Montrose’s campaigns in support of King Charles I and at Cromwell’s siege of Drogheda. In Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638—1660 Trevor Royle puts the fighting into its broad British context in the first full examination of the civil wars.
It is a vivid and dramatic narrative of these turbulent years, from their beginnings in an Edinburgh churchyard in 1638 where the Scots signed the National Covenant, to their conclusion at the end of the Protectorate in 1659. Royle shows how, initially, they tore the countries apart, and brought about the execution of a king who believed in the divine right of monarchs.