George Monck's
Observations upon
Military & Political Affairs:
The foremost English handbook of
Generalship and Statecraft
General George Monck
(1608-1670)
General on Land and Sea
under the Protectorate and the Parliament.
Architect of the Restoration of England's Parliament and Crown.
Captain General of all his Majesty's Forces
under King Charles II.
Who was George Monck? Click HERE to read more about him.
George Monck's Book
Written 1644-46. Published 1671. New edition 2006.
Click to read the original Table of Contents.
Annotated new edition of Monck's handbook for young officers.
New appendices include extracts from Monck's own orders and
reports, showing how he put his principles into practice:
- The Moral Basis of Service and Command
- Duties of Officers in the Various Branches
- Land Battles, Marches, Artillery, and Sieges
- Supply and Logistics: Caring for Troops in the Field
- Why Body Armor for Soldiers Is Vital, Despite Its Cost
- Training, Field Exercises, and Optimal Unit Size
- Mobile Warfare using Cavalry and Dragoons
- Counterinsurgency in a Foreign Land
- Occupation Government and Civil Reconstruction
- Preparing and Financing Defenses in Peacetime
- Preventing Civil War
Appendices include documents from:
- Monck's Conquest and Pacification of Scotland
- Monck's Revolution in Naval Warfare
- Monck's Restoration of Parliament and Crown
Editor of the new edition: Bernard Levine, Eugene, Oregon
How to order the NEW edition
A few excerpts from George Monck's
Observations upon
Military & Political Affairs
- Peace is more grievous to men in subjection, than War is to them that enjoy their liberties.
- Soldiers ought to go into the Field to Conquer, and not to be killed.
- A General is not so much blamed for making trial of an ill-digested project, as he will be for the obstinate continuing in the same. Therefore the speediest leaving of any such enterprise doth excuse the rashness which might be imputed to the beginning.
- Let a Soldier's Resolution be never so great, and his Courage invincible in the day of Battle, yet if he faint under the burden of such tediousness as usually attendeth upon warlike designments, he is no way fit for enterprise: because the two chief parts of a Soldier are Valor and Sufferance; and there is as much Honor gained by suffering Wants patiently in War, as by fighting Valiantly; and as great Achievements effected by the one, as by the other. It is no virtue, but a weakness of the mind, not to be able to endure want a little while: and yet it is an easier matter to find men that will offer themselves willingly to Death, then such as will endure Labor with patience.
- It is much better for a Prince to invade an Enemy in his own Country, than to attend him at home in his own Kingdom...
- You ought not to despise, and think too meanly of your Enemy; for that will not only beget negligence in your own Army, but care and diligence in your Enemy's Army. And it is most sure, the valor of a few may surmount the numbers of many: and if you be broken by your Enemy that you despise, you double your own disgrace by your rash and indiscreet arrogance.
- There is nothing that bringeth so much disorder to an Army upon the March as the Baggage; and therefore it is highly necessary to reduce it to the smallest proportion that may be.
Guarding the baggage train, parliamentary army 1645
- I hold it fit that wise and experienced Commanders when they meet with a new Enemy that is of Reputation, before they come to join Battle, should cause their Soldiers to make trial of them by some light Skirmishes; to the end that, beginning to know them, and to have to deal with them, they may be rid of that Terror which the Report and Reputation of these men have put them in.... But a good Commander must be very careful... how he engageth any of his Troops in small Skirmishes; and that he send no parties out of his Army upon any occasion, without taking care that they be commanded by good Commanders; and that the Officers that command such Parties have Order not to engage themselves with the Enemy, unless they have certain hopes of Victory.
- I would have our young Gallants to take notice, that men wear not Arms because they are afraid of danger, but because they would not fear it.
- The principal and able remedy against Civil War is to entertain a Foreign War. This chaseth away idleness, setteth all on work; and particularly this giveth satisfaction to ambitious and stirring spirits; it banisheth Luxury, maketh your people Warlike, and maintaineth you in such reputation among your Neighbors, that you are the Arbitrator of all their Differences.
- The fourth and last thing... for the preventing of Civil Wars... is, whereas the poorer and meaner people that have no interest in the Common-weal but the use of breath, these are always dangerous to the peace of a Kingdom, and having nothing to lose, willingly embrace all means of Innovation in hope of gaining something by other men's ruin; there are these three means left for a State to ease itself of this sort of people, either to employ them abroad in Plantations, or in a War, or to interest them in the quiet of the Common-weal by learning them such Trades and Occupations as may give them a taste of the sweetness of peace, and the benefit of a Civil life.
- Men have two ways to come by Wisdom, either by their own harms, or other men's miscasualties. And wise men are wont to say (not by chance, nor without reason) that he who will see what shall be, let him consider what hath been. For all things in the world at all times have their very counterpane with the times of old... Knowledge of the manifold accidents which rise from the variety of human actions is best and most speedily learned by reading History.
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Click to read the original Table of Contents
How to order the NEW edition
Who was George Monck?
1. Monck as general
[2. Monck as writer]
George Monck was the English general who restored Britain's parliament in the spring of 1660, bringing to a close nearly two decades of bitter civil war and religious strife. Then, under Monck's leadership, parliament enacted the restoration of the British monarchy, which had been suspended since the execution of King Charles I eleven years earlier. Yet Monck restored both parliament and crown, along with all the traditional forms of English government, without precipitating another civil war, indeed without any further bloodshed at all.
General Monck had conquered Scotland a decade earlier, and had been its military governor under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate since 1651.
[Click here to read the official day-by-day account of Monck's 1651 campaign in Scotland.]
In 1653 he had taken time out to command the English Navy in the First Anglo-Dutch War. Monck was a forceful advocate of the war, partly for personal payback, but mainly for pragmatic politics. He said at the time, "What matters this or that reason? What we want is more of the trade which the Dutch now have."
In order to outmaneuver the more agile Dutch fleet, Monck introduced signal flags and line-of-battle tactics adapted from land warfare, techniques that were to remain standard in all navies well into the 20th century. The new edition of Monck's Observations includes the full text of Monck's original fighting instructions, dated March 29, 1653.
Battle of the Gabbard, June 2, 1653.
The first use of line-ahead tactics,
by the English fleet under Monck's command.
Painting by Heerman Witmont.
Royal Navy cruisers in 1917, still using
Monck's line-ahead tactics of 1653.
Painting by Kenneth Denton Shoesmith.
After his victories at sea, Monck returned to Scotland in the spring of 1654, where he defeated Middleton's rebellion using a systematic counter-guerrilla strategy. There followed a period of peace and prosperity unprecedented in Scotland's history. The new edition includes a detailed account of Monck's second Scottish campaign, gleaned from his own letters, orders, and reports—a campaign offering valuable lessons to any army fighting insurgencies today.
In June 1658 Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell died, his heir abdicated, and Britain stumbled toward anarchy. Three independent English armies, as well as the English navy, the Rump parliament, the royalists, and a multitude of religious factions were all contending for power, but none had either the resources or the forceful leader necessary to claim the center.
On January 1, 1660, Monck took action, leading his occupying army out of Scotland, across the River Tweed at Coldstream, and south down the snow-covered road toward London. His army was small, 5,000 men, but well paid, loyal to him, and perfectly disciplined. His stated goal was simple, "I will reduce the military power in obedience to the civil," yet he proceeded to do so by an irresistible display of military power (backed up by an effective intelligence and propaganda network organized by his brother-in-law, Thomas Clarges {click to see some examples}). Monck swore allegiance to the parliament, which placed him in command of all Britain's armed forces, but once he had seized control of the House of Commons he explained that he really had meant a "full and free" parliament, not the factional "Rump" then sitting.
"I do not think my life too precious to hazard in the defense
of the Supreme Authority, the Parliament of England."
George Monck, to Speaker Lenthal, 13 October 1659
"Monck, who hath now the absolute command and power to do any
thing that he hath a mind to do." Samuel Pepys, Diary, 7 February 1660
"You have told me little of the general till now in the end:
but truly, I think the bringing of his little army entire
out of Scotland up to London, was the greatest stratagem
that is extant in history." Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, 1668
The restored parliament promptly voted to restore the king. Upon the return of Charles II from exile (May 25, 1660), the king created Monck Duke of Albemarle, and renewed the general's parliamentary appointment to command all of Britain's sea and land forces. The standing New Model army was disbanded in 1661 except for Monck's own regiments, which became (and remain) the Coldstream Guards.
"They were certainly the bravest, the best disciplined, and
the soberest army that had been known in these latter ages:
every soldier was able to do the functions of an officer."
Gilbert Burnet, History of My Own Time
Submission of the Army to the Crown, February 14, 1661
1930 Re-Enactment by Monck's own Regiments, the Coldstream Guards
Click the image to see photos and read the program.
General Monck fought the Dutch at sea again in the 1660s. He took charge of governing London during both the great plague of 1666, and the great fire of 1667. In 1665 King Charles had named "Our right Trusty, and right entirely Beloved Cousin and Counsellor, George Duke of Albemarle, Master of our Horse," one of the Lords Proprietor of Carolina. Albemarle Sound, North Carolina, was named in Monck's honor.
George Monck in the Coronation procession - April 22, 1661
Click the medal to read a
detailed illustrated biography
of George Monck, 1608-1670.
2. Monck as writer
[1. Monck as general]
During the First English Civil War Monck had served King Charles I, had been captured by parliamentary forces in 1644, and had then been locked up in the Tower of London until 1646. While imprisoned he wrote a book called Observations on Military and Political Affairs. It was based in part on his long experience (c1629-1636) as an officer in an English regiment in service to the Dutch Republic (culturally, militarily, and technologically the Netherlands was the most advanced country in 17th century Europe), in part on his reading of the classics while he was incarcerated, and in part on lessons he had learned from the unfolding civil war in Britain.
[Click here to read an eyewitness account of Monck's gallantry in the 1636 Dutch siege of Breda.]
When Monck was finally released from the Tower, and placed in command of the English parliamentary army in Ireland, he left his manuscript behind with Lord Lisle. Evidently he did no further work on it.
Soon after Monck died, in 1670, his unedited manuscript was given to a London publisher, who printed it in 1671. I have an original of that first edition, and from it I have prepared a new corrected edition (several of the chapters in the original were out of order, which is evident from the references to the diagrams; also many passages in the chapters on tactics were redundant). The new edition includes all of Monck's original battle diagrams, along with additional military illustrations of the period, and extracts from Monck's own letters and order books demonstrating how he put his principles into practice.
Monck was not university-educated, having become a soldier at age 16, so his writing style is refreshingly blunt and forthright. In the new edition I have modernized both spelling and punctuation (but not conjugation), and provided detailed explanatory footnotes for obsolete phrases and technical terms. Otherwise the language and ideas are Monck's own, and his forceful prose is readily accessible to the modern reader — especially those accustomed to the cadences of the King James Version of the Bible.
Monck's book can be regarded as an English counterpart to the Chinese Art of War or the Japanese Book of Five Rings. It distills the wisdom and experience of the most admired military man of 17th century Britain. The military technology of 1646 has long been obsolete (though it still is of lively interest to re-enactors, war-gamers, and historians), but Monck's tactical, strategic, political, and moral advice is as timely today as it was when he wrote it down, more than 350 years ago. See for yourself in the excerpts above.
Editor of the new edition: Bernard Levine, Eugene, Oregon
Click to read the original Table of Contents
How to order the NEW edition
Any questions? Click HERE to email.
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