Turner, Sir James. Pallas Armata.
Military Essayes of the Ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern Art of War. Written
in the Years 1670 and 1671. 1683. Repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968.
Sir
James Turner (from the book)
Before
proceeding to a review of Turner’s work, it might be useful to describe the
activities of the publisher, Greenwood Press. Greenwood Press was a publishing
house concentrating primarily on reprinting significant older works in a
variety of fields. Military studies were strongly represented among Greenwood’s
offerings, and the publisher at one time offered a separate catalog describing
over 120 books on military subjects. Among books listed in that catalog were
many of interest to scholars of the early modern period, including several
titles in the West Point Military Library series (works of Feuquières, Saxe,
Lloyd, and Colin). Other significant titles included Frederick Lewis Taylor’s
outstanding Art of War in Italy,
1494-1529, G. B. Malleson’s Battlefields
of Germany, and S. R. Gardiner’s Thirty
Years’ War. Of course, today many of these seminal works are available on
the web.
Turner’s
book is one of a multitude of military works that appeared in Europe in the
second half of the 17th century. The author was a professional
soldier whose purpose in writing was to instruct “Young Lords and Gentlemen” in
the art of war. His style is informative – even witty – and these properties
distinguish the book from many of its “dryasdust” contemporaries.
The
work is really two books. The first half is a detailed synthesis of the art of
war as it was practiced under the ancient Greeks and Romans; the second an
examination of the art of war in Turner’s own time and just previously. Both
parts are, as the author intended, instructive. No matter how deep your knowledge
of the subject covered, you are likely to find something here that you hadn’t
known before. For example, the author provides what I believe to be a unique
description of how Swedish brigade formations of the Thirty Years’ War
conducted fire fights in battle. On the whole, this is an entertaining work. It
is recommended for those interested in tactics, formations, and military
housekeeping of the period from the French Religious-Civil Wars through the
Thirty Years’ War.
This
post was adapted from a review published originally in Gorget & Sash, and is published with the permission of the
editors of G&S.
