Reprinted from TAG vol. 1 #4

I think it is what I owe to god and my Contry; my honor I take leave to putt into your Royalle hinesses hands, in which I think itt safe, if you think ther is anny thing else that I aught to doe, you have but to command me, and I shall pay an inteir obedience to itt, being resolved to dye in that Relidgion, that it has pleased god to give you, both the will and the power to protect .

Thus, with considerable ardor and odd orthography, did one famous Englishman choose sides in England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. Like many of his peers, Marlborough had found it necessary to play a double game until the final round of one of the most fascinating military intrigues in European history.

At right (L to R): Foreign Musketeer, Foreign Officer, British Grenadier

The term military intrigue is used advisedly since, although William of Orange's successful invasion of England was a military operation, it was hardly a war, to the infinite regret of latter-day military historians and enthusiasts.

What a show it might have been! And how close it came to being one! If James II of England had possessed one tenth of the skill as a commander which he had demonstrated as a military administrator, the fate of England and Protestant Europe might have been drastically altered.

For when William of Orange's fleet of five hundred transports and support vessels, escorted by sixty warships, set sail from the United Provinces his prospects were far from bright. Sailing under the banner of "the Protestant religion and the liberties of England" was a compact force of seasoned veterans, described by Sir Winston Churchill as " a microcosm of Protestant Europe - Dutch, Swedes, Danes, Prussians, English, and Scottish, together with a forlorn, devoted band of French Huguenots who had no longer any country of their own."

Led by the tight-lipped, hawk-nosed William and his veteran lieutenant Schomberg, a former Marshal of France who had left the service of Louis XIV because of the persecution of his Protestant co- religionists, they were the most formidable disciplined force ever to have landed in England. Although they included three English and three Scottish regiments in the service of Holland, they were for the mod part aliens. They totalled 11,000 foot and 4,000 horse.

Landing

They landed, on November 5, 1688 - the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot - at the sleepy fishing village of Torbay. Macaulay has left us a colorful if not entirely accurate account of the Prince's army after it's landing that hazy winter's morning at Torbay:

"Descriptions of the martial pageant were circulated all over the kingdom. They contained much that was well fitted to gratify the vulgar appetite for the marvellous. For the Dutch army, composed of men who had been born in various climates and had served under various standards, presented an aspect at once grotesque, gorgeous, and terrible to islanders who had, in general, a very indistinct notion of foreign countries. First rode Macclesfield at the head of two hundred gentlemen, mostly of English blood, glittering in helmets and cuirasses and mounted on Flemish war horses. Each was attended by a negro, brought from the sugar plantations on the coast of Guiana. The citizens . . . gazed with wonder on those black faces set off by embroidered turbans and white feathers. Then with drawn broadswords came a squadron of Swedish horsemen in black armor and fur cloaks (actually, these cavalrymen were Courlanders, described later in the article). They were regarded with a strange interest; for it was rumored that they were natives of a land where the ocean was frozen, and where the night lasted through half the year and that they had themselves slain the huge bears whose skins they wore.

"Next, surrounded by a goodly company of gentlemen and pages, was borne aloft the prince's banner. on its broad folds the crowd which covered the roofs and filled the windows read with delight that memorable inscription, "The Protestant religion and the liberties of England." But the acclamations redoubled when, attended by forty running footmen, the prince himself appeared, armed on back and breast, wearing a white plume, and mounted on a white charger ...

"Then came a long column of the whiskered infantry of Switzerland, distinguished in all the continental wars of two centuries by preiminent valor and discipline, but never till that week seen on English ground. And then marched a succession of (regiments) ... designated, as was the fashion of that age, after their leaders, Bentinck, Solmes, and Ginkell, Talmash and Mackay. With peculiar pleasure Englishmen might look on one gallant brigade which still bore the name of the honored and lamented Ossory ...

Nor did the wonder of the population diminish when the artillery arrived, twenty-one huge pieces of brass cannon, which were with difficulty lugged along by sixteen cart horses to each. Much curiosity was excited by a strange structure mounted on wheels. It proved to be a movable smithy, furnished with all tools and materials necessary for repairing arms and carriages. But nothing raised so much admiration as the bridge of boats, which was laid with great speed on the Exe for the conveyance of wagons and afterwards as speedily taken to pieces and carried away. It was made, if report said true, after a pattern contrived by the Christians who were warring against the Great Turk on the Danube ......

Seemingly, an invincible host, and one which was welcomed by the rustic population, not only because it came to deliver them from an oppressive and wrong-headed monarch, but because it was under strict orders to pay cash for billets, food, drink and any feminine companionship that might come its way. This set it in happy contrast to the British forces of King James, who, during recent disturbances in the area, had descended like a swarm of locusts and left mountains of wrecked maidenheads and unpayed bills in their wake.

But it would be a mistake to view the success of William's mission as a forgone conclusion.

As Sir Winston Churchill has observed, "At this crisis in his fortunes King James could marshal as large an army as Oliver Cromwell at his height." Unfortunately, James was his own worst enemy, even his virtues tending to operate against his own best interests.

So, although the opening days of William's invasion found nearly 40,000 regular troops on the move against him, the conflict never reached a violent climax on English soil. Allowing for the distance of James' 4,000 Scots and 3,000 Irish troops, and the need for a 7,000 man garrison to keep London under control, he still had at his disposal nearly double the field force of William.

Balking

Despite the defections of high-ranking officers and courtiers, the rank-and-file showed little sign of balking, and many junior officers could still be counted on. Indedd, even if many of the commissioned officers were unreliable, there were those who had already urged James to promote sergeants to replace them and seize the initiative by seeking a battle at the earliest opportunity. The calibre of commissioned officers in James' army being what it was, such counselorf pointed out, their loss would not be very sorely felt. in fact, it was the sergeants who had held things together and exerted the real leadership ever since the peace.

Implausible as such an argument sounds to us today, it was not then entirely without merit. The peacetime officer corps of 1688 was not that marvellous or indispensible, and as for seeking a battle - it was the one way in which Jsmes, a native-born Englishman, could hope to rally his subjects against an otherwise unmenacing foreign force.

But James hesitated, and James lost. After much fuss and bother, a great deal of bead-telling and several abortive attempts to negotiate, James tried to flee. He was discovered aboard a small vessel by a group of most uncivil Kentish fishermen. He returned, under some duress, to Whitehall. When negotiations again filed, and William's troops advanced on London, James, by now thoroughly distraught, ordered the Coldstream Guards to offer no armed resistance.

William's blue-coated Dutch Guardsmen took over sentry duty at Whitehall, and, the next morning James fled, to spend the rest of his days in futile attempts to regain the crown his fumbling had lost for him, through intrigue and French armed intervention.

For all practical purposes, the military phase of the Revolution was over in England, although its impact in Scotland (which led to the Battle of Killiecrankie and the Glencoe massacre, among other things) and Ireland (where a full-fledged war was yet to be fought out) had only begun to be felt.

But for Englishmen gathered about the family board at Christmas, 1688, it had been a "Glorious Revolution", and a war that had ended before it had begun.

Tabletop Commanders

Happily, the table-top commander of today need not be confined by the dreary bounds of reality. For him, history is an inspiration but not a restraining discipline, and the Glorious Revolution can be a call to arms.

Chance, in the form of cards or dice, can transform the "Protestant Wind" of 1688 into a hostile, Papist gale which will cast William and his followers ashore in a part of England firmly under James' control. A determined table-top commander may take the offensive with Jame's army and sweep the invaders into the sea. Or - who knows? William, who suffered from asthma, may be represented by an asthmatic wargamer, and, at a critical point in the engagement, a little well-aimed dust or a cleverly directed draft may send him reeling to his tent in a burst of coughs and wheezes.

So much for some of the possibilities.

Uniforms

As to the troops, there is a great deal of sketchy evidence of their arms, uniforms and organization, but very little systematic, comprehensive data.

On the side of James II, the regular British army had already begun to adopt red as its standard uniform color. In 1688 however, it was far from universal, and for some years to come, British regiments were to be found in white, grey and other variant uniforms. The "British Grenadier" illustrated is an officer of the 1st Guards, Grenadier Company, 1688. His uniform is a particularly colorful one. The coat is red for the rank and file, although many officers wore coats of crimson or cloth of gold. Officer's belting is blue, trim for the belting, button holes and fringe is gold. Belting for the rank and file is natural tan leather.

The grenadier cap of the First Guard is not typical, having a rounded stiff cloth front of blue with gold cipher and trim. The back band is also blue trimmed gold, with the trailing bag red and gold. Breeches are blue as are the stockings. The officer's scarf is white. Officers and men of the grenadier company carried snaphaunce carbines of over three-foot length, slung over the right shoulder.

Musketeers were also armed with snaphaunce muskets, having discarded the less efficient fused matchlock. Pikemen had 16 foot long pikes with steel points and were armed with swords in shoulder belts worn over the right shoulder. They also wore sashes around their waists, white with blue fringe, Musketeers and pikemen (the latter had originally worn breastplates and helmets) wore round brimmed hats of black, laced with silver.

The 2nd (Coldstream) Regiment of Foot Guards was described in 1685, at the Coronation of James, as being, "Musketeers, Pikemen and Grenadiers ... in all points accoutred as the 1st Regt. of Guards and agreable to them in their clothing except their breeches which were of red broad cloth and their stockings of red worsted. Their hats were black turned up, laced about with gold galoon, in which they wore red ribbonds."

Numerous other regiments are described in detail in Volume I of the late Colonel Lawson's History of the Uniforms of the British Army, along with much useful information on cavalry, artillery and rank distinctions. The above, however, gives an idea of the dress of James' best-outfitted troops. Equipment was also shoddier among the line regiments, some of which still used matchlocks.

Williams Army

For William's army, the variety is greater. Perhaps the best of his troops were the twenty-five companies of Dutch Guards, totalling 2,000 men, who were to distinguish themselves for bravery and steadiness in England, Ireland and on the continent. Their coats were of dark blue with orange yellow cuffs, waistcoats, breeches and stockings. Their belting was natural tan and the broad- brimmed round hat of plain black. It is interesting to note that a contemporary diarist, writing on July 21, 1690, reports that "the Dutch blew Guards are now ordered to be clothed in Red", apparently as a sop to English pride. The change was not permanent though, since by 1691 contemporary accounts have them back in their familiar "blew" coats. Other Dutch infantry units wore grey for the most part.

The imposing horsemen described by Macaulay as "Swedish" were actually a regiment of Dragoons raised for the Dutch service in 1672 by the reigning Prince of Courland, a dismal Baltic principality later gobbled up by Russia. They wore bearskin caps and dark grey coats. They had originally been raised by Frederick Casimir of Courland along with a regiment of horse and one of foot. In 1676 the eight companies of the regiment of dragoons had been reorganized into William's Dragoon Life Guards. An interesting description of the unit's background and standards can be found in Svenska Vapenhistoriska Sallskapets Skrifter New Series IX, Stockholm, 1964.

Danish troops serving under William are reported to have had a smart appearance, "having their arms as bright as silver, every man a coat or cloak such as the Dutch Guards wear and you shall not see a man with a hole in any part of his cloathing." Their uniforms included green lined with red, grey lined with blue, blue lined with red, and blue lined with white.

Dutch artillerymen of the period wore a uniform of grey-blue with yellow metal buttons and red cuffs. Breeches and stockings were the same color as the coat.

Obviously, this only scratches the surface of the uniforms involved. It ought also to be mentioned that regulations governing dress at this point were far from rigid, and so artistic license if offered some scope in reproducing it.