ABSTRACT
During the course of the seventeenth century there were major changes in battlefield practice, which were seen by Michael Roberts, writing in the third quarter of the twentieth century, as having consequences that amounted to a military revolution. This is not the place to review the twists and terms of the historical controversy that followed, except to point out that the military revolution, if that is what it was, is now seen as extending over a longer period of time and having deeper roots and wider ramifications than Roberts originally suggested. 1 In this chapter, the aim is merely to describe the major changes that relate to mobile as opposed to siege warfare between 1590 and 1640 in order to provide a military technology context for the discussion of strategy and tactics in the Great Civil War that follows, and also to explain some of the technical terms that will be employed.
