第四章：英国内战

原书简介：牛津通识读本系列的《斯图亚特英国》，”Stuart Britain：a very short introduction”，讲述在1603-1714年间统治英国的斯图亚特王朝时期的英国史。这个时期见证了英国逐渐步入现代化的种种转变，也见证了英国从绝对君主制转向君主立宪、议会共和政治框架的曲折历程。

系列上一篇：Early Stuarts｜早期

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Chp 4 The Civil War

1.The First Civil War

• 战争是在所有人的不情不愿中逐步展开的。最开始的双方都以为一些小战役足以解决问题，但战争什么也没解决，各方只好开始认真招兵买马、扩张军力。

p44 It is probable that at some moments in 1643–5 more than one in ten of all adult males was in arms. No single army exceeded 20,000 men, and the largest single battle – Marston Moor near York in June 1644, which saw the conjunction of several separate armies – involved fewer than 45,000 men. But there were usually 120,000 and up to 140,000 men in arms during the campaigning seasons of 1643, 1644, and 1645. Both sides organized themselves regionally into ‘associations’ of counties, each with an army (at least on paper) whose primary duty was to clear the association of enemies and to protect it from invasion.

2.Parliament’s Advantage

• 内战结果受军事因素的影响极小，保皇党人和议会党人的初始实力大致等同。但是打到后来，保皇一方几乎无法支付军饷，议会一方凭借在经济稳健性方面的优势赢得战争。

p45 The king had several initial advantages – the support of personally wealthy men, a naturally unified command structure emanating from the royal person, and a simpler military objective (to capture London). But Parliament had greater long-term advantages: the wealth and manpower of London, crucial for the provision of credit; the control of the navy and of the trade routes with the result that hard-headed businessmen preferred to deal with them rather than with the king; a greater compactness of territory less vulnerable to invasion than the royalist hinterlands; and the limited but important help afforded by the invasion of 20,000 Scots in 1644 in return for a commitment by the Houses to introduce a form of Church government similar to the Scottish one.

3.Impositions on Pocket and Conscience

• 不论对于哪里的平民，战争的影响几乎是一样的，赋税和各种压力增高，经济发展中断，社会生活混乱和不安全。不过，作为一个中国人看描述英国内战的文字，偶尔还是止不住想，这程度实在是太温良了…

p46-48 Excise duties were imposed on basic commodities such as beer and salt. Several thousand gentry and many thousands of others whose property lay in an area controlled by their opponents had their estates confiscated and their incomes employed wholly by the State, except for a meagre one-fifth allowed to those with wives and children. …… All those whose estates were not actually confiscated were required to lend money to king or Parliament; refusal to lend ‘voluntarily’ led to a stinging fine. In addition to those burdens, both sides resorted to free quarter, the billeting of troops on civilians with little prospect of any recompense for the board and lodging taken. Troops on the move were all too likely to help themselves and to point their muskets at anyone who protested. Looting and pillaging were rare; pilfering and trampling down crops were common.

• 战争造成的负面影响越多，结束战争和修复创伤所需的成本就越高。战时措施制造出的不公义需要重审，为了支援战争而透支的经济潜能，也会在退出战争状态的时候显出真正的价格。

p48 High taxation and high food prices depressed the markets for manufactures and led to economic recession. The plight of the poor and of the not-so-poor was desperate indeed. The costs of settlement, of the disbandment of armies, and of a return to ‘normality’ grew.

• 由于战争也在议会方的内部制造了集中资源和权力的需要，集中后的权力就逐渐开始失控，在经济、政治、宗教各方面都开始积累民怨，民众渴望和平。

p48 Parliament also had to grant extensive powers, even arbitrary powers, to its agents. The war was administered by a series of committees in London that oversaw the activities of committees in each county and regional association. Committees at each level were granted powers quite at variance with the principles of common law: powers to assess people’s wealth and impose their assessments; to search premises and to distrain goods; and to imprison those who obstructed them without trial, without cause shown, and without limitation. Those who acted in such roles were granted an indemnity against any civil or criminal action brought against them, and (after mid-1647) that indemnity was enforced by another parliamentary committee.

4.Radical Beliefs

• 眼看内战无以为继，战争制造出来的紧张只是使解决问题变得更难，许多看不见出路的议会党人灰心的准备好接受国王提出的任何解决方案。而国王查理一世所采取的策略——广泛谈判但始终不做出前后一致的承诺、等待精疲力尽的各方自行陷入分歧而自我削弱——看起来几乎正在奏效。
• 然而，是军队每每阻止了议会方的彻底投降，甚至同时也阻止了战争所催发的一些激进思潮的真正实现——他们的原因和目的非常明确，要军饷，而他们选定了议会作为满足自己需求的对象。

p50 But if the great majority, even on the winning side, became convinced that the Civil War had solved nothing and had only substituted new and harsher impositions on pocket and conscience for the old royal impositions, a minority, equally dismayed by the shabby realities of the IS present, persuaded themselves that a much more radical transformation of political institutions was necessary. God could not have subjected his people to such trials and sufferings without a good purpose. To admit the futility of the struggle, to bring back the king on terms he would have accepted in 1642, would be a betrayal of God and of those who had died and suffered in His cause.

5.The Second Civil War

• 没消停几年，由于议会在战争中所种下的伤害，第二场内战开始了，这一回是各地方起而反对议会的集权态势。此前议会和王室之间的争端此时也尚未解决。
• 注意我们平时说的英国内战（1642-1651），是第一场（1642-1646）和第二场（1648-1651）的总和。

p51-52 The outcome was a second Civil War, a revolt of the provinces against centralization and military rule. Moderate parliamentarians, Clubmen, and whole county communities rose against the renewed oppressions, and their outrage was encouraged and focused by ex-royalists. The second Civil War was fiercest in regions little affected by the first war, insufficiently numbed by past experience – in Kent, in East Anglia, in South Wales, in the West and North Ridings.

p52 It had solved nothing. Still the country cried out for peace and for settlement, still the army had to be paid, still the king prevaricated and made hollow promises. As in 1647, the Houses had to face the futility of all their efforts. By early December there were only two alternatives: to capitulate to the king and to bring him back on his own terms to restore order and peace; or to remove him, and to launch on a bold adventure into unknown and uncharted constitutional seas.

• 和上回一样，战争本身没有达成任何结果，还产生了额外的军饷负担（和经济破坏）。但是国王不松口，迁延日久之下，议会变成只能在全盘接受查理一世的方案和罢黜君主、冒险创造一种谁都没见过的新政体之间抉择。
• 虽然国民和议员中的压倒性多数都宁愿恢复绝对君主制，但军队却支持扭头构建新政体。军队发动清洗（Pride’s Purge），逮捕或者不允许不同意见者参会，然后在一个只有极少数成员在座的剩余议会中（Rump Parliament）通过了审判查理一世的决议。

6.Trial and Execution

p52-53 In January 1649, the king was tried for his life. His dignity and forbearance made it a massive propaganda defeat for his opponents. His public beheading at Whitehall took place before a stunned but sympathetic crowd. This most dishonourable and duplicitous of English kings grasped a martyr’s crown, his reputation rescued by that dignity at the end and by the publication of his self-justification, the Eikon Basilike, a runaway bestseller for decades to come.

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原书信息：Morrill, John. (1984). Stuart Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285400-3