An investigation into the means by which the Parliament carried on the War during the years 1642 to 1648 must take into consideration the role of the Office of Ordnance at the Tower of London. A study of the financial and administrative aspects of the Civil Wars would be incomplete without an examination of the ways in which the parties supplied their respective forces with arms, ammunition, clothing and equipment of all kinds. The extent to which they were successful in this sphere has a bearing on other aspects of the conflict. In monetary terms, the resources allocated by Parliament to the procurement of munitions, clothing and equipment for its forces on land appear small in comparison with some other items of military expenditure such as soldiers' pay. Lack of pay had an adverse effect on the strength and effectiveness of an army, and indeed it might have political as well as military repercussions, yet the consequences of a deficiency of munitions could obviously be significant too. The Ordnance Office had since the fifteenth century assumed a central position in the procurement, storage and distribution of munitions to English armies and garrisons, even though it had not acquired a monopoly of those tasks. This fact alone makes it worthwhile to investigate the effect of the outbreak of the Civil Wars upon the personnel and routines of the Office and then the way in which it functioned during the years of conflict that ensued. The Ordnance Office has been the subject of study during the period of its history stretching from the time of its inception to the early eighteenth century, but there has so far been no account of the institution as it was maintained by the Parliament during the Civil War years.

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En dépit d’un très impressionnant curriculum vitae (parlementaire pendant plus de quarante-quatre ans, onze fois ministre et cinq fois président du Conseil), force est de reconnaître qu’Alexandre Ribot (1842-1923) a peu retenu l’attention des historiens et quasiment disparu de la mémoire collective. Ce constat interroge d’autant plus que les sources le concernant sont particulièrement abondantes, avec notamment un très riche ensemble d’archives privées. Si notre investigation n’embrasse qu’une tranche de la longue carrière d’Alexandre Ribot (1858-1895), elle ambitionne en revanche de dépasser le strict cadre biographique pour aborder les structures politiques des débuts de la Troisième République et d’en dégager les dynamiques, inscrites dans différentes temporalités.En se structurant autour de la formation et de l’ascension politique d’Alexandre Ribot, notre recherche vise à analyser sa trajectoire en l’inscrivant dans le contexte de l’ancrage du modèle républicain français, apportant ainsi une contribution à différents chantiers historiographiques en cours concernant le « monde de la Troisième République » (G. et S. Berstein) tels que le fonctionnement du « parlementarisme absolu » (Carré de Malberg), la professionnalisation du personnel politique, ou encore l’influence du libéralisme et des libéraux dans l’installation du régime. / Despite a very impressive curriculum vitae (a parliamentarian for more than forty-four years, eleven times a minister and five times the president of the Council), one cannot but recognize that Alexandre Ribot (1842-1923) has received little attention from historians and has almost disappeared from collective memory. This raises questions, especially given the fact that the sources related to him, including a very rich set of private records, are quite abundant. Though our inquiry only covers a certain phase of Alexandre Ribot’s long career (1858-1895), it however aims at going beyond the strict biographical framework to tackle the political structures of the early Third Republic so as to identify their dynamics, embedded within different timeframes.By focusing on Alexandre Ribot’s building up as a politician and on his rise to power, this research aims at analysing his career-path while integrating it within the context of the establishment of the French Republican model. It thus makes a contribution to different ongoing historiographical initiatives regarding the “world of the Third Republic” (G. and S. Berstein), such as the working of “absolute parliamentarianism” (Carré de Malberg), the professionalization of political staff or the influence of liberalism and of the Liberals in the setting up of the regime.