Battles of English History

Charles advanced as far as Brentford, but the troops drawn out for the defence of London were too strong to be attacked, and he withdrew to Oxford, and entered on useless negotiations for peace. When active hostilities were resumed in the spring of 1643, all went favourably for the king. John Hampden, one of the most important leaders in the House of Commons, was killed in a skirmish: a series of successes in the field gave the whole south-west, with the important exception of Plymouth, into royalist hands: a victory at Atherton Moor drove Fairfax into Hull, and made the king master of all the rest of Yorkshire. Had Charles boldly marched on London, it is possible that the citizens in their dismay would have submitted. But Charles was hardly the man to take an audacious resolve; and it would have been audacious, even if no stronger word be applicable, to advance on London with his own immediate forces. His right wing, so to speak, was tied to the west by Plymouth, the garrison of which, if left unbesieged, would soon have revived the partisans of Parliament in the west. His left wing was still more closely fettered by the necessity of observing Hull. Moreover behind the king lay Gloucester, well garrisoned, and interrupting at a vital point, the lowest bridge on the Severn, free communication between the royalists of the south and west. Ordinary military judgment pointed out the capture of Gloucester as the most useful enterprise he could attempt, while waiting for the co-operation of Hopton from the west, of Newcastle from the north. The Parliament realised the supreme importance of Gloucester, and Essex, with an army consisting largely of the London train-bands, marched to relieve the place. Charles was obliged to raise the siege, and on his return to Oxford fought with Essex the bloody and indecisive battle of Newbury. The tide of royalist success had been stemmed, but no more. The outlook for the parliamentary cause seemed so gloomy that Pym, their greatest statesman, negotiated with his dying breath, at the price of important concessions to the Presbyterian spirit, for the assistance of the Scots for the next campaign. Things however were in reality less black than they seemed: in the eastern counties not only had their cause completely triumphed, but an army was being organised which was to turn the scale in the next year. This army was commanded by the earl of Manchester, under whom was Cromwell at the head of the cavalry, which was the specially important arm. In it the ideas which Cromwell had been the first to act on were definitely carried out. To quote the description of it sent to London by an admiring correspondent of a newspaper – "Neither is his army so formidable in number as exact in discipline; and that they might be all of one mind in religion as of resolution in the field, with a severe eye he hath looked into the manners of all those who are his officers, and cashiered those whom he found to be in any way irregular in their lives or disaffected to the cause. This brave army is our violets and primroses, the first-fruits of the spring, which the Parliament sends forth this year, for the growth of our religion, and the re-implanting of this kingdom in the garden of peace and truth."

Early in 1644 a Scottish army crossed the Tweed, and gradually pushed Newcastle back, till in April, when Fairfax was able to unite with them, they were strong enough to shut him up in York. Two or three weeks earlier Waller had won a victory at Cheriton in Hampshire, which finally assured the south-east to the Parliament, and which, though on a small scale, is an interesting prelude to Marston Moor, as exhibiting superiority of discipline passed over to the parliamentary side. Two or three weeks later Manchester's army came up to help in the siege of York. Newcastle was clearly doomed, unless assistance reached him. Months before, prince Rupert had been despatched by Charles with a small body of men to raise an army in the Severn region, and he was now, in accordance with his own earnest wish, ordered to relieve York. Making his way up through Lancashire, he ultimately crossed the Pennine hills from Skipton into the valley of the Wharfe. The governing committee of the Parliament had been anxious that the armies of Manchester and Fairfax should be sent into Lancashire to encounter Rupert, who had spent more than a month in taking various small places. Rupert was acting on the plan largely followed throughout the war; but on this occasion at least it was very mistaken policy. The capture of Newcastle's army in York would have been ill compensated by advantages tenfold greater than Rupert obtained in Lancashire; and York was very nearly lost. The generals were wiser than their government: they refused to raise the siege while a chance remained of capturing the city. If Rupert appeared they would fight him; and then, as they wrote to the committee, "if it please God to give us the victory, all Lancashire and Yorkshire will fall to us." At the same time they were well aware that in that case they would have to raise the siege, and they therefore pressed it vigorously, all the more so after intercepting a letter from Newcastle begging Rupert to make haste, as he could only hold out a few days longer. But for the folly of Crawford,51 third in command under Manchester, who exploded a mine without waiting for the co-operation of the Scots or of Fairfax, so that his own assault being unsupported was repulsed, York would in fact have been taken; but Crawford's failure gave the besieged just respite enough. On June 30 the generals heard that Rupert was at Knaresborough, only twelve miles off; the next morning therefore they raised the siege and marched towards him. Rupert however made a circuit northwards, crossing the Ure at Boroughbridge, and came down the left bank of the Ouse to join Newcastle, protected by the river from any possibility of the parliamentary forces intercepting him or taking him in flank. The fiery prince, who had in his pocket a letter from the king which he averred to be positive orders52 to fight the rebels, and who was Newcastle's superior officer, insisted on marching at once after the enemy. It cannot for a moment be maintained that he was wrong; though he was slightly inferior in numbers, his enemies might very reasonably be assumed to be hampered, as in fact they were, by difficulties arising from divided command, and from divergence of views as to the most important object to be attained.

The parliamentary army had moved westward from York, on the morning of July 1, and marched about half-way to Knaresborough. When the generals found that Rupert had given them the slip, and that a battle was out of the question unless he came out of York to seek them, serious difference of opinion seems to have arisen. The Scots, we are told, the earl of Leven and his lieutenant-general David Leslie, were for the prudent course of retreating. Considerable reinforcements were expected, and the junction with them would be best secured by retiring on Tadcaster. The English generals, or some of them, were for holding their ground; if this be true, it is safe to assume that Cromwell was for fighting, and probably also the Fairfaxes, father and son, as they were always of one mind, and usually for bold counsels. Whatever may have been the opinions, there was no supreme authority, and it was therefore inevitable that the prudent plan should be adopted. On July 2 the infantry started for Tadcaster; the cavalry, or a great part of the cavalry (for all the three lieutenant-generals were with them), remained on the moor to cover the retreat. About two o'clock Rupert's army was seen approaching from York; a message was sent hastily after the infantry, who retraced their steps, and assumed a position in which to await the oncoming royalists. Rupert was in no situation to attack at once; in fact he himself was not on the field till later, having been detained in York in order to appease Newcastle's troops, who were mutinous for lack of pay. During the whole afternoon the two armies "looked one another in the face." Why Leven was unwilling to attack then, and did so at evening, when Newcastle's men had reached the field, is not easy to understand: possibly the conflict of opinion, whether or not to fight if they had the option, was still undecided. At any rate it was not till about seven o'clock that the action was begun, by the advance of their whole line.

The battle of Marston Moor is in some respects one of the simplest ever fought. Very little depended on the ground, either in its natural formation, or in artificial features such as enclosures. The armies came straight into collision along their whole front. The numbers differed but little, the stubborn courage of both sides was unmistakably great, yet on both sides large bodies were utterly broken up by defeat. Yet from another point of view Marston Moor is possessed of very special interest: the battle was won by the perfect discipline of Cromwell's horse, and by the coolness which prevented him from being carried away by the excitement of immediate victory, and losing sight of the general issue.

The parliamentary army was posted on a ridge of ground lying south of the wide expanse of moorland, now all enclosed and cultivated, which stretched nearly to York. At the northern foot of this ridge, which was covered at the time of the battle with rye full grown though not ripe, runs a lane joining two hamlets, Long Marston and Tockwith, about a mile and a half apart. North of this line the moor rose, quite open and bare, though there was a wood a mile or so to the northwards. The moor was divided from the lane by a ditch, which has since disappeared, and therefore cannot be placed with accuracy. A little way from this ditch Rupert drew up his line, so near to it in fact that a battle must ensue, as neither side could possibly withdraw in safety. At the same time the ditch was a sufficient obstacle to make both sides somewhat reluctant to begin. Neither side seems to have thought it worth while to attempt to utilise the enclosures of Long Marston or Tockwith: indeed they could not have been occupied without departing from the established tactics of the day, which drew up the infantry in the centre, placing cavalry on each wing. Obviously the enclosures would have been fatal to the full use of the cavalry.

The threefold division of the parliamentary army was naturally retained in the order of battle. Manchester's troops were on the left of the line, Cromwell's cavalry reinforced by three Scottish regiments under David Leslie being on the flank, and the infantry commanded by Crawford to their right. In the centre were part of the Scottish infantry under Baillie; to their right Lord Fairfax commanded his own infantry, with the rest of the Scots in reserve behind him. The extreme right was occupied by Sir Thomas Fairfax's horse, again with a reserve of Scottish cavalry in rear. The numbers seem to have been about 19,000 foot and 7600 horse, the royalists having some 3000 less infantry but being equally strong in cavalry. The proportion of cavalry to infantry is enormous if measured by modern standards, though it was exceeded in some other battles of the war. This was of course natural, in view of the superior value of cavalry in action, as compared to the ill-armed infantry of that age. The royalist line was formed in a similar fashion. Rupert's infantry was on the right, Newcastle's on the left; the prince commanded in person the horse on the right wing, Goring those on the left. It seems strange to a modern reader, who habitually associates the idea of marked uniform colours with the soldier's appearance, to find that Newcastle's infantry attracted special notice as the Whitecoats, because the marquis had clothed them alike in undyed cloth, and that the parliamentary soldiers all wore white ribbons or paper in their hats in order to recognise one another. An equally marked contrast with the warfare of to-day is to be found in the fact that both sides, having twenty or thirty guns, merely used them during the afternoon for a little futile cannonading, and ignored them entirely in the real battle.

Rupert had, as we have seen, put it out of his power to decline battle, by drawing up his line so close to the enemy. No doubt he had fully intended to attack as soon as Newcastle came up; but the cautious veteran who commanded Newcastle's foot urged that it was too late in the day, and Rupert, according to one account, called for food, saying he would attack them in the morning. But he had no longer the choice: almost at this moment the enemy's whole line advanced, the left slightly leading. Rupert at once charged Cromwell's horse, and in the first collision got the advantage, Cromwell himself being slightly wounded. Leslie however who followed soon turned the scale back again, and before long Rupert's hitherto unbeaten cavalry was totally routed. In front of Crawford the ditch had been filled up, and the royalists had apparently crowded in to their left for the sake of the protection the ditch afforded. This was a serious mistake, for Crawford advancing at first unchecked could turn and take the royalist infantry in flank, thus greatly facilitating Baillie's passage of the ditch. The royalists defended themselves stubbornly, but they were still getting the worst of it. On the right however things had gone very differently. In front of Fairfax the moor was covered with furze-bushes, which compelled him to advance by a lane which led up on to the moor from the country road behind which had been their original position. This gave an obvious advantage to his immediate opponents, who occupied enclosures on each side of the lane, and inflicted on Fairfax a check, which the overthrow of the cavalry on his right converted into rout. Sir Thomas Fairfax there encountered Goring with signal ill success. He himself with his own troop broke through the enemy, but the remainder were driven back on the infantry, scattering them utterly. The Scottish cavalry was apparently swept away by the rush of fugitives, whom Goring with most of his men pursued far off the field, and then turned to plunder the enemy's baggage. The precedent of Edgehill was followed, with even more disastrous results. For the moment however the battle seemed still to be going well for the royalists. Some of Goring's command had been sufficiently alive to common sense to remain on the field; and their attack on the flank of the Scottish infantry, combined with the Whitecoats in front, gradually broke most of it. Baillie with three regiments stood his ground heroically; but Leven himself came at last to the conclusion that the day was lost, and fled from the field, never halting, according to the perhaps slanderous report of narrators who did not love the Scots, till he reached Leeds. Help came just in time to save Baillie from destruction, and ultimately convert defeat into decisive victory. Cromwell had by this time completed the rout of Rupert's wing, and had halted, with his men well in hand, behind the royalist line, to make out how the battle was going and where he could strike in effectually. Sir Thomas Fairfax, tearing off his white badge, had succeeded in making his way round the rear of the royalists, and encountering Cromwell was able to tell him what was happening under the smoke. He saw at once his opportunity. Bidding Leslie charge into the rear of the Whitecoats, he led his own men round, as Fairfax had come, encountered and totally routed Goring's horsemen, returning in confusion from their reckless raid. The Whitecoats perished almost to a man: and then Cromwell and Leslie had no difficulty in completing the victory, by breaking up the rest of the royalist infantry, with which Crawford and Baillie had been engaged.

A battle so stubbornly contested and involving such vicissitudes was necessarily a bloody one. According to one eye-witness over 4000 bodies were buried on the field. The royalist cause was utterly ruined in the north, though prince Rupert rallied a few thousand men. York surrendered in a few days: before the winter nothing was left to the king in the whole of the north and northern midlands except a few isolated posts. Marston Moor is rightly regarded as the turning-point of the civil war. The victory was conspicuously due to Oliver Cromwell personally, and to the troops raised by him and trained on his principles. This naturally gave great additional weight to the Independents, the party partly religious and partly political which he represented – all the more so because of the comparative failure of the Scots, the champions of Presbyterianism, whose valour was in truth somewhat unfairly decried. The most important, for the time being at least, of the ideas of the Independents was the conviction that the war could only be adequately waged by strong measures, by leaders who meant to win thoroughly, and by troops that could and would fight effectively. The victory of Marston Moor was a clinching argument in favour of the New Model army. Marston Moor was however much more than the decisive event in a conflict between two contending parties. It produced consequences more far-reaching than any battle ever fought on British soil, except perhaps Hastings. If ideas rule the world, it is one of the most important in human history. When the royalist gentry went down before Cromwell's Ironsides, absolutism received its death-wound. The great issue, whether the king or the nation should be supreme, was decided in favour of the nation, though generations had yet to elapse before the full results were attained. And since England alone set the example, and stored up the ideas, from which political liberty in other countries has been derived, it is hard to see what hope would have been left for sober freedom anywhere.53 Had Charles I. definitely triumphed in the civil war, and stamped out by force Puritanism in the widest sense of the word, the circle of absolute monarchies would have been complete. The United States of America, the French Republic, the constitutional Parliaments of Germany, Austria, Italy owe their existence to the victory of Marston Moor.

Great however as the ultimate political consequences were, the immediate military results of Marston Moor were limited to the north. While Rupert was approaching York, the king began a campaign in the south, which, thanks to the obstinacy of Essex, was completely successful. Essex and Waller, each in command of a small army, were left to face the king at Oxford: and if they could have cordially co-operated, they ought to have been at least a match for him. The rivalry between them was however too strong, nor was the governing committee in a position to dismiss either. Essex insisted on marching into the south-west, which he hoped to regain, and on leaving Waller to cope with Charles. Waller's forces were however very difficult to keep together: his money was expended, and his men were nearly all enlisted for very short periods. Charles found no difficulty in leaving Oxford adequately guarded, and following Essex. The latter, in a country on the whole unfriendly, was ultimately driven into Cornwall, where his infantry surrendered or dispersed, though he himself with his cavalry escaped by sea. When the king returned eastward, the difficulties of the Parliament reached their height. Essex and Waller agreed as little as ever, and Manchester, whose army had now been drawn down from the eastern counties, was more impracticable than either. The army which encountered Charles on October 17 in a second battle at Newbury, was directed by a council in which sat two civilians: there was no commander over the whole. Naturally the result of the action was indecisive. Fought on intricate ground, it was an infantry battle; and the soldiers of the Parliament proved themselves somewhat superior in the stubborn determination which was in truth conspicuous on both sides. As the final result the king was able, not without heavy loss, to return to his head-quarters at Oxford, without losing the minor posts which served as its outlying defences.

During the winter the Independent party, who were in earnest about crushing the king's power, and many of whom were inclined to believe that the only means of reaching a permanent settlement lay in deposing him, gained the upper hand in the House of Commons. They saw the necessity of organising an army the soldiers of which should be permanently enlisted and brought under thorough discipline, on the model in fact of Cromwell's regiments. They saw also the necessity of removing from the command men like Manchester, and even Essex, who were almost as much afraid of victory which should destroy the king, as of defeat which should leave him absolute. As a means to this end they proposed the Self-denying Ordinance, which disqualified all members of both houses from holding military commands; but the Lords rejected it. The latter however agreed to the scheme for a New Model army, to consist of 21,000 men regularly paid out of the taxes, and therefore dependent on no mere local resources, to be commanded by the younger Fairfax. Having done so they passed a new Self-denying Ordinance, which merely required that members of both houses should resign the posts they held, but contained no proviso against re-appointment. It is plain that the Lords were actuated by motives partly selfish, partly political: they desired if possible to retain control over the armies. But the result of their action was to make possible the retention of Cromwell's invaluable services; he, on the contrary, out of zeal for the cause, had inspired the first proposal, which would have compelled him to retire. The organisation of the New Model was none too rapidly completed; but when it did take the field it proved irresistible.

The need of the Parliament was all the greater because for the campaign of 1645 their Scottish auxiliaries were practically not available. Late in the previous summer Montrose had succeeded in inducing a great part of the Highlands to take up arms for the king, and in a series of short campaigns, continued contrary to the usual practice of that age through the winter, had inflicted so many blows on the king's enemies all over Scotland that Leven's army was much wanted at home. Rupert, who was in the Severn region, urged his uncle to join him with all available troops, and make a push northwards, so as to defeat or drive away Leven's much diminished forces, and restore the royalist cause in the north of England, before the New Model army was ready. But for a brilliant dash made by Cromwell, who at the head of 1500 cavalry swept right round Oxford, defeating one detachment after another, and clearing the neighbourhood of all draught horses, there might have been time to achieve much. The delay thus caused prevented Charles from taking the field for some little time: but the Parliament went far towards neutralising this advantage by instructing Fairfax to go into Somerset and relieve Taunton, the most strongly Puritan town of the west, which was in great straits. Hearing that the king had called to Oxford some of the royalist troops in the west, they recalled Fairfax, too late to prevent the king marching where he pleased. They followed up this waste of time, which was not altogether their fault, by the error of bidding Fairfax besiege Oxford, where the king was not: it ought to have been sufficiently plain that to defeat the king's army in the field was the one paramount object. The king however, instead of either going northwards in earnest, which might have achieved something, or gathering every available man to face Fairfax, which would at any rate have brought matters boldly to a crisis, pushed across to Leicester, which he stormed after a few days' siege. Here he heard that Oxford was badly straitened for provisions, and must surrender unless soon relieved. Nothing can more strongly mark the incompetence of the king and his officers to administer, however they might fight, than his having left his head-quarters on a vague campaign, without having satisfied himself that the city was adequately provisioned to stand the siege which he knew was impending. There was nothing for it but to turn back towards Oxford. At Daventry the king learned that Fairfax had abandoned the siege; and he accordingly halted, not venturing to go northwards again until he knew that Oxford was properly supplied.

On the news of the storm of Leicester, the Parliament bade Fairfax take the field against the king, and at the same time acceded to the unanimous request of Fairfax's officers that Cromwell might be appointed to the vacant post of lieutenant-general. Such was the presumptuous contempt of the royalists for the New Model, that they allowed Fairfax to approach within a dozen miles of Daventry before they heard that he was moving towards them at all. They then withdrew a little further north to Market Harborough, but on Fairfax pressing on they saw that a battle was inevitable, and returned southwards to meet him.