MARSTON MOOR
1644
As yet neither party had decidedly gained the upper hand, though the
tide seemed setting against the Parliament. Both parties, therefore,
looked outside England for allies, one to make its success complete, the
other to regain what it had lost. The King turned to Ireland, and to the
army there, which with little support from the Parliament was striving
to put down the rebellion. On September 15, 1643, Ormond, the
Lord-Lieutenant, concluded a cessation of arms with the rebels, and was
able to send several regiments of experienced soldiers to the King’s
assistance during the following months. The English Puritans turned to
their brethren in Scotland; in September, the Solemn League and Covenant
pledged the two nations to unite for the reformation of religion
according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed
churches; in November, the Scottish Parliament agreed to send twenty-one
thousand men to the assistance of the English Parliamentarians. In
January, 1644, Alexander Leslie, now Earl of Leven, crossed the Tweed
with the promised army.
The campaign of 1644 opened badly for the King. In January, Sir Thomas
Fairfax defeated Lord Byron and the King’s Irish forces at Nantwich. In
March, Waller defeated Hopton at Cheriton in Hampshire, and frustrated
his intended advance into Sussex. In April, Newcastle, after striving in
vain to bar Leslie’s progress in Durham, was forced to throw himself
into York, where Leslie and the Fairfaxes besieged his army. In May, the
forces of Waller and Essex advanced upon Oxford. The Royalists evacuated
Reading and Abingdon, and Charles, fearing to be blockaded in Oxford,
left the city to be defended by its garrison, and with about six
thousand men made his escape to Worcester. But Essex, instead of
pursuing and crushing the King’s weak army as he ought to have done,
delegated the task to Waller, and set out himself to recover the
south-western counties and relieve Lyme.
In April, while Waller and Essex were preparing for their movement on
Oxford, the army of the Eastern Association under Manchester took the
field. Its first business was to reconquer Lincolnshire,—the debatable
land between the north and east,—for Rupert’s defeat of the besiegers of
Newark in March, 1644, had thrown Lincolnshire once more into the hands
of the Royalists. On May 6th, Manchester’s army recaptured Lincoln, and
at the beginning of June he joined the two armies which beleaguered York
with about nine thousand men. Of these nine thousand, three thousand
were cavalry under the command of Cromwell. York held out stubbornly;
some detached forts were taken and the suburbs burnt, but an attempted
assault was bloodily repulsed. At the end of June, news came that Prince
Rupert with fifteen thousand men had crossed the hills from Lancashire,
and was marching to the relief of the city. The three generals, Leven,
Fairfax, and Manchester, raised the siege in order to give battle to
Rupert’s army, but when they assembled their forces on the south bank of
the Ouse, Rupert crossed to the northern bank, and reached York without
striking a blow. On the morning of July 2nd, the parliamentary generals,
finding themselves outmanœuvred, and the resumption of the siege
rendered impossible, were in full retreat to the south, when Rupert’s
attacks on their rearguard forced them to halt and offer battle. They
drew up their army on some rising ground between Tockwith and Marston,
overlooking the open moor on which the Royalists had taken their post.
Between the armies, and marking the southern boundary of the moor, ran a
hedge, and ditch, which Rupert had lined with musketeers, and some
similar obstacles strengthened the royalist left flank. Rupert’s army,
reinforced by Newcastle’s forces from York, numbered about eighteen
thousand men, while the Parliamentarians amounted to about twenty-seven
thousand, but the Royalists had the advantage of a strong defensive
position, and of open ground on which their cavalry could manœuvre
freely.
For three hours the two armies faced each other in battle array; a few
cannon-shots were exchanged, but neither army advanced. The Roundheads
fell to singing psalms, and the royalist generals came to the belief
that there would be no fighting that day. About five, the whole
parliamentary line began to move forward, and Cromwell, with the cavalry
forming its left wing, attacked Lord Byron and the royalist right.
Cromwell had under his command all the horse and dragoons of the Eastern
Association, half a regiment of Scottish dragoons, and three weak
regiments of Scottish cavalry who formed his reserve,—in all not less
than four thousand men, of whom one thousand were dragoons. The dragoons
rapidly drove the royalist musketeers from the ditch, and enabled the
cavalry to pass it. Cromwell led the way, and with the first troops who
crossed charged the nearest regiment of Royalists. His own division,
says a contemporary narrative, “had a hard pull of it; for they were
charged by Rupert’s bravest men both in front and flank.” But as fast as
they could form, the other troops of Cromwell’s first line charged in
support of their leader, erelong the foremost regiments of the Royalists
were broken, and, pursuing their victory, Cromwell’s men engaged the
second line.
In this hand-to-hand combat Cromwell was wounded in the neck by a
pistol-shot fired so near his eyes that it half blinded him, but, though
for a short time disabled, he did not leave the field. Meanwhile Rupert
himself, who had been at supper in the rear when the attack began,
galloped up with fresh regiments and, rallying his men, drove back
Cromwell’s troopers. It was but a temporary check, for David Leslie with
Cromwell’s second line fell on Rupert’s flank, and the royalist cavalry
was irretrievably routed. Sending the light Scottish regiments of the
reserve in pursuit of the flying Cavaliers, Cromwell and Leslie reformed
their tired squadrons, and halted to find out how the battle had gone in
other quarters of the field. Tidings of disaster soon reached them, and
it became plain that the battle was more than half lost for the
Parliament. Sir Thomas Fairfax, wounded and almost alone, came with the
news that the horse of the right wing under his command were defeated
and flying. His own regiment had charged with success, and broken
through the enemy; those who should have supported him, disordered by
the furze and the rough ground they had to pass through to debouch upon
the moor, had been charged by the Royalists, and completely scattered.
The infantry of the parliamentary centre had fared little better. The
advance had been at first successful all along the line, some guns had
been taken, and the ditch passed. On the left, Manchester’s foot, led by
Major-General Crawford, had outflanked the infantry opposed to them, and
were still gaining ground. In the centre, Lord Fairfax’s foot and the
Scottish regiments supporting them, repulsed by Newcastle’s white-coated
north-countrymen, and trampled down by their own flying horse, were in
full flight. On the right, the main body of the Scottish infantry was
hard pressed; some regiments gave way as their brethren in the centre
had done; others maintained their ground manfully. Yet with the centre
of the parliamentary line pierced, and the cavalry of the right wing
driven from the field, the position of these isolated regiments, exposed
to attack in front and flank both, seemed hopeless. So thought old
Leven, who, after striving in vain to rally the runaways, gave up the
day for lost, and galloped for Leeds. Lord Fairfax, too, was carried off
the field in the rout of his infantry, though he returned later.
[Illustration:
The Battle of
MARSTON MOOR.
B. V. Darbishire, Oxford 1899
]
While Goring’s victorious horse pursued the fugitives, or stopped to
plunder the baggage, Sir Charles Lucas, with another division of
Goring’s command, employed himself in attacking the Scottish infantry.
Maitland’s and Lindsey’s regiments on the extreme right of the line
stood like rocks, and beat off three charges with their pikes. Like
their ancestors at Flodden, and with better fortune,
“The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark, impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell.”
Help was now at hand. Sweeping across the moor behind the royalist
centre, Cromwell and Leslie came with their whole force to the relief of
the Scots. With them too marched Crawford and the three brigades of
Manchester’s foot. As they advanced, Lucas’s horse suspended their
attack, and Goring’s men streamed back from pursuit and pillage to meet
this new antagonist.
Cromwell’s cavalry now occupied the very ground where Goring’s men had
been posted when the battle began, and met them at “the same place of
disadvantage” where Sir Thomas Fairfax had been routed. The struggle was
short but decisive, and when the last squadrons of the royalist horse
were broken, Cromwell turned to co-operate with Crawford and the Scots
in attacking the royalist infantry. Some of Rupert’s veteran regiments
made good their retreat to York; Newcastle’s white-coats got into a
piece of enclosed ground, and sold their lives dearly; the rest
scattered and fled under cover of the protecting darkness. About three
thousand Royalists fell in the battle, while sixteen guns, one hundred
colours, six thousand muskets, and sixteen hundred prisoners were the
trophies of the victors. Rupert left York to its fate, and made his way
back to Lancashire with some six thousand men, and the city itself
surrendered a fortnight later.
In the despatch which the three Generals addressed to the Committee of
Both Kingdoms, they gave no account of the details of the battle, and
made no mention of Cromwell’s services. Private letters were more
outspoken. One described him as “the chief agent in obtaining the
victory.” Some people spoke of him as “the saviour of the three
kingdoms,” though Cromwell repudiated the title with some anger. The
friends of the Scottish army depreciated his services, attributed what
his cavalry achieved to David Leslie, and circulated reports that
Cromwell had taken no part in the battle after his first charge.
The utterances of the royalist leader both before and after the battle
showed that he appreciated Cromwell’s importance more justly. “Is
Cromwell there?” asked Rupert of a prisoner taken just before the
battle, and it was Rupert too who, after the battle, gave Cromwell the
nickname of “Ironside” or “Ironsides.” The title was derived, according
to a contemporary biographer, “from the impenetrable strength of his
troops, which could by no means be broken or divided,” and it was
extended later from the leader to the soldiers themselves.
Cromwell’s only account of the battle is contained in a few lines
written to his brother-in-law, Colonel Valentine Walton.
“England,” he said, “and the Church of God hath had a great favour
from the Lord in this great victory given unto us, such as the like
never was since this war began. It had all the evidences of an
absolute victory, obtained by the Lord’s blessing upon the godly
party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The
left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few
Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince’s horse. God made them as
stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our
horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I cannot relate
now; but I believe of 20,000 the Prince hath not 4000 left. Give
glory, all the glory, to God.”
Cromwell’s letter has been charged with concealing the services of David
Leslie and the Scots. But every word of his brief account was true. He
did not give the particulars of the fight, because he was writing a
letter of condolence, not a despatch. Walton’s son, a captain in
Cromwell’s own regiment, had fallen in the battle, and Cromwell wrote to
tell the father details of his son’s death. He began with the news of
the great victory in order that Walton might feel that his son’s life
had not been idly thrown away. Then he turned suddenly to the real
subject of the letter. “Sir, God hath taken your eldest son away by a
cannon shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off,
whereof he died.” Next he praised the dead—the “gallant young man,”
“exceeding gracious,” “exceedingly beloved in the army of all that knew
him,” who had died “full of comfort,” lamenting nothing save that he
could no longer serve God against his enemies, and rejoicing in his last
moments to “see the rogues run.” In the spring, Cromwell had lost his
own son, Captain Oliver, who died not in battle, but of smallpox in his
quarters at Newport. “A civil young gentleman, and the joy of his
father,” said a newspaper recording it. He referred to this now while
seeking to comfort Walton. “You know my own trials this way; but the
Lord supported me with this, that the Lord took him into the happiness
we all pant after and live for.” Let the same faith support Walton, and
let “this public mercy to the Church of God” help him to forget his
“private sorrow.” So closed the letter, revealing in its tenderness and
sympathy, its enthusiasm and its devotion to the cause, the depths of
Cromwell’s nature, and the secret of his power over his comrades in
arms.
After the fall of York, the three parliamentary armies separated. Leven
and the Scots turned northwards again to besiege Newcastle, the
Fairfaxes remained to capture the royalist strongholds in Yorkshire, and
Manchester, taking on his way Sheffield Castle and a few smaller
garrisons, returned to Lincoln. All August he remained there idle,
declining even to besiege Newark. He was weary of the war, anxious for
an accommodation with the King, and shocked at the spread of sectarian
and democratic opinions in his army and in the kingdom. Cromwell, as the
protector of the sectaries, was at daggers-drawn with Major-General
Crawford, who attempted to suppress them; Crawford cashiered an officer
on the ground that he was an Anabaptist, and Cromwell and some of his
colonels threatened to lay down their commissions unless Crawford was
removed. A compromise of some kind was patched up, but Cromwell’s
influence over Manchester was at an end.
Meanwhile, in the south of England the campaign so prosperously begun
was ending in disaster. Charles had turned on his pursuer, and defeated
Waller at Cropredy Bridge, in Oxfordshire, on June 29th. Leaving
Waller’s disorganised and mutinous army too weak to do any harm, he
followed Essex into the west, and, joined by the forces of the western
Royalists, threatened to overpower him. At the end of August, the
Committee of Both Kingdoms ordered the army of the Eastern Association
to go to the succour of Essex. Cromwell was eager to do so. “The
business,” he wrote to his friend Walton, “has our hearts with it, and
truly, had we wings we would fly thither.” Manchester’s army, though ill
provided with necessaries, and slandered by evil tongues as factious,
was ready to serve anywhere. “We do never find our men so cheerful as
when there is work to do.” But he went on to hint that there were
obstructives in high places, who were less willing to fight than their
soldiers. “We have some amongst us much slow in action; if we could all
intend our own ends less, and our own ease too, our business would go on
wheels for expedition.”
Before Manchester stirred from Lincoln the anticipated disaster came. At
Lostwithiel on September 2nd, Skippon and the infantry of Essex’s army
were forced to capitulate and to lay down their arms. The horse escaped
by a night march through a gap in the royalist lines, while Essex
himself and a few officers fled by sea. After his victory the King
returned slowly to Oxford, and Manchester with the greatest reluctance
moved south-west to meet him. “My army,” he said openly, “was raised by
the Association and for the guard of the Association. It cannot be
commanded by Parliament without their consent.” It was imperative that
Charles should be fought before he could get to his old headquarters at
Oxford, while his army was weakened by the forces left behind in the
west, but Manchester’s refusal to advance allowed the Royalists to reach
Newbury before the King was obliged to fight. At Newbury, on October
27th, Manchester’s army, strengthened by Waller’s forces and by what
remained of Essex’s troops, made a joint attack on the King. Charles had
only ten thousand men to oppose to the nineteen thousand brought against
him, but he had chosen a strong position between two rivers, protected
on one side by Donnington Castle, and covered, where it was most
assailable, by intrenchments. Above all, his army was under a single
commander, while the Parliament’s was directed by a committee. Essex was
absent from illness, and the Committee of Both Kingdoms hoped to avoid
disputes by putting the command in commission.
The parliamentary scheme was that Skippon’s foot, with the horse of
Cromwell and Waller, should attack the King’s position on the west,
while Manchester assaulted it on the north-east. It failed through lack
of combination. Skippon’s infantry carried the royalist intrenchments,
and recaptured several guns they had lost in Cornwall, but the cavalry,
impeded by the nature of the ground, could effect little. Manchester
delayed his attack till it was too late to assist them, and was repulsed
with heavy loss. Nevertheless the result of the day’s fighting was that
the King’s position was so seriously compromised that only a retreat
could save his army. In the night, the royalist army silently marched
past Manchester’s outposts, and by morning it was half way to
Wallingford. Waller and Cromwell set out in pursuit with the bulk of the
cavalry, but as Manchester and the majority of the committee refused to
support them with infantry Charles made good his retreat to Oxford. A
fortnight later, the King, reinforced by Rupert with five thousand men,
returned to relieve Donnington Castle and carry off the artillery he had
left there (October 9, 1644). He offered battle, and Cromwell was eager
to fight, but Manchester and a majority of the committee declared
against it. Foot and horse alike were greatly reduced in numbers, and
the latter “tired out with hard duty in such extremity of weather as
hath been seldom seen.” Manchester, in addition to military reasons,
urged political arguments against risking a battle.
“If we beat the King ninety-nine times, yet he is King still, and so
will his posterity be after him; but if the King beat us once we
shall all be hanged, and our posterity made slaves.” “My Lord,”
retorted Cromwell, “if this be so, why did we take up arms at first?
This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so, let us make peace,
be it ever so base.”
But much as he might despise Manchester’s logic, he had to bow to the
logic of facts, and to accept the view of the committee in general.
So ended the campaign of 1644. The north of England had been definitely
won, and with capable leadership the defeat of Essex in Cornwall might
have been compensated by the defeat of the King in Berkshire. When
Cromwell came to reflect on the incidents of the last few months, he
attributed the failure to obtain this victory entirely to Manchester. He
had failed, apparently, not through accident or want of foresight, but
through backwardness to all action. And this backwardness, concluded
Cromwell, came “from some principle of unwillingness to have the war
prosecuted to a full victory; and a desire to have it ended by an
accommodation on some such terms to which it might be disadvantageous to
bring the King too low.” On November 25th, Cromwell rose in the House of
Commons, told the story of the Newbury campaign, and made this charge
against Manchester. Manchester vindicated his generalship in the House
of Lords, alleging that he had always acted by the advice of the council
of war, and that Cromwell was a factious and obstructive subordinate.
Then, leaving military questions alone, he made a bitter attack on
Cromwell as a politician. He had once given great confidence to the
Lieutenant-General, but latterly he had become suspicious of his
designs, and had been obliged to withdraw it. For Cromwell had spoken
against the nobility, and had said that he hoped to live to see never a
nobleman in England. He had expressed himself with contempt against the
Assembly of Divines, and with animosity against the Scots for attempting
to establish Presbyterianism in England. Finally, he had avowed that he
desired to have none but Independents in the army of the Eastern
Association, “so that in case there should be propositions for peace, or
any conclusion of a peace, such as might not stand with those ends that
honest men should aim at, this army might prevent such a mischief.”
Cromwell did not deny these utterances, and their revelation produced
the effect which Manchester had anticipated. An enquiry into errors in
the conduct of the war developed into a political quarrel. The Lords
took up the cause of Manchester as the cause of their order. The Scots
intrigued against Cromwell as the enemy of their creed. “For the
interest of our nation,” wrote Baillie, “we must crave reason of that
darling of the sectaries,” and talked of breaking the power of that
potent faction “in obtaining his removal from the army, which himself by
his over-rashness has procured.” Some of the Scottish leaders consulted
together on the feasibility of accusing Cromwell as an “incendiary” who
had sought to cause strife between the two nations, but the English
lawyers consulted advised against it.
“Lieutenant-General Cromwell,” said Mr. Maynard, “is a person of
great favour and interest with the House of Commons, and with some
of the peers likewise, and therefore there must be proofs, and the
most clear and evident proofs against him, to prevail with the
Parliament to judge him an incendiary.”
As the controversy proceeded, the Lower House declared on Cromwell’s
side, and the conviction of Manchester’s incapacity spread amongst its
members. But, instead of pressing the charge home, Cromwell drew back. A
personal triumph, to be gained at the cost of a rupture between the two
Houses, and perhaps a rupture between England and Scotland, was not
worth gaining. What he wanted was military efficiency and the vigorous
conduct of the war, and he resolved to use the dissatisfaction which
Manchester’s slackness had roused in order to obtain these ends, and to
abandon the personal charges to secure them. The moment was propitious,
for on November 23rd the Commons had ordered the Committee of Both
Kingdoms to consider the reorganisation of the whole army. On December
9th, when the report on the charges against Manchester was brought in to
the House of Commons, Cromwell turned the debate to the larger issue.
The important thing now, he said, was to save the nation out of the
bleeding, almost dying condition, which the long continuance of the war
had brought it into.
“Without a more speedy, vigorous, and effectual prosecution of the
war, we shall make the kingdom weary of us, and make it hate the
name of a Parliament.”
“For what do the enemy say? Nay what do many say that were friends
at the beginning of the Parliament? Even this: That the members of
both Houses have got great places and commands, and the sword into
their hands; and what by interest in Parliament, what by power in
the army, will perpetually continue themselves in grandeur, and not
permit the war speedily to end, lest their own power should
determine with it.... If the army be not put into another method and
the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the war no
longer, and will enforce you to a dishonourable peace.”
He went on to abandon his attack upon Manchester, by recommending the
House not to insist upon any complaint against any commander. Oversights
could rarely be avoided in military affairs, and he acknowledged that he
had been guilty of them himself. The essential was not to enquire into
the causes of these failures, but to apply a remedy to them. That
remedy, as he had already suggested, was the reorganisation of the army,
and a change in its commanders. “And I hope,” he concluded, “we have
such true English hearts and zealous affections towards the general weal
of our mother country, as no members of either House will scruple to
deny themselves, and their own private interests for the public good.”
Cromwell’s suggestion was at once adopted, and, before the debate ended,
a resolution was passed that no member of either House of Parliament
should during the war hold any office or command either military or
civil. Ten days later, on December 19th, the Self-Denying Ordinance
passed the House of Commons and was sent up to the Lords. The Lords
demurred, and delayed, and at last rejected it, on the ground that they
did not know what shape the new army would take. The Commons immediately
formulated their scheme, nominated Sir Thomas Fairfax as the future
General, and fixed the new army at twenty-two thousand men. On the 15th
of February, 1645, the Lords accepted it, much against their will; and
on April 3rd, with still greater reluctance, they accepted a second
Self-Denying Ordinance. But the new ordinance was much less stringent
than the old. It simply ordained that all members of the two Houses
holding office should lay down their commissions within forty days of
its passing, and said nothing to prevent their reappointment in the
future if the two Houses thought fit. So much at least the Peers had
gained by their resistance.
Cromwell had been a leader in the earlier portion of this struggle. He
had been one of the tellers for the majority which voted Fairfax General
in place of Essex, and had urged that Fairfax should have full liberty
in the choice of his officers. His own military career seemed over, for
he could scarcely expect to retain his command when all other members
lost theirs. If he had sought to keep it, he would have continued the
prosecution of Manchester rather than striven to erect a legal barrier
against his own employment. But before the struggle ended, and before
the second Self-Denying Ordinance was passed or even introduced, he was
once more in the field. In the west of England, Weymouth and Taunton
were hard pressed by a royalist army under Goring. Waller was ordered to
advance and relieve them, but without reinforcements he was too weak to
do so. Parliament ordered Cromwell’s regiment to join Waller; it
murmured, grew mutinous, and seemed about to refuse obedience. On March
3rd, the House ordered Cromwell to go with it, its murmurs ceased, and
obedience was immediately restored. Cromwell made no objection to
putting himself under Waller’s command, and Waller found him an
admirable subordinate. There was nothing in his bearing, wrote Waller,
to show that he was conscious of having extraordinary abilities; “for
although he was blunt, he did not bear himself with pride or disdain. As
an officer he was obedient, and did never dispute my orders, or argue
upon them.” What struck Waller most was that, whilst a man of few words
himself, Cromwell had a way of making others talk, and a singular
sagacity in judging their characters, and discovering their secrets.
Waller’s expedition accomplished its object: a royalist regiment of
horse was captured, an imperilled body of parliamentary foot
successfully brought off, and at the end of April Cromwell returned to
headquarters to lay down his commission. It remained to be seen whether
Parliament could dispense with his services, and above all whether the
army would be content to lose a general who had gained the confidence of
the soldiers more than any leader whom the war had produced.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]