‘Most Bloody Prince, and all your bloody Prelates and Cavaliers: I have as you may see by this ensuing Discourse, taken a little pains, to set that before your eyes in words, which by your actions you will not take notice of namely, your unreasonable wickedness, and the doom that will follow: Advising you to take heed of persisting in such destructive ways, as now you are in; which counsel of mine, if you shall take, you will find it the best piece of work that ever you took in hand; but if you refuse and reject it, you will, I am sure, repent the day, when it is too late.’
Introduction to The Bloody Prince, or a Declaration of the Most cruell Practises of Prince Rupert, and the rest of the Cavaliers, London: 1643
The king marched triumphantly into Oxford, then sent a force on to take Reading. Rupert, meanwhile, pushed further down the Thames Valley towards Windsor. Most of the 1,500 townsfolk were Parliamentarians and, in the aftermath of Edgehill, they took control of the mighty Royalist castle — ‘being a place of greatest strength in this part of the kingdom, by reason of the height and strength, the country lying under it so that the Castle can command it round about’.[fn1] The new governor was Colonel John Venn, a City merchant who was loathed by the Royalists: he was on a select list of eleven rebels (headed by Pym) ineligible for the king’s pardon. If captured, he would be executed.
A fortnight after Edgehill, on 7 November, Rupert attacked Windsor from the Eton side of the Thames. The market town was almost defenceless and suffered badly during a seven-hour bombardment by Rupert’s five field pieces. Many civilians fled for refuge into the surrounding woodland. Others sought shelter up the hill in the castle, where the prince’s cannon made barely any impression on formidable defences. Rupert was told by his men that ‘they would willingly attend him to fight against men but not against stone walls, rocks and inaccessible places, where a hundred men might keep out ten thousand, all valour being useless; and therefore desired the Prince that he would rise thence, and depart into other places where they might do the Cause better service’.[fn2] Rupert reluctantly agreed, leaving Windsor Castle in Parliament’s hands. It would be its military headquarters throughout the Civil War, a counterbalance to Royalist Oxford 40 miles away.
Meanwhile, Charles and Parliament revisited possibilities for peace. But, when the king met the rebel commissioners near Slough, on the same day as his nephew was assaulting nearby Windsor, both sides believed the other to be insincere. Convinced that his enemies were deploying delaying tactics, Charles sanctioned Rupert’s request to attack Parliamentary Brentford. The prince led a ruthless infantry assault, descending out of the mist at the head of Welsh troops to overwhelm the garrison and capture several hundred men and a dozen cannon. The king’s opponents were outraged by this ‘bloody and treacherous design’.[fn3] Their men had been caught off guard, they claimed, because of the truce accompanying the ongoing peace negotiations. The military success of the attack was countered by the claims of Charles’s critics that he was ‘environ’d by some such Councils, as do rather persuade a desperate division, than a joining and a good agreement with your Parliament and People’.[fn4] The drunken pillaging of the town by Rupert’s men added credibility to the view that the prince, ‘and all his followers, wheresoever they go, leave not a house in their way unplundered’.[fn5]
Londoners saw Brentford’s fate as a foretaste of what they could expect, if Rupert breached the capital’s defences. The prince became the target of increasingly vicious propaganda. Lord Wharton, returned after serving as a captain at Edgehill, claimed in a speech at the Guildhall that God’s favour had spared Essex all but miniscule casualties in the battle. ‘One great cause of the preservation, & of the success of that day’, he continued, ‘was that the troops under the command of Prince Robert, while we were a fighting, not only pillaged the baggage (which was a poor employment;) but killed countrymen that came in with their teams, and poor women, and children that were with them; this I think not amiss to tell you, because you may see what is the thing they aim at, which is pillage, and baggage, and plundering, and the way which they would come by it is murdering, and destroying, and therefore it will come in very properly, to encourage you to that work … which is, the standing upon your defence.’[fn6]
Rupert reacted to Wharton’s slanders with fury: ‘If these abominable untruths (with many more like them in his Lordship’s speech) be all true,’ Rupert fumed, ‘then shall he freely charge me with barbarousness and inhumanity; but if these be most gross falsities (as many thousand worthy Gentlemen will take their oaths they are) then I must profess I am sorry that any Baron of the English Nation should utter such foul untruths, to deceive the poor abused Citizens of London with false reports, and so slander us.’[fn7]
Many chose to believe Wharton. The capital’s Puritan ministers harnessed fear at the prince’s approach to persuade 20,000 Londoners to stiffen the city’s defences. The citizens’ unity of purpose, in the face of looming peril, was celebrated in verse:
By hearsay our foes they are coming to town,
And threaten to kill us and beat our works down;
Which thing to prevent our tradesmen do strive,
To build up new bulwarks to keep us alive …
The several tradesmen I to you will name,
And tell you how orderly they to work came,
With shovels and baskets, with pick-axe and spades
Who laboured as hard as they did at their trades …
It do my heart good to see how fine wenches,
Doth drive the wheelbarrows and work in the trenches,
I dare undertake that they laboured so well,
That all the whole kingdom will of the same tell …
Indeed they have cause for to do their endeavour,
To work and take pains now at this time or never,
To keep out Prince Robert and his Cavaliers,
Which daily possesses the City with fears …[fn8]
The entrances to London — at St James’s, Hyde Park Corner, St Giles in the Fields, Pancras Fields, Gray’s Inn Lane, Holloway Road, and Hoxton — were allotted artillery batteries, fortifications, and troops with which to hold back ‘Prince Robber’. Warships were deployed along the Thames, their cannon standing sentinel over the Houses of Parliament.
Essex’s troops rushed back to the capital and joined apprentice-boy volunteers and the London Trained Bands on Turnham Green, ready to block Rupert’s approach from Brentford. The combined Parliamentary army numbered 24,000 men. An awkward stand-off ensued, both armies deployed for action but neither prepared to risk battle. Rupert saw that there was no open ground for his cavalry to exploit, and he could make out rebel muskets in the hedges and ditches before him. Essex’s artillery was well entrenched, its exploratory shots claiming a few victims.
Rupert led his cavalry forward in some minor sallies, his enemies reporting seeing him ‘charging like a Devil, rather than a man’. They were nervous of the prince’s growing reputation and sought to portray his bravery in a sinister light: ‘The prince, who without all doubt, is rather to be held desperate than truly valiant … and though he was shot at a thousand times by our men, not any of them was to purpose; encouraging his horsemen, who were the flower of his garland, not to leave him nor the quarrel.’[fn9] Despite Rupert’s efforts, the skirmishes did not develop into the expected decisive battle.
It was enough for the Parliamentarians to have blocked the Royalist advance. In a humiliating end to the 1642 campaign, Charles led his men slowly away, eventually returning to Oxford. The king was not to see London again until returning as a prisoner, years later, on trial for his life.
*
The reality of war had been a shock for all but the few professional soldiers on either side. The violent clashes at Edgehill, and the extraordinary sight of an English king preparing to attack his capital, were events that many found bewildering. A third of Essex’s army deserted during the first winter of the war, disillusioned and ill provided for. ‘My hope was’, Charles now admitted, ‘that either by success on my part, or Repentance on theirs, God would have put a short end to this great storm.’[fn10] However, he underestimated the passions unleashed by open conflict.
From January to April 1643, peace negotiations were conducted at Oxford. The concessions demanded of Charles remained unrealistic on many fronts: he would not contemplate surrendering his sovereign control of the militia; honour forbade him from handing over his key supporters to Parliament for punishment; his religious beliefs stopped him from abolishing the bishops; and common sense dictated that he should not disband an army that was showing encouraging growth.
While the talks dragged on, Rupert remained active and aggressive. As a professional soldier, he was determined to win political advantage on the battlefield. As the son of a displaced ruler, he was eager to save his uncle’s crown. The prince’s military position was strengthened by the confirmation of Patrick Ruthven, the Earl of Forth, as commander of the Royalist army in succession to the dead Lindsey. Forth admired Rupert’s exceptional drive and recognised his talismanic value to the king’s cause. The prince was encouraged to strike into the enemy heartland: 1643 was to be the golden year of his military career.
Cirencester was the first to fall. A crucial stronghold in the Cotswolds, the town was home to a large Parliamentary garrison. Rupert attacked it with 6,000 men in February, after his summons to surrender had been declined, and took it in four hours. A well-aimed grenade ignited the key defences and when the enemy’s musketeers fled, they were ruthlessly despatched by the prince’s men. There were the customary rumblings from London, which followed in the wake of a Rupert spectacular: he was falsely accused of sanctioning the cold-blooded murder of women, children, and Puritan ministers. In truth, he took 1,000 prisoners, seized much-needed arms and provisions, and marched them all to Oxford, where the Royalists greeted his victory with a celebratory Evening Service. Sir Edward Nicholas, one of Charles’s secretaries of state and a great admirer of the prince, wrote: ‘The welcome news of your highness’s taking of Cirencester by assault with admirable dexterity and courage, came this morning very seasonably and opportunely, as his Majesty was ready to give an answer to the Parliament Committee, and will, I believe, work better effects with them.’[fn11] Rupert’s timely victory had narrowly saved his uncle from needless concessions to his enemies.
By taking Cirencester, Rupert gained the king a vital staging post between his Oxford headquarters and his key recruiting grounds in the northwest and Wales — the latter was referred to by the rebels as the ‘feed-plot and nursery of Prince Rupert’s soldiers’.[fn12] The new acquisition also threatened two significant Parliamentarian cities, Bristol and Gloucester. Rupert tried to sweet-talk the governors of both into switching allegiance, without success.
Rupert now swept through Hampshire, bettering a Parliamentary force at Alton in late February, before terrorizing enemy troops in Wiltshire. Speed and surprise were his hallmarks, and nowhere in southern or central England seemed to be beyond his reach; he spread round the country, his enemies complained, ‘like wildfire’.
On 22 February, Henrietta Maria landed in Yorkshire with desperately needed reinforcements and armaments from the Continent. Rupert and 12,500 men — mainly mounted — were sent to escort the queen to Oxford, through the hostile Midlands. The prince was encouraged to attack enemy strongholds on his way northeast, to make the return of his precious convoy easier.
Birmingham was the first victim; it prided itself on being the most rebellious town in England, but its forces were unequal to its reputation. Rupert’s papers recalled that: ‘The Prince took Birmingham by assault with little loss, only the Lord of Denbigh was unfortunately slain.’[fn13] Denbigh had been one of the first to volunteer to serve the prince, at the outbreak of war. His son, though, had opted to fight for Parliament.
Rebel scribes accused Rupert’s men of defiling the women of Birmingham and of wilfully setting the town ablaze — their main pamphlet describing the assault was called Prince Rupert’s Burning Love for England discovered in Birmingham’s Flames. Independent eyewitnesses supported the prince’s denial of both charges.
Lichfield was a tougher proposition. Its well-drilled garrison, under a flinty professional called Colonel Rowsewell, made a stand inside the moat and walls of the town’s cathedral close. The rebel forces at Lichfield behaved in an inflammatory manner, hunting a cat with hounds inside the cathedral, and dressing up a calf as a bishop. Then, after capturing several Royalists in a failed assault with ladders, they paraded one of these prisoners, attached a noose around his neck, and goaded Rupert to rescue his man, if he could, by shooting through the rope. They then swung him over the wall from a gibbet, where he kicked his last in view of the prince. Rules of war were rudimentary during this period, and were frequently disregarded on the Continent, but in England the cold-blooded murder of prisoners was still regarded as a heinous act.
Rupert vowed to slaughter the garrison. He was entitled to do this because of the murder of his soldier and because his calls to surrender had been rejected. However, he had insufficient artillery to breach the walls. The prince now called on his experience in European warfare: summoning fifty Staffordshire miners from Cannock Chase, he ordered them to burrow a tunnel beneath the cathedral walls. It was a complex operation, requiring the draining of the defensive moat and the penetration of an unforgiving stratum of rock, but eventually ‘the first mine sprung in England’[fn14] was complete, and five barrels of gunpowder were detonated to good effect. Frenzied fighting took place in the resulting breach, but the defenders, no doubt spurred on by fear of Rupert’s reprisals, continued their resistance into the following day.
It was during his time outside Lichfield that Rupert received a stream of confusing and contradictory letters from the king. Initially, eager to be viewed as a magnanimous ruler, Charles wrote urging his nephew to ‘have a care of spilling innocent blood’[fn15] when he took the city. This was an easy order for an inexperienced, absent commander to give, but a difficult one for Rupert to implement on the ground. Such interference risked compromising the effectiveness of an independent man of action.
Charles further complicated Rupert’s task by dithering over how best to counter a serious threat to Reading. This important buffer between Parliamentary Windsor and Royalist Oxford was in peril, the full strength of Essex’s army bearing down on its 3,000-strong garrison. However, if a rescue operation were to be mounted, Rupert’s army would need to lead it. The choice for Charles was simple: either to urge Rupert on to hurry queen and convoy to Oxford’s safety, while the garrison in Reading tried to hold out; or to call the prince back immediately, save Reading, and trust the queen would be safe until the Royalists could ride out to meet her again. Charles’s inability to make this decision is betrayed in this muddled letter, which arrived at Lichfield during Rupert’s siege:
Nephew,
I thought necessary to advertise you that the Rebels have attacked Reading, not to recall you (though I could be content you were here) but to desire you to hasten Northward. I write not this to make you raise your siege but that you lose no more time in it than you must needs. I suppose that this direction needs no ways retard my wife’s coming …[fn16]
Ambivalence was alien to a man of Rupert’s uncompromising focus. The phrase in parentheses suggests that Charles wanted his nephew to decide for himself where he should be. The king’s next letter was more decisive, probably because it resulted from his counsellors’ deliberations:
Nephew,
Upon further debate this day I have resolved to desire you to come to me with what diligence you may and with as much force as you can … This I confess is somewhat differing from what I wrote to you yesterday.[fn17]
The postscript of Charles’s letter, a personal addendum, revealed the king’s wavering nature: ‘I hope you will have done your work about Lichfield before this can come to you,’ he added.
Rupert’s papers recorded: ‘The King sent for the Prince from Lichfield without delay to march to the relief of Reading.’[fn18] The urgency of the summons denied Rupert time to finish off the Lichfield rebels. He was forced to grant them generous terms of surrender, before setting off for the Royalist rendezvous at Wallingford. The next day the combined forces of king and prince tried to relieve Reading in an attempted push across Caversham Bridge. The Parliamentarians were strongly entrenched, however, and the besieged Royalists failed to help their would-be rescuers by striking out from Reading. Their commander, Sir Arthur Aston, had taken a serious blow to the skull from a falling brick. In his place stood Colonel Richard Feilding, who had already started negotiating Reading’s surrender.
When Rupert heard of Feilding’s defeatism, he took it upon himself to snuff it out. ‘The Prince spoke to Feilding over the river by Reading to know if he wanted any thing,’ the Prince’s papers record, ‘he said they wanted [gun-]powder, but that they were in treaty and were offered terms to march out of the town … His Highness told him that there was no treating to be admitted, the king being there in person, and that for Powder he might be furnished when he pleased, passing over a quantity in a Boat for the present.’[fn19] Yet Feilding, whether believing that he must honour the ongoing peace negotiations or out of fear of the enemy, disobeyed the prince and surrendered Reading. The terms of the treaty allowed Feilding’s men to march unimpeded to Oxford, yet some Parliamentarians breached these terms, plundering the Royalists before they could reach safety. ‘The soldiers were not only reviled’, Clarendon wrote, ‘and reproachfully used, but many of them disarmed, and most of the wagons plundered, in the presence of the Earl of Essex himself, and the Chief Officers; who seemed to be offended at it, and not to be able to prevent it.’[fn20]
Many viewed the capitulation of Reading as shameful and unnecessary, a treacherous betrayal by an inadequate colonel. Feilding was court-martialled, found guilty, and sentenced to death by beheading. However, Rupert helped secure a pardon, seeing Feilding’s execution as an unnecessary additional casualty for the Royalist cause.
After Reading’s fall Oxford was more vulnerable, prompting several of the king’s counsellors to advise him to move his headquarters further north. But Rupert realised the strategic importance of maintaining a strong presence in the Thames Valley, within striking distance of London. He persuaded his uncle not to move.
*
By contemporary standards, Rupert possessed the key ingredient of a successful general: ‘As one said that pronunciation was the first, second, and third part of a good orator,’ said the Bishop of Derry, in a sermon to a Royalist congregation, ‘so may I say that Courage is the first, second, and third part of a good commander.’[fn21] To valour, Rupert added versatility. Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie, an influential tract published a decade before the Civil War, advised that: ‘The Cavalry must principally be employed to travel and molest the enemy, sometime by hindering him from his victual, sometime by endamaging his foragers, sometime by sending some troops even up to his camp to take some booty, by that means to draw him forth, and to make him fall upon some embuscadoe disposed beforehand in some fitting place.’[fn22] The prince used all aspects of the cavalier’s art to pull off one of his most famous successes.
Colonel John Urry was a Scottish mercenary whose Civil War record became a byword for disloyalty: he was to change sides four times. In mid June he slipped away from Essex’s army, which was suffering from low morale and an epidemic of typhoid, and defected to Rupert. He brought with him tantalising news: Essex was awaiting the arrival of a convoy from London, bearing the pay for his entire army — a sum in excess of £20,000.
Rupert targeted this bonanza with his flying army. He had 1,800 men, three-quarters of whom were mounted. He was aware that this small force would be outnumbered, if cornered. However, he also knew the capabilities of his troops, who were commanded by his favourite lieutenants: Sir Richard Crane, a veteran of Vlotho, was in charge of Rupert’s lifeguards; the Irishman Daniel O’Neill, an equally trusted comrade in arms, rode as lieutenant colonel of Prince Rupert’s Regiment; and Will Legge, the son of one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s naval officers — and who was to become closer to the prince than any other British Royalist, acted as brigade major. Legge rode ahead of the main body with 150 scouting skirmishers. On foot was Colonel Henry Lunsford, whose regiment of experienced Somerset men had seen action in the Bishops’ Wars, at Edgehill, and at Reading. Rupert would soon show his admiration for their gritty professionalism by adopting them as ‘Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats’. This was the force that accompanied him as he departed Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge.
Rupert sent his handpicked men out in sweeping manoeuvres to disable Essex’s outposts, so the rebels marching with the military chest would have no warning of the Cavaliers’ approach. Early on 18 June, Parliament’s detachments in the Chiltern villages of Postcomb and Chinnor were surprised and easily overcome. Many were killed and some were captured, but others escaped and fired shots into the air, raising the alarm and allowing the convoy to escape into nearby woodland. Rupert, disappointed that his plan had come to nothing, now looked for alternative action. He retreated slowly, luring on the superior numbers of the enemy, teasing them with the prospect of revenge for their recent reverses.
The prospect of bettering the infamous prince proved irresistible. Essex sent men from his main base at Thame to join in the pursuit. John Hampden, the leading Parliamentarian, learnt of Rupert’s proximity while in bed at Warpsgrove House. Hampden was colonel of his own regiment, but now rode independently as a simple volunteer, so eager was he to join the fray. A rolling series of skirmishes took place throughout the morning near Chiselhampton. Rupert ordered his infantry to hold Chiselhampton Bridge, in case a speedy retreat became necessary, and then hid his dragoons in surrounding hedges, setting the ambush for the enemy.
When the Parliamentarian horse and dragoons bore down, charging through the ripening corn of Chalgrove Field, they expected the prince to gallop off in retreat. So did Rupert’s officers, who could see they were outnumbered and thought flight their only option. Instead, to everyone’s astonishment, Rupert turned to face the enemy and shouted: ‘Yea, this insolency is not to be endured.’ He then spurred on his horse and plunged over the hedge separating his force from the enemy. Without hesitation, one of Rupert’s officers reported: ‘The Captain and rest of his Troop of Lifeguards (every man as they could) jumped over after him, and as about 15 were gotten over, the Prince presently drew them up into a Front till the rest could recover up to him. At this, the rebels’ Dragooners that lined the hedge fled: having hurt and slain some of ours with their first volley.’[fn23]
Rupert led his men in a fearless charge across flat and open countryside. Although the Royalist cavalry noted that the rebels resisted their first charge better than at any point since Powick Bridge, they were still quick to break and flee. Chalgrove Field was (like Powick Bridge) an action that had repercussions out of all proportion to its scale: it confirmed the already dread reputation of the prince and his Cavaliers. Rupert lost just twelve men. This slight cost had garnered huge psychological advantages, as the Royalists left their enemy demoralised and disordered.
It also produced a significant enemy casualty: John Hampden had written an ode at the time of the marriage of Rupert’s parents, wishing them many illustrious children. Now, while attacking one of the Palatine offspring, he was shot twice in the shoulder. After six days of ineffective medical treatment, he died of his wounds. Hugely respected in the Parliamentary camp, Hampden was regarded as a wise and calming influence on his more extreme colleagues, particularly the radical Pym. At Chalgrove Field Rupert’s Cavaliers silenced Westminster’s clearest voice of reason.
This was one of several victories that turned the summer of 1643 into the season of greatest success for the king. In the north the rebels reeled from total defeat at Adwalton Moor. In May, in the southwest, Sir Ralph Hopton and his Cornishmen trounced Parliament’s southwestern army at Stratton, despite being outnumbered two to one. They then advanced through Devon to Somerset, looking to link up with the troops led by the Marquess of Hertford and by Rupert’s brother, Prince Maurice.
Parliament had enjoyed a series of stunning successes in southern England early in the war, thanks to the inspired leadership of the Andover MP, Sir William Waller. Waller was a gifted opportunist, who revelled in his nickname of ‘the Night Owl’: he liked to move at night, then swoop on unsuspecting prey. In little over a month he took control of Farnham, Winchester, and Chichester. He then gained Hereford, Monmouth, and Chepstow in the west. London celebrated Waller’s exploits by giving him the sobriquet ‘William the Conqueror’.
Prince Maurice and Hertford were now approaching Waller’s sphere of influence. The Parliamentarian was eager to keep the two Royalist armies apart, but he failed to stop them from joining at Chard. The combined force pulled off an astonishing, fast-paced victory over Waller at Lansdown Hill, outside Bath. This was followed by Prince Maurice’s greatest triumph, when he rode to Oxford, rounded up all available cavalry, took them towards Devizes, and led them with real intelligence at the battle of Roundway Down. That July day, Maurice helped in the destruction of Waller’s army and the puncturing of his inflated reputation. As ‘the Conqueror’ scuttled off, vanquished, to Gloucester, with five or six hundred survivors from his army of several thousand, he left Bristol open to Rupert’s long-planned assault.
*
In mid February 1643, partly in response to Rupert’s success at Cirencester, Parliament promoted its own glamorous champion from colonel to major general. Waller was placed in charge of rebel troops in five western and southern counties, and was instructed to guard the Severn Valley. The newly vulnerable Bristol became his headquarters.
Bristol was, with Norwich, one of only two provincial cities in England to have a population in excess of 10,000. With its natural harbour, complemented by a thriving arms industry, Bristol was England’s second city and a highly desirable prize for both causes. It started the war as Parliament’s possession, but its population contained a sizeable Royalist contingent: ‘So it was’, a contemporary, rebel historian explained, ‘that the King’s cause and party were favoured by two extremes in that city; the one the wealthy and powerful men, the other of the basest and lowest sort, but disgusted by the middle rank, the true and best citizens.’[fn24]
Rupert had tried to take Bristol with his flying column of horse and dragoons in early March. Lacking sufficient infantry or artillery to attack, Rupert had instead resorted to subterfuge. Two prominent citizens — Robert Yeomans, a former sheriff, and George Bouchier, a merchant — agreed to open the gates to the waiting Royalists, which would be the prelude to Rupert’s attack. But the two men were betrayed, their plans ‘divulged by tattling women’.[fn25] They were arrested by Major Langrish, a fanatical Parliamentarian, just before their men attempted to overpower a guardhouse. The major had them chained to a dungeon’s walls. During their imprisonment they were barely fed and were given unclean water to drink. Despite the pleas of the king, as well as the mayor and aldermen of Bristol, the men were condemned to death by hanging, the Commons insisting that an example be made of these dangerous conspirators.
On the day of their public execution the two men were taken to a scaffold, specially erected near the City Cross. On arrival the starving, terrified Yeomans collapsed and fainted. His executioners propped him up so that, when he came round, the first thing he saw was his home, along the street. As the pair huddled in final prayers, Major Langrish insulted and cursed them. Bouchier and Yeomans then summoned their final reserves of dignity and strength, and climbed the ladders to their death.
Parliament’s harsh punishment had the desired effect: it deterred other Royalist sympathisers from acting on the king’s behalf. Rupert realised that, if Bristol were to fall, it would have to be by conventional means: he must besiege the city.
*
Bristol was difficult to defend. Its perimeter walls were 4 miles long and were punctuated by infrequent fortifications, which left various approaches with vulnerable dead ground. Furthermore, the city’s low-lying position (Warburton described it as ‘situated in a hole’) meant that an attacking commander enjoyed a panoramic view of proceedings.
Rupert arrived from Oxford with a sizeable army — fourteen infantry regiments, seven troops of dragoons, two wings of cavalry, and eight siege guns. Although his units were not at battle strength because of casualties, desertion, and sickness, they easily outnumbered the 1,800 Parliamentarian defenders. Sidelining the Marquess of Hertford, the prince took control of the siege. He made his camp at Clifton, appointed Maurice as his lieutenant general, and pressed for immediate action.
Rupert ordered the attack for before dawn on 26 July 1643. It was to be simultaneous, on all sides of the city: the prince wanted the defenders to be strung out along their perimeter, unable to concentrate their fire on his men. The assailants were drawn up in lines, each with a distinctive role. First went the dragoons, carrying bundles of faggots wrapped up in fascines and dragging carts: their job was to fill up any trenches and ditches that might slow down the Royalist advance. Next were the musketeers, under orders only to fire at close range. In the third line came pikemen, their weapons bearing blazing rags, designed to torch the rebel defences. Following these came a line of grenadiers and then more musketeers. The Cavalry was kept in the rear, ready to support the attack when Rupert decided it was appropriate.
The fighting was intense, one eyewitness judging it ‘the hottest service that ever was in this kingdom since the war began’.[fn26] Maurice’s West Countrymen suffered horrendous casualties as they tried, but failed, to scale the main fort on the south side of Bristol. They were beaten back by volleys of musket-balls, and also by hurled rocks that knocked them off their scaling ladders. After half an hour they slipped back to the safety of some nearby hedges, from where they continued to fire for several hours. ‘In time of the retreat’, wrote Rupert’s engineering expert, de Gomme, ‘Prince Maurice went from regiment to regiment encouraging the soldiers, desiring the officers to keep their companies by their colours; telling them he believed his brother had already made his entrance on the other side.’[fn27]
Maurice’s optimism was premature. Rupert’s infantry also suffered initially, before finding some dead ground that allowed them to approach within a stone’s throw of the Parliamentary outer defences. From that range, they were able to lob grenades into the exposed rebel lines. An officer, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Littleton, then rode forward with a fire-pike, swinging it menacingly and causing terror in the enemy lines. The rebels screamed ‘Wildfire!’ as they fled in panic. The word went through the Royalist ranks — ‘They run! They run!’ — and Rupert’s men surged forward in pursuit, hacking down and running through many before they reached the safety of the city walls.
The struggle continued for several hours. One young Royalist lord later recalled ‘the noise and tintamarre of guns and drums, with the horrid spectacles, and hideous cries, of dead and hurt men’.[fn28] Rupert, in the thick of the action as ever, was thrown to the ground when his horse was shot dead, a bullet piercing its eyeball. He joined his men on foot until another mount could be found, screaming orders and sustaining the assault in the cacophony of gunfire and grenade explosion. His soldiers pushed forward, through a breach made by Colonel Henry Washington’s dragoons. The fighting inside the city was confused and fierce as the men of both sides discharged their weapons, before falling on one another with sword, musket butt, and gouging hands. Eventually, the Royalists established a stronghold within sight of the harbour, but Rupert forbade his men from using this as a position from which to torch the ships or the city. In the heat of battle, with the outcome still undecided, the prince’s conduct was far from that of the bloody destroyer of popular myth.
Indeed, at the storming of Bristol, Rupert showed himself the model professional general, hectoring, encouraging, and controlling his men so their impetus never wavered. He moved his cavalry through Washington’s breach, in support of the hard-pressed foot, who were drawing heavy enemy fire in house-to-house fighting. Henry Lunsford, Rupert’s favoured infantry colonel, already wounded in the arm, was now shot dead near the Frome Gate. The ferocity of the fighting was such that it became a question of which side could sustain the contest for the longest, in the face of terrible losses.
The Parliamentarian commander, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, had received his governorship of the city through nepotism. His military experience was limited to an extremely rapid retreat from Powick Bridge, and a minor role at Edgehill. However, he was the son and heir of Lord Saye and Sele, an eminent Westminster rebel. Over-promoted though Fiennes was, he had the sense to realise that his small force faced elimination. With the city and its shipping at the mercy of the prince, he offered to discuss terms of surrender. Rupert, eager to avoid time-wasting and now confident of taking Bristol by force, limited the ceasefire to a maximum of two hours: if Fiennes failed to agree terms in that period, his garrison would be annihilated. This proved enough time to reach a peaceful conclusion: Fiennes would be allowed to lead his vanquished men unmolested out of the city to a safe, Parliamentarian destination, but stores, weapons, and armaments must be left behind for the victors.
Many Royalists had been roughly treated in similar circumstances, after the surrender of Reading. ‘Some of ours’, Baron de Gomme reported, ‘in requital, now plundered some of theirs.’[fn29] However, Rupert and Maurice were outraged, and Fiennes — despite facing criticism from London for losing Bristol — had the moral courage to testify on their behalf: ‘I must do this right to the Princes’, he said, ‘contrary to what I find in a printed pamphlet, that they were so far from sitting on their horses, triumphing and rejoicing at these disorders, that they did ride among the plunderers with their swords, hacking and slashing them, and that Prince Rupert did excuse it to me in a very fair way, and with expressions as if he were much troubled at it.’[fn30] Rupert was furious: first, as a professional soldier, he was keen to adhere to honourable conduct; secondly, as a devout Christian, he was not prepared to have his solemn word made valueless by the dregs in his ranks.
The capture of Bristol was a major boost for the king’s cause, paid for with 500 lives — most of them Cornish. One thousand of the defeated citizens joined the prince’s victorious ranks. More importantly, the capture of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, eighty pieces of artillery and 6,000 firearms was a welcome influx for a Royalist army short of key supplies. Charles wrote from Oxford: ‘I know you do not expect compliments from me, yet I must not be so forgetful, as now that I have time, not only to congratulate with you for this last happy success of the taking of Bristol, but to acknowledge the chief thanks thereof to belong to you, which, I assure you, adds to my contentment.’[fn31]
There would be further triumphs, but the run of successes that culminated in Bristol was the zenith of Rupert’s Civil War career. He was recognised as the most dynamic, effective, and flamboyant general in the land, the curse of Parliament and the darling of the Royalists. He had become a man ‘whose very name was half a conquest’.[fn32] His military gifts were celebrated in verse:
Thread the beads
Of Caesar’s acts, great Pompey’s, and the Swede’s,
And ‘tis a bracelet fit for Rupert’s hand,
By which that vast triumvirate is spanned.[fn33]
The Marquess of Newcastle, commander of the king’s army in the north, wrote: ‘Your name is grown so triumphant, and the world’s expectations to look for more from you than man can do; but that is their fault, sir, and not yours. Long may you live … a terror to your uncle’s enemies, and a preserver of his servants.’[fn34] The problem, unrecognised by Newcastle, was that such clear-cut distinctions no longer applied: some of the king’s most trusted servants were, in truth, becoming the prince’s bitterest enemies.