‘The glories of our blood and state,
are shadows, not substantial things,
There is no armour against Fate.
Death lays his icy hand on Kings,
Sceptre and Crown,
Must tumble down,
And in the dust must be equal made,
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.’
The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses, James Shirley, 1596-1666.
First reports from Marston Moor spoke of a famous victory for the prince. Such assessments were based on news of the first hour of the battle, when thousands of the allies had been seen fleeing the field. Rupert’s own account arrived with Charles at Evesham, ten days after the defeat. It was an honest appraisal of the situation, that looked to future opportunities rather than dwelling over-long on this devastating reverse. The prince knew he had been soundly beaten, but he also believed that the north was not lost: most of his casualties were in infantry, the bulk of his cavalry having been saved by the speed of their horses and the darkness of nightfall. He hoped to have a Royalist army back in action soon. In the meantime, his forces had inflicted heavy casualties on the Fairfaxes’ troops, which would make it difficult for the other rebel commanders to move their men south without leaving the north vulnerable and undermanned. Allowing York to fall to the allies, Rupert set off to regroup his men and to gather recruits with 6,000 enemy horsemen snapping at his heels.
Rupert’s fellow northern commanders did not share his optimism. Newcastle had fought bravely at Marston Moor, rushing into battle at the head of a troop of volunteers and killing three of the enemy with a sword borrowed from his page. However, the self-regarding marquess feared that the scale of defeat would lead to ridicule at court. He had threatened resignation twice before, but this time Newcastle meant it: he set sail from Scarborough for the Continent, with Eythin in his retinue. He was to remain in self-imposed exile for the remainder of the war.
Parliamentarians celebrated a glorious triumph over an enemy riven by dissent and lured to self-destruction — they maintained — by Rupert’s fatal pride. They ordered a Day of Thanksgiving, their propagandists gloating, ‘That when Prince Rupert had according to his own will relieved York, which (as was thought) was the greatest of his ambition, yet then he should so much glory in his own strength, as to give battle to our forces, though contrary to the advice and importunity of his own chiefest commanders.’[fn1] Thanks to God’s intervention, they believed, Rupert had received his long overdue come-uppance. In the flush of victory colourful tales emerged, the Scots even claiming that Newcastle had tried to stab Rupert with a knife during their final, furious meeting.
The king was careful not to criticise his nephew, despite making it clear that it had never been his intention for Rupert to attack the enemy. The scale of the defeat shook Charles, but he could be philosophical about reverses, writing to Goring on another occasion: ‘We must expect disasters in war.’[fn2] Marston Moor certainly fell into this category: the biggest cavalry engagement of the war — indeed, probably the largest battle ever fought on English soil — had ended in disaster. However, Charles was loyal to his own blood, and Rupert’s past successes meant that even a debacle of this magnitude could be digested without censure.
The king’s attitude denied Digby the opportunity to celebrate his rival’s fiasco openly. Besides, the consequences of the defeat for the Royalist cause were too serious for obvious point-scoring. Digby’s attacks had to be covert. He threw Rupert’s failure into relief by emphasising others’ heroics: ‘Noble General,’ he wrote to Goring, with a Classical flourish, ‘As we owe you all the good of the day in the Northern battle, so we owe you all the good news from thence.’[fn3] Next, Digby fomented suspicion that Rupert was too pig-headed to be an effective general: ‘It is given out here’, a friend warned the prince from Oxford, ‘that your commanders are unsatisfied, because you hear only private counsels, and never hear their opinions concerning your business.’[fn4]
Digby used the moment to settle other scores. The secretary of state had fallen out with Lord Wilmot — Rupert’s Lieutenant General of Horse had tired of Digby’s slyness and was exasperated by his negative influence on the king. Wilmot was the epitome of the roistering, drunken Cavalier, caricatured in Puritan propaganda, but he was also a loyal and experienced general, not without talent, whose men loved him. As Clarendon observed: ‘He had, by his excessive good Fellowship (in every part whereof he excelled, and was grateful to all the Company) made himself so popular with all the Officers of the Army, especially of the Horse, that he had, in truth, a very great Interest.’[fn5]
In the summer of 1644, disgruntled and drinking heavily, he allowed his hatred for Digby to seep into the open: ‘Wilmot continued still sullen and perverse,’ Clarendon wrote, ‘and every day grew more insolent, and had contracted such an animosity against Lord Digby and the Master of the Rolls, that he persuaded many officers of the army, especially of the horse, where he was most entirely obeyed, to join in a petition to the King, that those two councillors might be excluded, and be no more present in councils of war, which they promised to do.’[fn6] Wilmot had underestimated his enemy, however. By declaring his hand, he left himself vulnerable to Machiavellian revenge.
As the summer progressed, Digby closely monitored this noisy threat to his position. He made sure that Wilmot’s increasingly outspoken comments were relayed to the king, with the least generous interpretation attached. Wilmot’s bravery at the battle of Cropredy Bridge saved him for a while, but when it was reported that he was in secret communication with the Earl of Essex, Digby encouraged the king to strike.
On 8 August 1644, the knight marshal, Sir Edward Sydenham, arrested Wilmot at the head of his men. The charge was high treason. Wilmot was ordered to dismount his horse and follow Sydenham into custody. Wilmot’s loyal officers greeted this dramatic move with seething disbelief — at one point, full-blooded mutiny seemed likely. Charles felt compelled to ride up to each regiment to restore order in person, offering an explanation for Wilmot’s arrest that had been concocted by Digby: Wilmot’s detention was, the king assured the cavalry, only temporary; George Goring would replace him for the time being. Meanwhile, Charles lied, it was Prince Rupert who had recommended the arrest.
It is hard to disagree with Warburton’s view that: Digby must have hugged himself on the contrivance of making his other great enemy, Rupert, appear to be the mover in this transaction.’[fn7] Digby’s removal of Wilmot from his power base, and his blaming the prince for such an unpopular step, was a masterstroke.
By this stage, Rupert was making as little effort as Wilmot to hide his contempt for Digby. Charles, blind to his secretary of state’s wiles, wrote pleading for a change of heart:
Nephew,
Digby, whom I must desire you (for my service’s sake because he is a useful servant) so far to countenance as to show him a possibility to recover your favour, if he shall deserve it, which I hope he will; and if not he shall repent it too late. Not doubting that for my sake but ye will make this act a greater experiment; for I assure you that, as to me, you are and shall be capable to oblige any of my servants …[fn8]
Digby, for his part, hid his dislike for Rupert under a veneer of flattery. ‘There is no occasion of my enlarging your Highness’s trouble at this present,’ he wrote to the prince, ‘further than to assure you of the great comfort and new life, as it were, which it gives to those who have the honour to be trusted by your Highness, to think that our army shall shortly be again animated by your spirit.’[fn9]
Rupert greeted this obsequiousness with disdain. He wrote in cipher to his great friend and ally, Will Legge: ‘Digby makes great professions and vows to Rupert; but it will do no good upon him. Great factions are breeding against Rupert, under a pretence of peace; he being, as they report, the only cause of war in the kingdom. This party is found out, but no particulars proved: they will be, and then the King did promise to punish, or there will be no staying; which else Rupert is resolved to do, since the King’s friends are in no very good condition, and he hath promised me fair; it is well if half performed.’[fn10] Rupert knew that Digby was at the forefront of his Royalist enemies. He hoped that, once revealed in his true colours, Digby would lose the king’s patronage.
*
The latter months of 1644 produced mixed fortunes for Charles I’s cause. There had been a welcome victory at Lostwithiel, in Cornwall, when the king led his troops in a pincer movement that trapped the Earl of Essex’s army on the west of the Fowey peninsula. The rebel infantry surrendered en masse, but Essex escaped to the waiting navy in a rowing boat, and his cavalry successfully broke out to freedom when they should have been taken. Charles misguidedly allowed the defeated foot soldiers to march away unharmed, rather than be imprisoned. He could ill afford to gift his enemies thousands of troops at such a time, but the desire to be seen as a magnanimous victor was too great to resist.
Rupert, worried that the king’s success might breed overconfidence, made his uncle promise that he would immediately head back with his men to Oxford. However, to Rupert’s intense annoyance, Charles was instead persuaded by Goring to attempt an attack on Waller, before trying to take two enemy strongholds. These delays gave the Parliamentarians the chance to catch up with the king and led to the Second Battle of Newbury — a messy and indecisive affair, fought at the end of October, at which the Royalist army was fortunate to escape serious casualties. Waller and Manchester expected too much from their artillery, an extended bombardment stopping their infantry and cavalry from joining in a concerted attack. Prince Maurice succeeded in drawing his battered infantry off into the safety of the night, while Charles rode with his lifeguards to join Rupert in Bath.
There were reports that, in the autumn, Rupert had sunk into a depressed state. Arthur Trevor infers in his letters that the prince indulged in the sort of loose living that he was frequently accused of by Parliament, but for which no other evidence exists. He seems to have finally succumbed to the constant assaults of his courtier enemies. He also appears to have reacted to his summer defeat, one Parliamentary commentator noting that Rupert: ‘was grown dogged with the frowns he had for his miscarriage at Marston Moor, and would not come near his Majesty.’[fn11] Exhaustion no doubt played a part: he had been frenetically active for two years and even his famously robust constitution had reached its limits.
On 6 November 1644, Charles demonstrated that memories of Marston Moor were banished, by bestowing on his nephew his greatest show of favour to date. During a general rendezvous of the king’s forces on Bullingdon Green: ‘The Prince was declared General of the Army and Master of the Horse’,[fn12] the author of Prince Rupert’s diary recorded — a succinct sentence, but a mighty promotion. The 24-year-old Rupert replaced the doddery, alcoholic, and recently wounded Earl of Forth as commander of all the king’s armies. However, Rupert was keen not to play into Digby’s hands, by being seen to overreach himself. He cleverly insisted that his cousin the Prince of Wales bear the title of General of the Royal Army, while he settled for the rank of lieutenant general, his main task the coordination of the king’s war plans.
Rupert’s critics mourned Forth’s replacement. ‘The King’s Army was less united than ever,’ Clarendon gauged, ‘the old General was left aside, and Prince Rupert put into the command, which was no popular change: for the other was known to be an officer of great experience, and had committed no oversights in his conduct; was willing to hear every thing debated, and always concurred with the most reasonable opinion: and though he was not of many words, and was not quick in hearing, yet upon any action he was sprightly, and commanded well. The Prince was rough, and passionate, and loved not debate; liked what was proposed, as he liked the persons who proposed it; and was so great an enemy to Digby and Culpepper, who were only present in debates of the War with the Officers, that he crossed all they proposed.’[fn13]
Rupert took advantage of his new powers to promote his most stalwart supporter, his brother Maurice, who took command of Wales and the Welsh Borders. Rupert also secured Goring’s promotion to General of Horse. The king soon went further, entrusting Goring to lead all his forces in the southwest. To Rupert’s fury, Goring managed to secure the dispensation that he had previously insisted upon for himself, receiving his orders directly from the king. When the Royalists most needed unified command, Charles gave them division.
The transfer of Rupert, Maurice, and Goring to new postings was the most significant change to take place on the Royalist side during the winter of 1644-5, a season that the rebels were to use to far greater effect.
*
Prince Rupert returned to Oxford in early November, going into winter quarters to prepare for the 1645 campaign. His priority was to claw provisions from every available recess in the kingdom, so the Royalists could supply their men in the field. Although Rupert approached these duties with purpose, he was unable to overcome a general breakdown in discipline. Charles could not afford to pay or feed his soldiers regularly and, in lieu of wages, he allowed his men to take matters into their own hands. Sometimes, this took a practical form: soldiers cut down a coppice in Brasenose, meeting a shortage of wood in Oxford, and kept the income for themselves. However, elsewhere pillaging became more frequent. A disgusted Parliamentarian wrote, in late November: ‘The King’s Party from Oxford have lately plundered Wantage, which is about ten miles from Oxford; and have taken all away from the poor inhabitants that was portable, leaving them poorer, and more miserable, than ever.’[fn14]
This disintegration of order was accompanied by war-weariness: the king’s soldiers, under pressure throughout 1644, had marched from pillar to post in an effort to keep his cause alive. Now there was a growing sense, almost tangible in Oxford, that the conflict would be lost. A peace party emerged, led by Richmond, Clarendon, and Lord Southampton. Rupert found he increasingly sympathised with them: nobody had a greater appreciation of the Royalists’ weaknesses than he, whose job was to paper over the ever widening cracks.
Rupert also saw that Charles’s prospects were compromised by the poor quality of his closest advisers. This problem grew more serious when the king decided, for safety’s sake, to send his eldest son to establish a secondary court in Bristol: Richmond, and many of the rest of Charles’s wiser counsellors, accompanied the Prince of Wales to the southwest. Digby and John Ashburnham — the treasurer of the Royal army — were left behind, their self-interest undimmed and their guidance as flawed as ever.
Towards the end of the year, Rupert appeared to be in the ascendant over his rivals. Parliamentarians reported with optimism: ‘Let me tell you, the power of Digby and the rest of the Irish [i.e., Roman Catholic] rebels faction is not so great with the King, at least, it is so given out, to the end we may think so, the more so sweeten them at Oxford in the opinion of us here: and none more forward to make peace, than Prince Rupert …’[fn15]
Rupert, as commander of the army, was asked by the king to write a letter inviting peace negotiations. He addressed Essex, on 5 December:
My Lord,
I am commanded by his Majesty to desire of your Lordship safe conduct for the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Southampton, with their attendants, coaches, and horses, and other accommodations fitting for their journey towards London, during their stay, and in their return, when they shall think fit, from the Lords and Commons Assembled in the Parliament of England at Westminster, to bring to the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England, and the Commissioners of the Kingdom of Scotland now at London, an answer to the Propositions sent to his Majesty, for a safe and well grounded peace.
Your Lordship’s servant
Rupert[fn16]
It was far removed from his cocksure letter to Essex two years earlier, challenging the lord general to a duel. Indeed, the prince’s acknowledgement of Parliament as the legitimate assembly in England was an act of unprecedented humility. This concession had been agreed on by a majority of Charles’s advisers (a vote from which Rupert abstained, seeing himself as merely the communicator of his colleagues’ will). It was seen as a promising gesture in Westminster, the author of the rebel news-sheet Mercurius Britannicus writing: ‘This is so: we have Rupert’s hand for it, and the Duke [Richmond], and the Earl [Southampton], are continually expected here: This acknowledging of a Parliament is a good beginning, and gives great hope, that there may be a fair proceeding; whereas the want of this formal acknowledgement was a long time as a great gulf betwixt us and Peace.’[fn17]
However, Richmond and Southampton were unable to persuade Parliament to withdraw its more contentious demands. These were contained in ‘The Humble Desires and Propositions for a safe and well-grounded Peace’, the usual uneasy rebel blend of blind optimism, sensible compromise, and wilful insult. The fourteenth clause specified: ‘That the persons who shall expect no Pardon, be only these following: …’. There then followed more than fifty names of prominent Royalist generals, advisers, and priests. The first two were: ‘Rupert and Maurice, Count Palatines of the Rhine …’. There were many other points that Charles could not possibly accept, but leaving his most loyal followers vulnerable to retribution was one of the more compelling reasons for continuing the war.
Denied peace, singled out by Parliament as his uncle’s chief ‘malignant’, and exhausted by the court’s shenanigans, rumours circulated that Rupert would look to continue his military career overseas. ‘Nay, it is affirmed by some (who seem to know much),’ asserted the London Post, in mid December, ‘that Prince Rupert himself is now inclined to peace, whether he is weary of war finding it to be carried on in no part of Christendom, with greater violence, or whether England being now sufficiently wasted, he would exchange the wants of England, for the plenty and wealth of Venice: you heard that he hath been sent for by the States of Venice to be one of their Generals in their wars. Indeed, he hath a name in arms beyond the seas.’[fn18]
Yet Rupert still had an important role to play at the head of his uncle’s forces. His personal charisma was a potent weapon and wherever he travelled the Royalist cause prospered. However, the prince could not be everywhere at once, a fact bemoaned by colleagues reliant on the magic of his presence: ‘Your highness’s absence had cooled the affection of many,’ Dudley Wyatt wrote from Shropshire, in January 1645, ‘and consequently the hope of impunity raised many mutinous spirits.’[fn19] ‘The want of your Highness’s presence in these parts’, echoed Sir John Byron, writing from Chester three months later, ‘(though occasioned by inevitable incidents) & the continuance of the Rebels’ army so near unto us hath begot so much despair amongst all people here, that unless some speedy hopes of relief be given them, I much fear either a general revolt or neutrality …’.[fn20]
The continuation of war was a draining affair. Supplying armies was costly and complicated, and manning them was ever more difficult: years of armed conflict had taken their toll, not just in lives lost, but also in incapacitating many survivors. Lorentz Gamb bowed out of the contest with a wonderfully understated adieu to Prince Maurice, in which he made light of a skirmish that had cost him many men, as well as his health: ‘For my part I hardly escaped with life having five deep wounds in my hand and right arm, whereof I doubt but I shall be lame forever … I, having so escaped, could get not as much as quarter for myself, nor surgeon for [my] maimed soldiers, but was forced to leave each one to seek his fortune. Wherefore I humbly desire that your highness may be pleased to give me your recommendation in writing to his Majesty for my three years service, having lost all, and nothing wherewithal to subsist, and that your princely brother (whom heavens preserve) be not ignorant of it, thus praying for your happiness, and continual success, I rest your highness’s most humble servant during life.’[fn21]
Other avenues now had to be explored, to bring new recruits to the Royalist cause. Henrietta Maria secured an audience with Cardinal Mazarin, at which she hoped to persuade her native France to support her husband. However, Parliament knew of France’s military distractions on the Continent: ‘What reason have the French’, enquired one rebel commentator, ‘to pull an old house upon their heads in England, when with less money they may get new ones from Spain, and keep them when they have them without charge?’[fn22] Not even Henrietta Maria’s insistent pleas could divert France’s troops from the Thirty Years’ War.
Parliament faced similar problems with manpower and supply. At the end of 1644, Cromwell complained to his civilian masters that without more money to pay and feed his men, he would be unable to guarantee their future loyalty. He also became increasingly outspoken in his desire to push for victory, criticising those who failed to share his focus. There had been a suspicion earlier in the war that the Earl of Essex was reluctant to defeat his monarch: this would explain his failure to ram home advantages in the field. Now, Cromwell vented his distrust of the Earl of Manchester, whose reasonable weighing up of the odds facing the rebels — that one defeat could cost them their lives — was presented as defeatism. To the shock of many of his comrades, Cromwell declared that if he came across the king in battle, he would shoot him dead as happily as he would slay any lesser adversary.
Cromwell pushed for the transformation of the Parliamentary high command. He supported the Self-Denying Ordnance, which forbade Members of the Lords or Commons from serving as officers in the army. Cromwell was one of the few exceptions, receiving short-term commissions that recognised his indispensability in either sphere. However, the aristocratic generals who had failed to win the war thus far were jettisoned — their place was now in London, advising, rather than on the battlefield, fighting.
Parliament’s military capability was reinforced by Christian probity. Cromwell had bemoaned the inferior quality of the rebel troopers at Edgehill. He now harnessed religious fervour to his cause, turning his fighting East Anglians into some of the finest, most disciplined regiments engaged in the Civil War. Twelve years earlier British observers felt they had identified the secret to King Gustavus Adolphus’s success in war: ‘Fighting and Praying, and Praying and Fighting: thus hath the King of Sweden learn’d to conquer.’[fn23] Strong Protestant ethics, insisted upon by an uncompromising leader, had proved an irresistible aid on the battlefield.
The correlation between godliness and military effectiveness was recognised by both sides: the Bishop of Derry, preaching to Royalists in York in early 1644, had chided the worldly excesses of some in his congregation, promising that more devotion would lead inevitably to battlefield success: ‘It is a slander cast upon Religion,’ he claimed, ‘that it makes men cowards. The fear of God is the best armour against the fear of man. Religion is the root of Courage.’[fn24] Seven years later the Chief Justice of Munster was to expand on the same theme: ‘For not only that knowledge which is divine is from God, but skill in arms and expertness in wars, which though it may in a great measure be acquired by natural valour and understanding, voluntary industry, and long experiences, yet considering how many veteran Commanders of noble extraction and education, famous in feats of chivalry; have been foiled, broken in pieces, and beaten at their own weapons by a few gentlemen (in comparison) and … mechanics and honest tradesmen, whose hearts the Lord hath drawn forth and engaged to fight his battles; we must needs acknowledge, that their valour, prowess and dexterity hath either been infused by God, or improved by him to a miraculous proficiency.’[fn25]
Sir Thomas Fairfax, the rebel commander, shared this creed. He borrowed from rigid Puritanism to bring a level of order to his troops that the Royalists could not match. During the winter of 1644-5, while peace negotiations between the two sides played out with their customary futility, Parliament built on the foundations of tight order revealed at Marston Moor. The result was England’s first truly professional fighting force, the New Model Army. It numbered 22,000 — a third of all rebel land forces.
The New Model Army’s cavalry and dragoons were of high quality, many drawn from Cromwell’s Eastern Association. The infantry was of less impressive heritage, many of them pressed men. However, once enlisted, they were obliged to observe ‘The Articles of War’, a rigid code of conduct with swingeing penalties for the disobedient: if a soldier swore, he was fined; if he blasphemed, he had his ‘tongue bored with a red-hot iron’; if he indulged in ‘rapes, ravishments and unnatural abuses’, he was executed. In return for accepting these conditions, Fairfax promised his men ‘coat and conduct money, wages and entertainments, and other necessary charges and allowances’.[fn26]
When the New Model Army marched out of Windsor, on 30 April 1645, Rupert had nothing to match it.
*
Fairfax was eager for action, but he found his enemy reluctant to fight. When he turned towards Taunton, the Royalists lifted their siege; when the New Model Army swivelled round to invest Oxford, Charles and his nephews marched quickly into the Midlands at the head of 11,000 men, leaving Will Legge to hold the town.
At the end of May the Royal field army proceeded to Leicester. Rupert’s demands of immediate surrender, coupled with threats of dire consequences if denied, were twice rejected. On the last day of the month he stormed the city, the charge led by the 500 infantrymen of Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats, their battle cry ‘God and the Prince!’ The deterioration in discipline in the Royalist army was revealed in the performance of this crack unit: ‘Rupert’s regiment got in with the first’, the Parliamentary journal Mercurius Britannicus recorded with disgust, ‘that was for the plunder, else you should have seen them hang an arse, as if they were going to a sermon.’[fn27] In all, the pillaging Royalists amassed ‘140 cart loads of the best goods and wares in the shops’[fn28] and sent them off to Newark for safekeeping.
The capture of Leicester was a huge fillip to the Royalists. With Clarendon reporting excellent recruiting figures from the southwest and Montrose prospering in Scotland, the king wrote to Henrietta Maria that things had never looked so promising for his cause. It seemed that Prince Rupert’s elevation to chief command had resulted in a sudden sea change in the king’s fortunes. Charles looked forward to a decisive conclusion to the war — ‘the last blow in the business’.
Parliament quit all its garrisons around Leicester and gloom spread among its supporters throughout the Midlands. ‘I am most heartily sorry for the ill success of our forces in all parties,’ wrote Sir Samuel Luke from Newport Pagnell, on 6 June, ‘which hath caused a dead heartedness in all people, that they are struck with such a panic fear, that, if I am not deceived, the Parliament cause was never in so declining a condition as at present.’[fn29]
The Royalist council of war debated how to capitalise on their unexpected advantage. There were three choices: to head west, to Worcester, and join up with Sir Charles Gerard’s army; to march north, to relieve Carlisle and fight the Scots; or to return to Oxford, and force Fairfax to lift the siege. Digby and his faction were for the Oxford option, playing on the king’s sense of chivalry by emphasising the plight that the ladies would face if the town fell and the victorious attackers had their way with them. Rupert was eager to push northwards again: he wanted to avenge Marston Moor, but also to appease the Northern Horse, whose troopers were desperate to return home. The debate was heated, the civilian courtiers fighting hard to re-establish influence after a period when Rupert and his military allies had held sway.
To the prince’s intense disappointment, Charles decided to march to the relief of Oxford. However, the Royal army had only reached Daventry when news came that Fairfax had abandoned his siege. This prompted a jubilant letter from Prince Rupert to Will Legge: ‘There was a plot to send the King to Oxford, but it is undone. The Chief of the Council was the fear some men [Digby and Ashburnham] had that the soldiers should take from the influence which now they possess with the King.’[fn30]
But, rather than push northwards as he had promised, Charles led his senior officers in a series of stag-hunts through the Northamptonshire countryside.
*
It was now that the Self-Denying Ordnance showed its worth: Essex, Manchester, and Waller were among those who pooled their combined battlefield experience in the Committee of Both Kingdoms in London, directing the generals in the field. There had been concern that Fairfax was hot-headed and would therefore be best deployed in the static business of siege warfare. But all appreciated that a crucial battle was now in the offing. The Moderate Intelligencer reported: ‘The fighting at this time is a business of great hazard to both parties, and he that hath the victory will gain much by it.’[fn31] It was essential, in such circumstances, for the field commander to have strategic independence and to be given the lieutenants that he wanted: Fairfax was given the freedom to act on his own initiative; Cromwell was given temporary command of the horse, as lieutenant general. The two men were ordered to unite their forces and bring the king to battle at the earliest opportunity.
On 12 June patrols from the two armies stumbled on each other just outside Northampton. Charles ordered a hasty retreat towards Leicester. The following night, it was later claimed, the king had a dream in which the ghost of the Earl of Strafford appeared, advising him not to give battle. Charles was roused from his sleep with news that Fairfax was closing in on the Royalists faster than had been thought possible. He summoned a midnight council of war at which Digby, Ashburnham, and their acolytes urged the king to turn and fight — underestimating a force that they had contemptuously nicknamed ‘the New Noddle’. They argued that it would be folly not to face the enemy so soon after it had failed in its siege of Oxford: the rebels must be demoralised by this failure and their own men would be dispirited if denied the chance of a great victory.
Rupert was equally insistent that it would be madness to risk all on the battlefield, while still at a numerical disadvantage. He advocated retreating to Leicester until reinforcements arrived. Gerard was expected at any moment, as was Goring, who had pleaded with the king to avoid battle until his return from the siege of Taunton. Goring’s cavalry was the pick of the Royalist horse, containing squadrons that had triumphed at Cropredy Bridge and helped save the day at the Second Battle of Newbury. Leicester’s walls had been quickly patched up, the weak points exploited by Rupert made strong, and the size of the Royalist army would make the speedy taking of the city impossible.
Charles, yet again, and this time disastrously, disregarded his nephew and opted to accept Digby’s advice. It ranks alongside his order to Rupert the previous summer — to fight the Anglo-Scottish army outside York — as one of the greatest strategic mistakes that the king made during the Civil War.
*
The point chosen by Rupert to meet Fairfax and Cromwell was near to the village of Naseby. It was suited to his smaller numbers: only a mile wide, there were gorse bushes along the east side of the field and cramped enclosures to the west, ruling out rebel flanking attacks. Both armies would start the day by occupying opposing hills and the outcome would be decided at the dip of the parabola between them. This was a site that demanded victory: there was no hiding place for the defeated in the sweeping countryside beyond. The prince had been commanded to fight, so he had selected a killing zone where he would risk all.
In the early morning of Saturday, 14 June 1645, Rupert’s scouts erroneously reported that Fairfax was in retreat. In fact, the rebels were simply rearranging their lines to take advantage of the wind. Believing this faulty intelligence, the prince despatched a messenger to find his uncle, so the Royalists could be immediately unleashed on a disordered enemy.
By nine o’clock the Royalists were ready for action. The prince, resplendent in a scarlet cape, opted to lead the charge of his right-hand cavalry wing. Astley again commanded the infantry centre and Marmaduke Langdale rode at the head of the Northern Horse, on the left-hand wing. To distinguish themselves from the rebels, they tied beanstalks to their helmets. They were given as their battle cry, ‘Queen Mary’. The entire army was only 9,000 men.
Rupert dispensed with the traditional preliminaries of artillery bombardment. Cannon fire had reaped few benefits in previous battles for either side and, besides, the prince had only twelve guns. He chose, instead, to close with the enemy along his entire front.
Fairfax commanded his infantry at the centre, with Cromwell to his right and Ireton to his left, opposite Rupert. Cromwell’s recent arrival in the rebel camp with 4,000 men, meant that the Parliamentarians had 16,000 soldiers, outnumbering the Royalists by nearly two to one. They wore no distinguishing marks and their battle cry was ‘God is our strength’.
Both sides had agreed to engage and on spying one another across the valley early in the morning, the armies had each signalled their thirst for action with gigantic roars. Everyone knew what was at stake: ‘About eleven o’clock,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘the trumpets began to sound, the drums to beat, the horses to neigh and prance, and now thought both sides, An afternoon for a Kingdom: Caesar or nothing was we suppose the voice of one army, The Liberties of England of the other: and thus they charged each other with all their might and equal courage.’[fn32]
Naseby was, in many ways, a fitting military climax to the Civil War, various episodes within its furious energy reminiscent of previous engagements. As at Edgehill and Marston Moor, Rupert’s cavaliers were magnificent in attack, drawing admiration from enemy onlookers. Colonel Okey commanded Parliament’s dragoons drawn up behind a hedge, who fired their muskets into the flank of Rupert’s cavalry as they passed. Okey was moved to record the stirring sight of ‘the Royalists moving on in a very stately and gallant style’ as they galloped past him.[fn33] Another rebel conceded that Rupert’s wing charged ‘with such gallantry as few in the Army ever saw the like’.[fn34] Ireton’s men were broken and their leader received two wounds.
With the rest of the Royalist army heavily outnumbered, it was essential that Rupert should now wheel his soldiers about and bring them swiftly back to the battlefield for further action. However, he instead led his men to the enemy baggage train. Colonel Bartlett, commander of its guard, was intrigued to see a red-caped cavalryman trot up to him and assumed that the man greeting him with such civility was Fairfax. Taking his hat off, Bartlett asked how the day was going. He did not receive the answer he was expecting: to his astonishment, a Parliamentary correspondent reported, ‘The Cavalier whom we since heard was Rupert, asked him and the rest, if they would have quarter, and they cried no, gave fire and instantly beat them off.’[fn35] Bartlett’s stubborn resistance detained the prince and his men for a crucial period, when their services were urgently needed elsewhere.
The Northern Horse, demoralised and tired, made up the left-hand cavalry wing. They had long wanted to return to their homes, to protect their lands and families. The king’s refusal to honour his promise to head northwards, after the abortive lunge towards Oxford, had left them mutinous and distracted. Rupert ordered them to attack Parliament’s right wing, led by Cromwell — a manoeuvre that involved leaving a strong defensive position and charging uphill at a powerful and confident enemy. Many on both sides were veterans of Marston Moor and although the fighting was unforgiving, the result was similar. Langdale’s men were forced to retreat, at first in an orderly manner, picking their way through the gorse as they fell back. Eventually, though, the sheer weight of the Ironsides drove them from the field.
One of the broken Royalist cavalry regiments had embroidered their colours with the words, ‘Come, Cuckolds’, and had embellished this message with the image of a pair of horns. This flag was captured by the rebels, who then ‘held the Horns and Motto towards the Enemy, and so charged them’.[fn36] Both sides shared a common nationality that revealed itself in an exuberant irreverence and a very Anglo-Saxon sense of humour.
Charles’s infantry showed great courage, surprising the enemy with its resilience. It started the foot battle promisingly, locking with the first rebel brigades in the face of artillery and musket fire. The king’s musketeers discharged their weapons before falling on Fairfax’s troops, using their weapons as clubs, while the Royalist pikemen remained compact and focused, their points breaking their opponents’ line, which fell back. However, on reaching the top of the hill, an awful sight confronted them: two more lines of enemy, until now hidden from view, were standing in battle order, ready to receive them. Astley’s men faltered, knowing they could not hope to repeat their heroics once, let alone twice, more. At this moment, Cromwell’s cavalry reserves ploughed into them and the fields around Naseby village became a place of slaughter.
As Newcastle’s Whitecoats had done at Marston Moor, now Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats became martyrs in a hopeless cause. While many other Royalist infantry units accepted the inevitable and surrendered to Fairfax, the Prince’s infantry regiment levelled their pikes and chose to fight on. The arrival of rebel cavalry hastened their end, ‘… the right wing of our Horse (wherein the General was in person),’ remembered a Parliamentarian eyewitness, ‘charged in the flank of the blue regiment of the enemy’s Foot, who stood to it, till the last man, abundance of them slain, and all the rest surrounded, wounded, and taken’.[fn37] Fairfax called up his own regiment and a one-sided duel took place between the two commanders’ crack units, the rebels finishing off the Royalists by staving in their skulls with the butt ends of their muskets.
The king still hoped that the day could be his. Wearing gilt armour, he trotted round the beleaguered pockets of his remaining men shouting, ‘One charge more, gentlemen! One charge more, and the day is ours!’[fn38] But the sheer quantity of Cromwell and Fairfax’s men smothered any hopes Charles had of reconstituting his splintered force. The king called for those around him to join him in a desperate charge. He was about to gallop towards the enemy when one of his Scottish courtiers, the Earl of Carnworth, seized Charles’s bridle and chided the monarch for his foolhardiness: ‘Will you go upon your death in an instant?’[fn39] He then led the king away from the field, snuffing out the last hope of Royalist victory and precipitating the rout that saw the defeated break for Leicester, Lichfield, and Newark.
At Naseby 800 Royalists lost their lives, 500 on the battlefield and 300 cut down by Cromwell’s pursuing cavalry. Parliamentary pamphlets were abuzz with the scale of the victory, listing the officers taken in this, the decisive battle of the Civil War. Five thousand Royalists were captured, the majority infantry. Of these, 500 were officers: they were sent to London, to be paraded through the streets like vanquished barbarians, adding exotic colour to the scenes of triumph.
Savagery blossomed in the aftermath of the battle. The king’s army included female camp followers — officers’ wives, cooks and servants, whores — who were caught; many were killed, while others had their features slashed in acts of deliberate disfigurement. The false justification for this outrage was that these women were Irish Papists of no morality. The Irish were fair game in the minds of bigoted Puritans: a Parliamentary naval officer expressed commonly held contempt for them when he called them ‘that ungodly crew of Revolters’[fn40] and one of the propaganda sheets referred to them as ‘unnatural Monsters’.[fn41] The women’s murder and brutalisation was a result of rampant religious intolerance.
There was no shame at this bloodshed, an early battlefield report merely mentioning in passing: ‘The Irish women Prince Rupert brought on the field (wives of the bloody Rebels in Ireland — his Majesty’s dearly beloved subjects) our soldiers would grant no quarter to, about 100 slain of them, and most of the rest of the whores that attended that wicked Army are marked in the face or nose, with a slash or cut.’[fn42] Other pamphlets reckoned the number of women murdered between three and four hundred.
Early, excited reports that Prince Rupert had been taken alive proved to be unfounded: he slipped away, a commander who had suffered heavy battlefield defeat for the second time in a year. His sumpter horse was taken, as was his standard — along with those of his uncle, aunt, and brother. Two hundred wagons were filled by the victors with valuables and provisions — including, as one rebel recalled, ‘great store of biscuit and cheese, a seasonable refreshment for our soldiers that had marched so hard, and the night before had not a bit of bread to a regiment for their refreshment’.[fn43]
Of huge embarrassment to Charles was the discovery of the cabinet containing his personal correspondence with Henrietta Maria. This revealed him to be negotiating with foreign, Catholic powers to aid him against Parliament. Politically, these letters were catastrophic for the king. They played into the hands of his bitterest enemies, whose message was hateful distrust of a monarch they held responsible for all the misery of the war. When the king learnt that his cabinet was lost, he ordered that those who had failed to guard it properly should be hung.
*
There were many reasons why the battle of Naseby ended in disaster for Charles: he should not have fought when at such a numerical disadvantage; he would have been wise to await the arrival of Goring’s cavalry and Gerard’s foot; and the Northern Horse had betrayed their flickering morale in the face of Cromwell’s unblinking Ironsides. However, Rupert’s inability to learn from previous experience made defeat more likely and more complete.
If the prince had been in a fixed command post at Marston Moor, it is less likely that he would have lost the battle. However, he had been wrong-footed by the sudden enemy charge and then was forced to flee for his life. At Naseby, though, he had a choice. He could have left the right cavalry wing to Maurice, while keeping a controlling overview of the battle. Instead, he decided to lead the cavaliers’ assault.
Rupert’s private papers show that he had hoped to annihilate the squadrons opposing him quickly, then lead his men back to the battlefield, surprising Cromwell’s cavalry from the rear. But this was an ambitious plan that was always likely to fail. Even if Ireton’s men had put up weaker resistance, the sheer number of rebel foot soldiers arrayed in the folds of the land between Rupert and the rear of Cromwell’s position was always likely to be decisive. Attacking the baggage train was therefore probably not — as subsequent generations have been taught — yet another sign of hopeless, Cavalier, indiscipline. Rather, it was an attempt by Rupert to find an alternative route for his men, so they could swing round on the enemy’s unprotected rear. Whatever the hypotheses, the absence of the prince’s troopers from the centre of the battlefield proved catastrophic.
The Northern Horse’s reputation suffered greatly at Naseby. Both sides saw its retreat as a major contribution to the Royalist defeat: ‘Langdale’s brigade ran away basely, and lost the King the day’,[fn44] was the conclusion of one Parliamentarian. But blame for the misuse of a force low in morale, against the Puritan powerhouse of the New Model Army, must be laid at Rupert’s feet. It would have been wiser to leave them to fight a defensive battle while the right wing sallied forth with its customary verve; indeed, the infantry would also have been better off receiving, rather than initiating, an attack. A more considered general — someone like Lindsey, in fact — would have served his king better that day.
The prince had belatedly taken command of an army whose discipline — never its strong point — had gently unravelled during the course of the war. ‘Nothing could equal the gallantry of the Cavaliers,’ Parliament acknowledged with relief, ‘except their want of discipline.’[fn45] Rupert’s role had increasingly become that of a commissar, trying desperately to keep his forces provisioned and armed so the military struggle could continue. These priorities left him with little time to drill his men or to hone their military skills: the Royalist army had some fine units, but the majority suffered from any combination of war-weariness, homesickness, disillusionment, or a penchant for plunder. In the face of Fairfax and Cromwell’s New Model Army, aided by well-armed auxiliaries, they were shown up for the amateurs that many of them had always been.
To what extent one man can be blamed for a failure to deal with every aspect of a wide command, without committed support from the king or his council of war, is the yardstick against which Rupert should be judged as a commander. However, it is clear that Naseby was a mismatch, because Parliament’s army was more numerous and more professional than Charles’s force. The prince was left hoping for victory, in a battle that he did not want, as he tried to hold the Royalist cause together. Fairfax and Cromwell, meanwhile, had enjoyed the luxury of planning for a decisive engagement, and then had the calibre and weight of men to see their plans through.
Militarily, the commitment of his men to a battlefront advance against a superior enemy revealed Rupert’s misplaced optimism. A pair of pragmatists called his bluff: their military nous, supported by a sincere and deep-seated religious fervour, proved to be an irresistible combination. Naseby was Rupert’s last land battle as overall commander, fought when he was just 24 years old. It is as well to admit that, despite his startling bravery, his fighting skill, and his dynamic presence, he failed in this role.
The prince’s inability to play at politics left him exposed after Naseby. Digby blamed the prince for the defeat, pointing in particular to the failure to use artillery before battle was joined. But Rupert’s real crime had been allowing Digby to hold such sway over a malleable monarch. This time, the secretary of state could not resist the opportunity to kick his rival while he was down.