PRINCE RUPERT, K.G.
(From a painting by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery.)
On both sides, the generals possessed the training which their soldiers lacked. Essex had fought with honour in the Palatinate and Holland; Balfour, who led his cavalry, had served many years in the Dutch army. The King’s commander-in-chief, the Earl of Lindsey, was another Dutch officer, and Prince Rupert had seen some fighting under the Prince of Orange, and one disastrous campaign in Germany. Yet despite Rupert’s lack of experience the King gave him charge of all his horse as an independent command, and followed his advice rather than Lindsey’s in the ordering of the battle. One great advantage Charles had which counterbalanced the superior armament of the parliamentary forces. His cavalry was superior to theirs both in quantity and quality. He had four thousand horse to Essex’s three thousand, and his troopers were flushed with confidence by their easy victory in a skirmish near Worcester. Rupert resolved to utilise this advantage to the full. Massing the bulk of the cavalry on the right wing under his own command, he swept the horse opposed to him from the field, routed four regiments of Essex’s foot, plundered Essex’s camp at Kineton, and followed the fugitives for some miles. Wilmot, with the cavalry of the left, charged with like success, and even the reserves joined in the chase. Meanwhile, Essex and those of his foot regiments who stood firm attacked the royalist infantry front to front, while Balfour, with two regiments of cavalry forming the parliamentary reserve, fell upon their exposed flanks. The Earl of Lindsey was mortally wounded and made prisoner, the King’s standard taken and regained, several regiments were cut to pieces, and two only held their ground. When Rupert returned from the chase, his cavalry were too disordered to be brought to attack, but their arrival saved the King’s infantry from further attack, and night brought the dubious battle to a close. Before day broke, Hampden, with two fresh regiments of foot and ten troops of horse, joined Essex, and urged him to advance and drive the King from his position. Essex, discouraged by the misbehaviour of his cavalry, and by his heavy losses, was disinclined to risk anything, and retreated to Warwick. All the fruits of victory fell to the King, and, capturing Banbury Castle without a blow, he pursued his march to Oxford and made that city his headquarters for the remainder of the war (October 29th).
Early in November, Charles resumed his advance upon London. Reading was abandoned as he drew near, but by this time Essex had placed his army between the King and the capital, and there was no ground for the panic which filled the citizens. In the Parliament, the peace party for a moment gained the upper hand and sent commissioners to open negotiations. Charles expressed his willingness to treat, but said nothing about a suspension of hostilities, and still continued to advance. By his orders, on November 12th, Rupert, taking advantage of a mist which concealed his movements, fell upon Essex’s outposts at Brentford, and cut to pieces the two regiments of Holles and Brooke. Hampden came to their rescue and covered the retreat of the survivors, but Brentford was thoroughly sacked by the Royalists. The City expected to share the same fate, and, says Clarendon, “the alarum came to London with the same dire yell as if the army were entered their gates.” Negotiations were broken off, with loud accusations of treachery against the King. The train-bands rushed to arms, and, all night, regiments streamed forth from the City to reinforce Essex. Next day, Charles found twenty thousand men blocking his way at Turnham Green, while three thousand more occupied Kingston and threatened his line of retreat. Some cannon shots were exchanged, but the King was too weak to attack, and Essex too cautious. Once more Hampden urged him to action, and for a moment he seemed inclined to take the offensive. He had two men to the King’s one, and his citizen soldiers were eager to fight, and cheered “Old Robin” whenever he appeared amongst them. But, as after Edgehill, “the old soldiers of fortune, on whose judgment the general most relied,” were against fighting, and he called back Hampden, evacuated Kingston, and suffered Charles to draw off his troops undisturbed. The march on London was stopped, at least for this year; the shops of its citizens were safe, and neither “captain or colonel or knight-at-arms” threatened the “defenceless doors” of Puritan poets. Charles retired to Oxford; the parliamentary army went into winter quarters, and the campaign ended as indecisively as Edgehill had ended. With a larger and better equipped army, and with greater pecuniary resources at his disposal, Essex had throughout allowed the King to take the initiative, and neglected every opportunity offered him by fortune. Charles, on the other hand, as soon as he got together an army, adopted a consistent strategic plan, and pursued it with energy and even audacity. His outposts were now within thirty miles of London, and all over England his followers were gaining ground and gaining heart.
Ever since September, Cromwell had been serving under Essex, and this unsuccessful campaign was his sole training in the art of war. At Edgehill, his troops formed part of the regiment commanded by Sir Philip Stapleton, one of the two regiments which did such splendid service on that day. In later years, it pleased party pamphleteers to assert that he was not even present in the battle, but a contemporary account specially mentions Captain Cromwell in a list of officers who “never stirred from their troops, but fought till the last minute.” One lesson at least he learned at Edgehill: that was the necessity of keeping a reserve in hand, and the importance of energetically using it. Another thing which the battle taught him was that the Parliament’s arms would never be victorious till its cavalry was equal in quality to the King’s. Some of Essex’s foot regiments were excellent, but the ranks of his cavalry were filled with men attracted solely by high pay and opportunities of plunder-men who were neither soldiers nor good material for making soldiers. The consequences were what might have been expected. “At my first going out into this engagement,” said Cromwell, “I saw our men beaten at every hand.” Accordingly he spoke to his cousin, Hampden, and urged him to procure the raising of some new regiments to be added to Essex’s army.
“I told him I would be serviceable to him in bringing such men in as I thought had a spirit that would do something in the work. ‘Your troops,’ said I, ‘are most of them old decayed serving-men, tapsters, and such kind of fellows; do you think that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour, and courage, and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or you will be beaten still.’”
Hampden answered that the notion was a good notion, but impracticable. Impracticable was not a word which Cromwell understood. He obtained leave of absence for himself and his troop and went down into the eastern counties in January, 1643, “to raise such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they did.”
