CHAPTER VI
MARSTON MOOR
1644

As yet neither party had decidedly gained the upper hand, though the tide seemed setting against the Parliament. Both parties, therefore, looked outside England for allies, one to make its success complete, the other to regain what it had lost. The King turned to Ireland, and to the army there, which with little support from the Parliament was striving to put down the rebellion. On September 15, 1643, Ormond, the Lord-Lieutenant, concluded a cessation of arms with the rebels, and was able to send several regiments of experienced soldiers to the King’s assistance during the following months. The English Puritans turned to their brethren in Scotland; in September, the Solemn League and Covenant pledged the two nations to unite for the reformation of religion according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed churches; in November, the Scottish Parliament agreed to send twenty-one thousand men to the assistance of the English Parliamentarians. In January, 1644, Alexander Leslie, now Earl of Leven, crossed the Tweed with the promised army.

The campaign of 1644 opened badly for the King. In January, Sir Thomas Fairfax defeated Lord Byron and the King’s Irish forces at Nantwich. In March, Waller defeated Hopton at Cheriton in Hampshire, and frustrated his intended advance into Sussex. In April, Newcastle, after striving in vain to bar Leslie’s progress in Durham, was forced to throw himself into York, where Leslie and the Fairfaxes besieged his army. In May, the forces of Waller and Essex advanced upon Oxford. The Royalists evacuated Reading and Abingdon, and Charles, fearing to be blockaded in Oxford, left the city to be defended by its garrison, and with about six thousand men made his escape to Worcester. But Essex, instead of pursuing and crushing the King’s weak army as he ought to have done, delegated the task to Waller, and set out himself to recover the south-western counties and relieve Lyme.

In April, while Waller and Essex were preparing for their movement on Oxford, the army of the Eastern Association under Manchester took the field. Its first business was to reconquer Lincolnshire,—the debatable land between the north and east,—for Rupert’s defeat of the besiegers of Newark in March, 1644, had thrown Lincolnshire once more into the hands of the Royalists. On May 6th, Manchester’s army recaptured Lincoln, and at the beginning of June he joined the two armies which beleaguered York with about nine thousand men. Of these nine thousand, three thousand were cavalry under the command of Cromwell. York held out stubbornly; some detached forts were taken and the suburbs burnt, but an attempted assault was bloodily repulsed. At the end of June, news came that Prince Rupert with fifteen thousand men had crossed the hills from Lancashire, and was marching to the relief of the city. The three generals, Leven, Fairfax, and Manchester, raised the siege in order to give battle to Rupert’s army, but when they assembled their forces on the south bank of the Ouse, Rupert crossed to the northern bank, and reached York without striking a blow. On the morning of July 2nd, the parliamentary generals, finding themselves outmanœuvred, and the resumption of the siege rendered impossible, were in full retreat to the south, when Rupert’s attacks on their rearguard forced them to halt and offer battle. They drew up their army on some rising ground between Tockwith and Marston, overlooking the open moor on which the Royalists had taken their post. Between the armies, and marking the southern boundary of the moor, ran a hedge, and ditch, which Rupert had lined with musketeers, and some similar obstacles strengthened the royalist left flank. Rupert’s army, reinforced by Newcastle’s forces from York, numbered about eighteen thousand men, while the Parliamentarians amounted to about twenty-seven thousand, but the Royalists had the advantage of a strong defensive position, and of open ground on which their cavalry could manœuvre freely.

For three hours the two armies faced each other in battle array; a few cannon-shots were exchanged, but neither army advanced. The Roundheads fell to singing psalms, and the royalist generals came to the belief that there would be no fighting that day. About five, the whole parliamentary line began to move forward, and Cromwell, with the cavalry forming its left wing, attacked Lord Byron and the royalist right. Cromwell had under his command all the horse and dragoons of the Eastern Association, half a regiment of Scottish dragoons, and three weak regiments of Scottish cavalry who formed his reserve,—in all not less than four thousand men, of whom one thousand were dragoons. The dragoons rapidly drove the royalist musketeers from the ditch, and enabled the cavalry to pass it. Cromwell led the way, and with the first troops who crossed charged the nearest regiment of Royalists. His own division, says a contemporary narrative, “had a hard pull of it; for they were charged by Rupert’s bravest men both in front and flank.” But as fast as they could form, the other troops of Cromwell’s first line charged in support of their leader, erelong the foremost regiments of the Royalists were broken, and, pursuing their victory, Cromwell’s men engaged the second line.

In this hand-to-hand combat Cromwell was wounded in the neck by a pistol-shot fired so near his eyes that it half blinded him, but, though for a short time disabled, he did not leave the field. Meanwhile Rupert himself, who had been at supper in the rear when the attack began, galloped up with fresh regiments and, rallying his men, drove back Cromwell’s troopers. It was but a temporary check, for David Leslie with Cromwell’s second line fell on Rupert’s flank, and the royalist cavalry was irretrievably routed. Sending the light Scottish regiments of the reserve in pursuit of the flying Cavaliers, Cromwell and Leslie reformed their tired squadrons, and halted to find out how the battle had gone in other quarters of the field. Tidings of disaster soon reached them, and it became plain that the battle was more than half lost for the Parliament. Sir Thomas Fairfax, wounded and almost alone, came with the news that the horse of the right wing under his command were defeated and flying. His own regiment had charged with success, and broken through the enemy; those who should have supported him, disordered by the furze and the rough ground they had to pass through to debouch upon the moor, had been charged by the Royalists, and completely scattered. The infantry of the parliamentary centre had fared little better. The advance had been at first successful all along the line, some guns had been taken, and the ditch passed. On the left, Manchester’s foot, led by Major-General Crawford, had outflanked the infantry opposed to them, and were still gaining ground. In the centre, Lord Fairfax’s foot and the Scottish regiments supporting them, repulsed by Newcastle’s white-coated north-countrymen, and trampled down by their own flying horse, were in full flight. On the right, the main body of the Scottish infantry was hard pressed; some regiments gave way as their brethren in the centre had done; others maintained their ground manfully. Yet with the centre of the parliamentary line pierced, and the cavalry of the right wing driven from the field, the position of these isolated regiments, exposed to attack in front and flank both, seemed hopeless. So thought old Leven, who, after striving in vain to rally the runaways, gave up the day for lost, and galloped for Leeds. Lord Fairfax, too, was carried off the field in the rout of his infantry, though he returned later.

While Goring’s victorious horse pursued the fugitives, or stopped to plunder the baggage, Sir Charles Lucas, with another division of Goring’s command, employed himself in attacking the Scottish infantry. Maitland’s and Lindsey’s regiments on the extreme right of the line stood like rocks, and beat off three charges with their pikes. Like their ancestors at Flodden, and with better fortune,

“The stubborn spearmen still made good

Their dark, impenetrable wood,