After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that you know must be
After a famous victory.
—Southey.
Never, perhaps, had the hopes of Waller’s army been higher than on the morning of the 13th July as they encompassed the town of Devizes, the attack upon which had been fixed for that evening. Throughout the march from Bath they had been able to harass the rear of Hopton’s army: they had intercepted a convoy of ammunition coming from Oxford; and though Prince Maurice’s convoy had contrived to escape, they held Hopton and all his foot cooped up in Devizes with no match and very little powder.
While still suffering terribly from the effects of the explosion, the brave Royalist General had the wit to devise on his sickbed a plan for supplying match. He ordered the townsfolk to give the ropes which held up the sacking of their beds, and these, when boiled in resin, served very well for the emergency. Still, he was heavy-hearted, for he knew that the unfortified town could not long withstand such an attack as Waller was like to make, and in great suffering of body and anxiety of mind he lay musing over the dire misfortunes which had followed this army of the West.
The hours passed slowly by, and at length early in the afternoon he was roused by the approach of quick footsteps.
“Sir, sir,” cried Captain Nevill, eagerly, “we are, I trust, saved. Prince Maurice hath returned from Oxford bringing fresh troops under my Lord Wilmot. They are massed on Roundway Down.”