Men Who Have Made the Empire

by George Chetwynd Griffith

But Cromwell, profiting by the mistakes which Rupert himself had made in his headlong charges, kept his men well in hand, and when once the Royalist right wing was broken, led them round to see how the battle had gone on the Parliamentary right and centre.

If he had not done so Marston Moor might have replaced Charles Stuart on the throne of England. Goring had broken up Fairfax’s cavalry as completely as Oliver had broken up Rupert’s. He had flung them back upon their infantry supports, breaking these in turn, after which he flung himself with the seemingly triumphant Royalists of the centre on the Scots Infantry, taking them in flank and almost routing them, too. Only three regiments of them out of nine held their ground, the rest had broken and fled, and the Earl of Leven, their leader, was already making the best of his way towards Leeds.

The battle at this moment presented one of the strangest spectacles in the history of warfare. On the one side Prince Rupert with his broken brigades was flying towards the North, on the other Leven and Manchester and Fairfax, believing the day hopelessly lost, were making equal haste towards the South. Such was the juncture at which the Man of Destiny arrived. He was in command of the only really disciplined force on the field.

HE SWOOPED WITH HIS CAVALRY ROUND THE REAR OF THE KING’S ARMY.

Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his excellent monograph on Cromwell, thus graphically describes what happened: “In an hour the genius of Cromwell had changed disaster into victory. Launching the Scotch troopers of his own wing against Newcastle’s Whitecoats, and the infantry of the Eastern Association to succour the remnants of the Scots in the centre, he swooped with the bulk of his own cavalry round the rear of the King’s army, and fell upon Goring’s victorious troopers on the opposite side of the field. Taking them in the rear, all disordered as they were in the chase and the plunder, he utterly crushed and dispersed them. Having thus with his own squadron annihilated the cavalry of the enemy’s both wings, he closed round upon the Royalist centre, and there the Whitecoats and the remnants of the King’s infantry were cut to pieces almost to a man.”

Such was Marston Moor, and how completely it was the work of the one man of destiny may be seen in the fact that, complete and crushing as the victory was, its advantages were almost entirely negatived by the incapacity and imbecility of the Parliamentary leaders in the West and South. Every one of any consequence wanted to be supreme leader; no one had either definite plans or the capacity to carry them through; and when at last there was a prospect of bringing matters to an issue on the field of Newberry, the Royalist forces, though half-beaten, were allowed to get away with all their guns, stores, and ammunition in spite of the fact that Manchester was in command of a very superior force.

This was as good as a defeat for the forces of the Parliament, for it was the cause of dividing their councils. Manchester and those who sided with him had apparently begun to fear the terrible earnestness of the Captain of the Ironsides, and were for making peace with the King and patching matters up somehow. But Cromwell, with deeper insight, saw that the quarrel had now gone too far and that it could not stop till one side or the other had had a thorough and decisive beating, and that side he was fully determined should be the King’s.

The dispute ended in the fall of Manchester and the triumph of Cromwell. Then came the reorganisation of the Parliamentary forces under what was at this time the New Model, and this New Model, be it noted, was the first standing army of professional soldiers that the United Kingdom had ever seen. Its nominal Commander-in-Chief was Sir Thomas Fairfax, but its master spirit and guiding genius was Oliver Cromwell.

But meanwhile the tide of Royalism had been on the rise again, sweeping up from the West and South. The armies faced each other on the borders of Leicestershire, but Cromwell was not there. Fairfax, no doubt knowing his own weakness, entreated that he might come and command the horse. He came, and then, as Clarendon pathetically remarks, “the evil genius of the Kingdom in a moment shifted the whole scene,” and it is related that when, after rumours had been for some days flying through both armies as to his arrival, “Old Ironsides” at last came upon the field of action, all the cavalry of the Parliament raised a great shout of joy.