Fairfax refused to move from his strong position near Naseby, and the king, yielding to the importunity of his officers, gave the word to advance. Prince Rupert commanded on the right. The enemy fled before him; six pieces of cannon were taken, and Ireton, the general of the parliamentary horse, was wounded, and for some time a prisoner in the hands of the victors.[1] But the lessons of experience had been thrown away upon Rupert. He urged the pursuit with his characteristic impetuosity, and, as at Marston Moor, by wandering from the field suffered the victory to be won by the masterly conduct of Oliver Cromwell.
That commander found himself opposed to a weak body of cavalry under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. By both the fight was maintained with obstinate valour; but superiority of numbers enabled the former to press on the flanks of the royalists, who began to waver, and at last turned their backs and fled. Cromwell prudently checked the pursuit, and leaving three squadrons to watch the fugitives, directed the remainder of his force against the rear of the royal infantry. That body of men, only three thousand five hundred in number, had hitherto fought with the most heroic valour, and had driven the enemy's line, with the exception of one regiment, back on the reserve; but this unexpected charge broke their spirit; they threw down their arms and asked for quarter. Charles, who had witnessed their efforts and their danger, made every exertion to support them; he collected several
[Footnote 1: Ireton was of an ancient family in Nottinghamshire, and bred to the law. He raised a troop of horse for the parliament at the beginning of the war, and accepted a captain's commission in the new-modelled army. At the request of the officers, Cromwell had been lately appointed general of the horse, and, at Cromwell's request, Ireton was made commissary-general under him.—Journals, vii. 421. Rushworth, vi. 42.]
bodies of horse; he put himself at their head; he called on them to follow him; he assured them that one more effort would secure the victory. But the appeal was made in vain. Instead of attending to his prayers and commands, they fled, and forced him to accompany them. The pursuit was continued with great slaughter almost to the walls of Leicester; and one hundred females, some of them ladies of distinguished rank, were put to the sword under the pretence that they were Irish Catholics. In this fatal battle, fought near the village of Naseby, the king lost more than three thousand men, nine thousand stand of arms, his park of artillery, the baggage of the army, and with it his own cabinet, containing private papers of the first importance. Out of these the parliament made a collection, which was published, with remarks, to prove to the nation the falsehoods of Charles, and the justice of the war.[1]
[Footnote 1: For this battle see Clarendon, ii. 655; Rushworth, vi. 42; and the Journals, vii. 433-436. May asserts that not more than three hundred men were killed on the part of the king, and only one hundred on that of the parliament. The prisoners amounted to five thousand.—May, 77. The publication of the king's papers has been severely censured by his friends, and as warmly defended by the advocates of the parliament. If their contents were of a nature to justify the conduct of the latter, I see not on what ground it could be expected that they should be suppressed. The only complaint which can reasonably be made, and which seems founded in fact, is that the selection of the papers for the press was made unfairly. The contents of the cabinet were several days in possession of the officers, and then submitted to the examination of a committee of the lower house; by whose advice certain papers were selected and sent to the Lords, with a suggestion that they should be communicated to the citizens in a common hall. But the Lords required to see the remainder; twenty-two additional papers were accordingly produced; but it was at the same time acknowledged that others were still kept back, because they had not yet been deciphered. By an order of the Commons the papers were afterwards printed with a preface contrasting certain passages in them with the king's former protestations.—Journals, June 23, 26, 30, July 3, 7; Lords', vii. 467, 469. Charles himself acknowledges that the publication, as far as it went, was genuine (Evelyn's Memoirs, App. 101); but he also maintains that other papers, which would have served to explain doubtful passages, had been purposely suppressed.—Clarendon Papers, ii. 187. See Baillie, ii. 136.]
After this disastrous battle, the campaign presented little more than the last and feeble struggles of an expiring party. Among the royalists hardly a man could be found who did not pronounce the cause to be desperate; and, if any made a show of resistance, it was more through the hope of procuring conditions for themselves, than of benefiting the interests of their sovereign. Charles himself bore his misfortunes with an air of magnanimity, which was characterized as obstinacy by the desponding minds of his followers. As a statesman he acknowledged the hopelessness of his cause; as a Christian he professed to believe that God would never allow rebellion to prosper; but, let whatever happen, he at least would act as honour and conscience called on him to act; his name should not descend to posterity as the name of a king who had abandoned the cause of God, injured the rights of his successors, and sacrificed the interests of his faithful and devoted adherents. From Leicester he retreated[a] to Hereford; from Hereford to Ragland Castle, the seat of the loyal marquess of Worcester; and thence to Cardiff, that he might more readily communicate with Prince Rupert at Bristol. Each day brought him a repetition of the most melancholy intelligence. Leicester had surrendered almost at the first summons; the forces under Goring, the only body of royalists deserving the name of an army, were defeated by Fairfax at Lamport; Bridgewater, hitherto[c] deemed an impregnable fortress, capitulated after a[d]
[Transcriber's Note: No footnote 1 in the text]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth vi. 132. Clarendon, ii. 630.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645 July 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1645 June 17.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1645 July 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1645 July 23.]
short siege; a chain of posts extending from that town to Lime, on the southern coast, cut off Devonshire and Cornwall, his principal resources, from all communication with the rest of the kingdom; and, what was still worse, the dissensions which raged among his officers and partisans in those counties could not be appeased either by the necessity of providing for the common safety, or by the presence and authority of the prince of Wales.[1] To add to his embarrassments, his three[a] fortresses in the north, Carlisle, Pontefract, and Scarborough, which for eighteen months had defied all the efforts of the enemy, had now fallen, the first into the[c] hands of the Scots, the other two into those of the parliament. Under this accumulation of misfortunes many of his friends, and among them Rupert himself, hitherto the declared advocate of war, importuned him to yield to necessity, and to accept the conditions offered by the parliament. He replied that they viewed[d] the question with the eyes of mere soldiers and statesmen; but he was a king, and had duties to perform, from which no change of circumstances, no human power could absolve him,—to preserve the church, protect his friends, and transmit to his successors the lawful rights of the crown. God was bound to support his own cause: he might for a time permit rebels and traitors to prosper, but he would ultimately humble them before the throne of their sovereign.[2] Under