None of the men on the Parliamentary side who had received their training in the Continental armies amounted to much. On the Royalist side the only professional soldier who made his mark was Rupert; and Rupert, after a year or two, was decisively beaten by Cromwell—a great natural military genius, who, although a civilian till after forty, showed an astonishing aptitude in grasping the essentials of his new profession. His only military rival in the war was Montrose, who was also not a professional soldier.
Prince Rupert.
From the portrait by Vandyke at Hinchingbrooke.
By permission of the Earl of Sandwich.
In September King Charles had gathered a force of 10,000 men at Nottingham, while Essex was getting together a larger army not far off, at Northampton. The wealth of the kingdom was with the Parliament, which also possessed the arsenal, the fleet, and the principal ports. On the other hand, man for man, the King’s troops were superior to the Parliament’s, especially in the most dreaded arm of the service, the horse. The fervid zealots who, like John Bunyan, entered the Parliamentary army, were never in the majority, and needed peculiar training to bring out their remarkable soldierly qualities. The sober, thrifty, religious middle class—which was the backbone of the Parliamentary strength—had no special aptitude for military service. If its members could once be put in the army and kept there a sufficient length of time, their qualities made them excellent soldiers; but, as a whole, they were not men of very adventurous temper, and had had no such training in arms, or in the sports akin to war, as inclined them to rush into the army. On the other hand, the Royalist nobles and squires, and their game-keepers, grooms, and hard-riding kinsmen, with their taste for field-sports, their love of adventure, and their high sense of warlike honor, made splendid material out of which to organize an army, and especially cavalry. In consequence, for the first half of the war the Royalist cavalry was overwhelmingly superior to the Parliamentary cavalry, composed as it was of men bought with the money of the bourgeoisie, who had no particular heart in their work; who were timid horsemen and unskilled swordsmen. The difference in favor of the Royalist horse was as marked as the superiority of the Confederate horse in the American Civil War, under leaders like Stuart, Morgan, and Basil Duke; until time was afforded, in the one case for the growth of Cromwell, in the other for the development of leaders like Sheridan and Wilson.
Cromwell had already shown himself very active. He had seized the magazine of the Castle of Cambridge, and secured the University plate, which was being sent to the King. He had raised volunteers and expended money freely out of his own scanty means. His troop of horse was, from the beginning, utterly different from most of the Parliamentary cavalry; it was composed of his own neighbors, yeomen and small farmers, hard, serious men, whose grim natures were thrilled by the intense earnestness of their leader, and whom he steadily drilled into good horsemanship and swordsmanship. His chaplains always played an important part; one of them, Hugh Peters, was a man of mark, who joined ability to high character.
The King’s cavalry was led by Prince Rupert, a dashing swordsman and horseman, a born cavalry leader, who, though only twenty-three, had already learned his trade in the wars of the Continent. Rupert opened the real fighting, scattering a large body of Parliamentary horse in panic rout when he struck them near Powick, on the Severn.
In October the King marched on London, and at Edgehill met the army of Essex. Each side drew up, with the infantry in the centre, the cavalry on the flanks. On the King’s side there was much jealousy among the different generals, and some insubordination, but far more activity and eagerness for fight than the Parliamentary troops displayed. The battle was fought on the afternoon of October 23d, and the Parliamentary army was demoralized at the outset by the treacherous desertion of a regiment commanded by a man most inappropriately named Sir Faithful Fortescue. He moved out of the ranks and joined Rupert’s horse. Rupert charged with headlong impetuosity, and by his fury and decision so overawed the Parliamentary horse opposed to him that they did not wait the shock, but galloped wildly off, actually dispersing the nearest infantry regiments of their own side. Rupert then showed the characteristic shortcoming which always impaired the effect of his daring prowess. He never could keep his men in hand after they had scattered the foe; he never kept a sufficient reserve with which to meet a counter-stroke. None but a great master of war could withstand his first shock; but after the first shock he was no longer dangerous. At Edgehill his horse followed the routed left wing of the Parliamentarians until they became as completely scattered as their beaten foes. He struck the Parliamentary baggage-train, which was defended by Hampden with a couple of infantry regiments, and his scattered troopers were beaten back when he attempted to take it.
Meanwhile, the Royalist horse of the left wing had fallen with the same headlong fury on the Parliamentary right, but had only struck a small portion of the Parliamentary cavalry. These they drove in rout before them, themselves following in hot pursuit. The result was, that the bulk of the Parliamentary foot, and a portion of the right wing of the Parliamentary horse, including Oliver Cromwell’s troop, were left face to face with the Royalist foot, which was inferior in numbers; and falling on it, after a desperate struggle they got the upper hand and forced it back. Rupert at last began to gather his horse together to face the victorious Roundhead foot; and as night fell, the two armies were still fronting each other. The King advanced on London in November, but was unable to force his way into the city, and fell back.
The war had not opened well for the Parliamentary side, and their especial weakness was evidently in cavalry—the arm by which decisive battles in the open field were won. Cromwell, with unerring eye, saw the weakness and started to remedy it. It is about this time that his famous conversation with Hampden took place. Said Cromwell: “Your troops are most of them old decayed serving-men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and their troops are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons, and persons of quality; do you think that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and courage and resolution in them?... You must get men of a spirit; and take it not ill what I say—I know you will not—of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be beaten still.... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did, and from that day forward they were never beaten.”
The famous Presbyterian clergyman, Baxter, who was by no means friendly to Cromwell, described his special care to get religious men into his troop; men of greater intelligence than common soldiers, who enlisted, not for the money, but from an earnest sense of public duty. Naturally, said Baxter, these troopers “having more than ordinary wit and resolution had more than ordinary success.”