“Gentlemen, You have done me the Honour to choose me your Captain, and now is the fittest time that I may do you service; wherefore if you’ll follow me I shall lead you on the best I can, and show you the way to your own Honour”.
They were soon under fire and Newcastle led them against a regiment of Scottish infantry. By some ill-luck, or clumsiness, he lost his sword; but, although several officers immediately offered him theirs, he refused them and took his page’s little sword, which the Duchess tells us was “half leaden”. With this little weapon, however, he killed three Scots and led his company of volunteers right through the enemy’s regiment. Then he was brought to a standstill by a single brave Puritan pikeman, whom he charged three times without effect, but the courageous fellow was hacked down by the followers of Newcastle.
Meanwhile, Newcastle’s cavalry were doing splendidly on his left under Goring and Sir Charles Lucas, whose sister Newcastle subsequently married. She describes her brother as one who by nature “had a practick genius to the warlike arts, or Arts in War, as Natural Poets have to Poetry”. With regard to the Royalist cavalry, Mr. Fortescue, in his standard work, A History of the British Army,[104] writes of “the superiority of the Royalist cavalry. The long neglect of the mounted service left the supremacy to the ablest amateurs, and the majority of these, though there were hundreds of gentlemen on the Parliamentary side, were undoubtedly for the King. Nor was it only the courage, honour, and resolution of which Cromwell had spoken that favoured them; they had from the nature of the case better horses, a higher standard of horsemanship and equipment, a quicker natural intelligence and a higher natural training. The thousand lessons which the county gentlemen learned when riding with hawk and hound were of infinite advantage in the casual and irregular warfare of the first two or three years ... One fatal defect however marred what should have been a most efficient cavalry, the blot had been hit by Cromwell, indiscipline.”
[104] Vol. I, pp. 201-2.
It was with such cavalry as this that Goring and Sir Charles Cavendish charged on Marston Moor, on a day which, Mr. Fortescue says, “may indeed be termed the first great day of English cavalry”.
On the whole, Ethyn may have been right in blaming Rupert for drawing up his army close to the “great ditch,” but his having done so did him good service on his left flank; for, when Fairfax wished to charge Newcastle’s cavalry, he found the ditch impassable, and his only means of reaching his enemy to be an almost straight lane which ran at right angles to, and across, the ditch. Fairfax’s cavalry were only able to cross the bridge over the ditch “three or four” abreast, and it is surprising that they should have got over it at all, exposed as they were to the fire of musketeers lining the lane. The muskets of the period, however, could be reloaded but very slowly, and the heavy rain which was falling may have interfered with the priming and caused missfires. Nor did the Royalist artillery, likewise directed upon the bridge, but also probably hampered by the rain, very seriously cripple the invaders. Fairfax’s horse drove the Royalist gunners “from their cannon, being two drakes” (six-pounders) and a “demiculverine” (a nine-pounder).
What appears to have obstructed the progress of Fairfax’s cavalry even more than the musketeers, the drakes and the demiculverine, was a quantity of furze bushes and small ditches which they found lying between themselves and Newcastle’s horse, when they had got over the “great ditch”. The Royalist cavalry was also inconvenienced by these impediments, for both sides charged simultaneously. “We were a long time engaged with one another,” wrote Fairfax, who was unhorsed and received a deep cut across the cheek which marked him for the rest of his life. Sir Charles Fairfax and Major Fairfax were killed. “There was scarce an officer but received a hurt,” wrote Lord Fairfax. Sir William Fairfax led the Yorkshire foot across the ditch over Moor Lane Bridge; but the fire of Newcastle’s famous regiment of Whitecoats did this infantry more mischief than it had done to the cavalry; and the Yorkshire foot were driven back, thinned in numbers and completely demoralized by the gallant Royalists.
“On Marston, with Rupert, ’gainst traitors contending.” [105]
[105] “On Leaving Newstead Abbey,” Byron.