Cromwell

by Antonia Fraser

  Cromwell the hunter npw went by Newcastle and Brancepeth and pressed forward south roughly parallel to his prey, his determination on rapid pursuit seen by the fact that his men were allowed to march in their shirt-sleeves, while local horses were pressed into service to carry their outer clothing and arms. He was at Catterick by 16 August, having averaged twenty miles a day, an astonishingly high figure for infantry. Such a turn of speed brought its problems: on 21 August he wrote off to the Council of State requesting another two thousand men “for carrying on and finishing the business of Scotland” since his men were suffering and falling out from the long march. While Charles at Worcester wrote off desperately to city authorities elsewhere to rise on his behalf, Cromwell reached Rufford Abbey, near Mansfield, the home of his friend and fellow MP William Pierrepont. He then turned west, and at Warwick was joined by his brother-in-law Desborough with Lord Grey of Groby and another two thousand men. Two days later he wrote off for five thousand shovels, spades and pickaxes and a vast quantity of ammunition to come to Gloucester south of Worcester. It was clear that he expected to have to besiege the King.47

  But here the ill-luck of the Royalists continued. One man who had rallied to the King’s cause was the powerful territorial magnate the Earl of Derby, who had landed from the Continent in Lancashire on 17 August. He now had his force eliminated by Lilburne at Wigan, out of which disaster only Derby himself and a handful of men escaped to join the King within Worcester itself. Cromwell was by now at Stratford-onAvon; from here on 27 August he had the inclination to write “one bold word” to his friend Lord Wharton, begging him to overcome his scruples and associate himself willingly with what was clearly the Lord’s work, instead of reasoning himself out of His service. Other friends were named, including Hammond, who were allowing their consciences to thus misdirect them helping one another in a regrettable manner to “stumble at the dispensations of God”. Considering the pressures now upon Cromwell (“I have no leisure” he admitted to Wharton) the letter was a remarkable proof of his desire for unity in what he felt to be a righteous enterprise48. How could people, godly people, be so stubborn as not to realize where the divine will was pointing? By the same night, Cromwell and Fleetwood were together at Evesham, only fifteen miles south-east of Worcester, their combined forces totalling twenty-eight thousand men, and with the prospect of more to come from the raising of the militia.

  Within the depths of Worcester, Charles had only about half that number. Moreover his men were exhausted, depressed by the catalogue of failures, and lacked arms. Yet at least Worcester presented in itself a position of natural advantage spreading across the right bank of the broad river Severn as it flowed down to Bristol, and with a range of hills extending between the town and Evesham. The left bank was further guarded by a network of tributary rivers including the Teme. The Royalists, efficiently blowing up the four key bridges giving access to the city, prepared to sell their lives dearly. It was left to Cromwell to counter by sending Lambert ten miles south to Upton, also on the Severn, where he seized one of the bridges with the aid of the dragoons, and rebuilt it. Cromwell, himself, who by now had been almost continuously on the march for over three weeks (in weather which had included hail as big as musket balls, killing birds at Towcester, as well as hours of lightning) established himself at Spetchley Park, also south-east of Worcester.

  There was very little that the beleaguered Charles could do now with any true hope of success. The opposing forces, joined by men of the militia, now numbered over thirty-one thousand and the combination of Cromwell, Fleetwood and Lambert effectively ringed him round on the south and east, while new forces were hurrying to block any possible northern escape. Inside the city indecision was the order of the day: no one could decide what should best be done. Should they break out and dive for London? (In any case Cromwell was by now blocking the way.) Or should they simply make a foray to win new supplies? The one sensible suggestion – to make for Wales – was not adopted. One abortive breakout under Middleton and Keith on the 29th to try and crush the English guns’ position on the heights to the east of the city at Perry Wood was betrayed by a Puritan tailor of Worcester named Guise. Although he was hanged the next day, the Scots were pushed back.* ( * Later Cromwell, hearing of the incident and impressed by the tailor’s character – “the man (I am credibly informed) feared the Lord” – commended his widow and children to Parliament’s charily; but they had already been voted a gift of Ł200, and a further Ł2oo a year.49) On the same day Cromwell wrote back to London of his future plans: “We are thus advancing towards that city. And I suppose we shall draw very close to it. If they will come forth and engage with us we shall leave the issue to God’s providence, and doubt not to partake of glorious mercies. If they avoid fighting, and lead us a jaunt, we shall do as God shall direct.. .”50

  But there was a certain impression of leisure both in Cromwell’s letter and in his next preparations, which consisted of bombarding the town from Perry Wood. It was significant that it was almost exactly twelve months since the victory of Dunbar. He rode down to Upton to thank the men there for their work in recapturing the bridge and was received with rapturous acclaim by the troops. His letter two days later spoke of the enemy merely being still inside Worcester “and within a few days will have to fight or fly”. Cromwell clearly intended to attack Worcester from the west, in the open fields on the left bank of the Severn, rather than in the heavily defended east. For this a bridge of boats was needed, in the absence of any other form of bridge, across both Teme and Severn, for which heavy boats were towed upstream from Gloucester. Materials were gathered on Monday, 1 September and the two bridges, within “pistol-shot” of each other, were completed by Tuesday, 2 September. Yet it was not until the next day that at daybreak, exactly twelve months after the fateful dawn of Dunbar, the first action began. The conclusion that Cromwell, that master of the quick manoeuvre and surprise attack, dawdled infinitesimally but deliberately after the Council of War on the 29th, to make the two dates concur, is irresistible. The coincidence was the subject of his first comment to Parliament afterwards which began “upon this day . . . remarkable for a mercy vouchsafed to your forces on this day twelvemonth in Scotland”.51 It was surely an endearing weakness in a man otherwise singularly free from the credulities of many of his comrades, and even recognized as such at the time.

  The plan of campaign involved dividing the Commonwealth forces roughly in half: in the east the men should remain at Perry Wood, while in the west Fleetwood with about twelve thousand men was to march to the conjunction of the Teme and Severn rivers, and there fling his two wings across. While the morning was spent in the crossings, which were not complete until early afternoon, Cromwell probably remained at a form of command post at Perry Wood. From this situation later arose a fantastic but enjoyable story of Faustian proportions which the Royalists loved to tell, and whose main real effect was to confirm the impression made on Cromwell’s contemporaries of the unusual significance of the date 3 September, in his life. It purported to come from Colonel Lindsay, first Captain of Oliver’s own regiment who on the morning of 3 September was taken by his commander into the wood to meet “a grave elderly Man with a Roll of parchment in his hand”, a meeting that filled Lindsay with uncontrollable horror and trembling. The aged unknown promised Oliver to “have his will then, and in all things else for seven years”, at which date it would be his – the devil’s – turn to have complete mastery over Cromwell’s soul and body. Cromwell was supposed to have argued the short span – he was expecting twenty-one years and stood out for fourteen – but in the end the compact was made, and he returned crying out joyously to his companion: “Now Lindsay, the Battle is our own, I long to be engaged.” Lindsay however deserted at the first charge, galloped all the way to Norfolk and confided the whole hideous tale to a minister who wrote it down.52

  Diabolic interlude apart, by the time the fighting on the west bank was begun in earnest, it was time for Cromwell to move across perso
nally from the eastern front, and throw in further troops including his lifeguards and his own horse, across the Severn over the second bridge of boats. He led his men himself, and once more the famous cry of Dunbar was heard: “The Lord of Hosts.” This time his colours were not white, yet, wrote Robert Staplyton afterwards “the Lord hath clothed us with white garments, though to the enemy they have been bloody”. Mercurius Politicus described how Cromwell did “exceedingly hazard himself” riding up and down and in person offering quarter to the enemy foot – whose answer was merely to shoot at him.53 The effect of this savage flank attack was to knock the Scottish left back into Worcester, and their right, which up to this point was successfully holding Fleetwood’s left to the south at Powick, also inevitably retracted. Even so, the fighting was extremely fierce, and it took Fleetwood some appreciable time to push all the Scots back to the confines of the city. As it was, Montgomery on the Royalist right might have held out longer if Leslie had allowed him aid. Yet the instincts of the old soldier were probably right: whether or not he disobeyed Charles’s orders in ignoring Montgomery’s claims, the only hope for the Scots now lay in some kind of concentration of their forces.

  It was now that the young King led a personal sally to the east, against that half of the Commonwealth army still on the Perry Wood heights, a desperate measure attempting his own version of Cromwell’s Dunbar break-out. But it was literally uphill work, a fearful struggle, pike to pike and musket to musket. As the battle line swayed this way and that by inches, there was time for Cromwell’s own troops to come round from the western bank and add themselves to the Commonwealth strength. So now the Royalists were themselves forced back and their own Royal Fort captured by the valiant Essex militia, whose courage, that of “newly raised forces”, Cromwell afterwards especially commended. Refusing quarter, the garrison was overrun, and their own guns now turned towards the city. As a result the wretched Royalists found themselves pressed back into Worcester itself from two directions. The result was carnage. Dead bodies of Royalists began to fill the streets. Crushed in the narrow alleys of Worcester, corpses not only of men but of horses began to block all possible passage like heaps of unnatural refuse. Some Scots, perhaps as many as four thousand, did manage to escape through the inadequately attended north gate. But two thousand were killed to a mere two hundred of Cromwell’s men, and eight or nine thousand prisoners taken. Captain John Hodgson said that the demoralization and terror was so great that eighteen men would insist on surrendering to one officer.54 Leslie was taken prisoner; so, a day later, was the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Lauderdale and Lanark who had succeeded his executed brother as Duke of Hamilton.

  “A very glorious mercy”, from the point of view of the Commonwealth, so Cromwell fittingly described Worcester to Parliament in a letter dashed off that very night “being so weary and scarce able to write”. Later, when he had got his breath he added something more: “The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy.” Perhaps the King never had a chance once the Royalists failed to rise, nevertheless for Cromwell’s part he prosecuted the campaign with relentless vigour from the first moment, when this fortunate outcome still lay in the future. His strategy was good in driving the Scots before him, and the two-pronged tactics of the battle, with the aid of such excellent lieutenants as Fleetwood and Lambert, both men inspired by him, brought their own reward. The last Royalist army had been destroyed. Richard Baxter, ill at near-by Kidderminster, heard the bullets of the pursuers flying towards his window till midnight, while “the sorrowful fugitives hastening for their lives, did tell me of the calamitousness of war”. The King only escaped after adventures which might have been related by a seventeenth-century Scheherezade, but owed at least as much to the organization of Colonel Francis Wyndham and the Western Association as to the more romantic contribution of individuals. On arrival in Paris his filthy unkempt appearance shocked the sophisticated French Court.55

  In contrast, Hugh Peter, speaking to the militia men after the battle, used language which whether intentionally or not recalled that of Shakespeare’s Henry v on the eve of St Crispin’s day: “When your wives and children shall ask you where you have been, and what news; say you have been at Worcester, where England’s sorrows began, and where they are happily ended.”* ( * Although Worcester, known as “the faithful City” with its appropriate motto Civitas in Bella in Pace Fidelis, still commemorates the last Royalist stand in a plaque in Sidbury, and by the head of Cromwell nailed by its ears over the Guildhall shows its continuing opinion of the victor of the battle. There is however also a plaque placed by the Cromwell Association at the city end of Sidbury bridge recalling his own words: “It is for aught I know a crowning mercy.”) Constantine Heath, who brought the good news to the House of Commons, was rewarded with the extravagant sum of Ł30. Mercurius Politicus took the opportunity to go through the whole list of Commonwealth victories, including Naseby “that loud declaration from Heaven”, Dunbar where “a weary and sick handful of men” had done such valiant work, and now Worcester, God’s “loudest declaration of all” whereby he seemed “as it were with his own finger, to point out to all the world, his Resolutions for England”.56 As for Cromwell, his own baton of war was now hung up like the Royalist colours brought to Westminster Hall to join the earlier trophies of war. Although he was to instigate military expeditions, he never took the field again.

  It is an appropriate place to sum up the achievements that made him an unbeaten commander, and in the opinion of one of the foremost soldiers of our own age, Field-Marshal Montgomery, one of the great “Captains” of history.* ( * An archaic term, confusing in the seventeenth century when there are Captains, Captain-Generals etc. in the field, but now coming back into use among military historians as an overall description of a commander.) It is sometimes suggested that in the ultimate hall of fame where stand the busts of an Alexander, a Wellington or a Napoleon, there is no place for Cromwell. A brilliant cavalry leader of enterprise and daring, an unconventional tactician who owed nothing to early military training, a commander who created an army which was the wonder of Europe, later a master planner who used the same effective speed of the charge – his “unimaginable celerity” as Florins Anglicus put it – on a wider scale for a series of sparkling campaigns, all these laurels are willingly draped upon his brow. But was Cromwell, who acted after all only within the narrow sphere of the British Isles, worthy to be compared with the very great, those who took on war on a global scale? It is true that the confines of Cromwell’s actions prevented him trying his hand at what might be termed grand or global strategy. But he cannot for that reason be denied the title of strategist. The conflict between England and Scotland, if it was held within the British shores, involved two separate nations, and could hardly be described as a civil war. In the last campaign of Worcester, Cromwell employed all his intelligence not only to battle but to throw in all his country’s resources.

  The distinction is surely an unfair one, for Generals are not gods, and their role is not to create situations, but to provide solutions. Just as the function of the soldier is to fight battles, the function of a commander is to win battles, and win them in such a way that the last victory also will go to his own side. In this function Cromwell was supremely successful. He never failed, whether in the crucible of Dunbar or with the pincer trap of Worcester, to find either by God’s providence or some special sort of military grace, exactly the type of victory that was required. To achieve what it was necessary to do, and achieve it perfectly is a rare distinction, whatever the scale: it is that which gives to Cromwell, him too, the right to be placed in the hall of fame.

  15 A settlement of the nation

  He proposed to them, That the old King being dead, and his son being defeated, it was necessary to come to a Settlement of the Nation

  CROMWELL, REPORTED BY WHiTELOCKE, in December 1651

  Cromwell our chief of men” – so Milton began his great sonnet to the Lord-Gene
ral of May 1652, in which he first placed upon his head “Worcester’s laureate wreath” before issuing a courteous caution: “yet much remains to conquer still: peace hath her victories no less renowned than war…” But Cromwell, for all Milton’s dramatic salutation, had as yet no official title to the chieftainship. During the twenty-odd months that followed the victory of Worcester and preceded the expulsion of the Rump Parliament, Cromwell lived in a curious kind of limbo in which his national eminence should not obscure the undoubted restraints not only on his power but also on his influence. His theoretic position comprised the Captain-Generalship of the Army and membership of the Council of State. To this he was twice elected as first in line out of 118 members, but the elections were free and his immediate followers in 1651, Whitelocke and Vane, did not necessarily share all his preoccupations or views. Then there were the numerous committees on which he sat, echoing the far-off days of his first rise to political power: the Irish Committee, the Scottish Committee, the important Committee for Trade founded in 1650, and committees which affected the settlement of the peace, such as that for sending prisoners of war to the plantations. Cromwell in this period has thus been described as “the most powerful official of the government”.1 Nevertheless it was an anomalous position, where success could not be guaranteed for the policies Cromwell wished to administer – the godly policies, as he saw it, for which they had by now fought a series of crippling wars. It is in the checks which existed to his domination, not so much in theory, but in the practical workings of the Commonwealth, that the clues to the mysterious workings of Cromwell’s mind during this period must be sought. For in the end, they would lead him in a hail of violence, to alter the balance radically in favour of the power of one individual – himself.