Pistoleer: Roundway Down
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19. Did Waller's cavalry really fall over a cliff at Roundway?
Yes though no one knows who or how many. Historians have been trying to find the bodies so that they can identify which cliff they fell from and how many fell. There was such confusion during and after the battle that no one seems to have documented the butcher's bill. The royalist estimates were high, while Waller's were minimal. By all accounts the royalists freed hundreds of their own who had been captured by Waller.
There are wide discrepancies in the accounts of the battle, and historians still argue about where and how the armies lined up and what caused the battle to go so surprisingly and terribly wrong for Waller. Even though military historians often mention the battle in passing, they give few details. Waller himself called it "my dismal defeat at Roundway Down".
The old hill fort on Devil's Leap has since been renamed "Oliver's Fort" even though Cromwell had nothing to do with the battle. Missing is any historical account of the defense of Wansdyke at Shepherd's Shore, or that the royalist cavalry were trying to evade a battle by racing down the coach road to join up with Hopton's infantry in Devizes. If the field gun that back fired was along side other guns, then that event by itself could have tipped the advantage to the royalists, however its effect was not documented. Since Roundway Down is so scenic and so close to other historic sites, it is surprising that the battle has not been researched as a University project.
20. Why was Waller's loss at Roundway Down so devastating?
By mid-1643 both sides were critically short of infantry. Injuries, the Typhus epidemic, and desertion had greatly reduced the numbers. The king always had trouble recruiting infantry and so usually pressed them into service. The rebels were having a harder and harder time recruiting as the war got longer and the battles became more desperate. The trained bands were beginning to refuse assignments that took them out of their own counties (including the London Trainbands). The rebel infantry were losing faith in their elitist officers. Meanwhile there was more and more need of infantry as more and more towns were being garrisoned, and more and more sieges were necessary.
At Roundway Down, Waller escaped with most of his cavalry, but lost his infantry, supplies and ordinance. And it was not just his own infantry that he lost, but the infantry that was supposed to be defending Bristol and Bath. This left the entire West Country almost defenseless against the royalist raiders. Thus began a desperate and hungry year for the common folk of the west. A year where they were freely preyed upon by royalists with their cavalier attitude towards looting and raping.
According to military historians and to the royalist cavalry of the day, Waller's loss was proof that it was still possible for a force of cavalry to defeat an equal force of cavalry supported by infantry and field guns.
Politically the loss was a disaster for the kingdom because it added at least a year of deprivation to the length of the war. At the time Parliament was discussing making General Waller the Lord General instead of Essex. Parliament's watch dog at Essex's side, John Hampden, had just died. Hampden would have stopped the king's cavalry from riding to relieve Devizes. Essex could have but did not. Waller writes in his memoirs, "My dismal defeat at Roundway Down was owing to those heart burnings and jealousies for the General suffered the enemy's horse to pass quietly and without molestation to the succor of their infantry which lay at the Devizes in miserable plight. I was so sure of victory."
THE END of Roundway Down Appendices
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The Pistoleer - Roundway Down by Skye Smith Copyright 2014-15