Rebels and traitors

by Lindsey Davis

  He caught up with the Tower Guard just as they went on forced marches into Kent. After the short, fierce campaign there, Gideon found himself besieging Colchester. The Parliamentarians were in a hard, angry mood. They were sick of war, exasperated that the King had stirred up further fighting while they were trying to make a decent settlement, determined to end the conflict once and for all.

  This turned out to be the longest and most terrible siege ever conducted on English soil. It was necessary because Colchester was so close to London. Fairfax dared not leave such a substantial enemy force only two days' march away from the city. The Royalists, who were said to number 5,000, had seized and brought with them, as hostages, Parliament's entire Essex County Committee; the prisoners' fates also had to be considered.

  The Royalists had superior numbers and at first they held genuine hopes that uprisings would flourish throughout the country, with the Scots bringing an invasion army south to join up with them. If the Royalists broke out and took London, they stood a good chance of obliterating Parliament, the New Model Army, the Levellers and all that had been won. Fairfax was stuck. He and his men were just as much prisoners of the situation as the rebels. So long as Lord Norwich, Lord Capel, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle held them here, they were prevented from deploying their forces and their artillery anywhere else.

  The local situation became deeply unhappy. The fugitives had been admitted to Colchester by the mayor because they swore they would only stay a few days. Besides, Sir Charles Lucas was a Colchester man; it still counted. They had ended up here on the urging of Lucas — a single-minded military man, who was generally thought so unpleasant that the civilians said enduring him was worse than enduring the siege. He had little sympathy with the townspeople, who had raided and plundered his house at the start of the war. Until now Colchester, a prosperous textile town, had loyally supported Parliament although it lay outside the main fields of action and avoided trouble. To have this siege wished upon them at this late stage was cruel. The townspeople were constantly at odds with their unwelcome, frequently boorish house guests.

  Outside, the besiegers hated to be forced to impose terrible suffering on their own supporters. Deserting Royalist soldiers were promised an amnesty, yet civilians could not be permitted to leave. The essence of starving a garrison into surrender was to keep as many mouths as possible needing to be fed, to increase the pressure.

  A siege was bad enough when hungry soldiers and civilians were on the same side; inside Colchester their antagonism worsened a fraught situation. The soldiers had first call on food, to keep them fit to fight; civilians were just a drain on resources — though they could be a source of supplies. Colchester homes were stripped of thatch to feed military animals. Houses were roughly searched, their pantries and store cupboards stripped bare. As the siege progressed, people congregated outside the commanders' headquarters agitating to share the soldiers' food; to stall a riot, horsemeat had to be handed out to them, but it was clear the garrison took precedence and inflammatory stories circulated that the commanders were dining on beef washed down with good wine every night. Constant tension seethed as those commanders refused to surrender while the townsfolk were all the time begging them to accept Fairfax's terms. Week after week passed while Lord Norwich and the other commanders convinced themselves they would soon be relieved by the Scots or others.

  Thomas Rainborough's career with the fleet had not lasted long. He was put off his flagship by navy mutineers and lost the admiral's post. Without a command, he in turn arrived at Colchester.

  Fairfax's men believed Royalist snipers inside Colchester were shooting poisoned bullets, which killed both the colonel and lieutenant-colonel of the Tower Guard. The slugs were thought to have been either rolled in sand, which had fatal results in a wound, or else boiled in sulphate of iron, which was used in dyes and ink-making. It was contrary to the rules of war and in retaliation prisoners were killed. Rainborough, fortuitously on the spot, then became the Guards' replacement colonel. He and they were in the thick of events at Colchester. 'Fort Rainborough', on the north side of the city, was the final link built in the besiegers' encircling wall, a position the colonel ran, with his men's eager connivance, as an excitable, rather maverick outpost.

  Hunkered down in Fort Rainborough, conditions were bad. Gideon thought he had never known a period when the weather was so terrible, so often, through year after year. The whole civil war had been fought in miserable conditions. Being out in rain, wind and snow would become his abiding memory of his military service. The soldiers, many used to town life, responded badly to lack of shelter. Then crops rotted in the fields and food shortages followed failed harvests. When they did have stints of fighting at Colchester, they had to contend with the River Colne, so swollen that its fords were generally impassable; two men who lost their footing close to Gideon were drowned during a skirmish.

  The first few weeks were exhausting while they dug in. Depressingly, they could hear Royalists strengthening and repairing the town walls at the same time. As the rain kept coming, the besiegers' forts provided only meagre and part-time shelter. Their ten forts and fourteen redoubts formed a unique ribbon of earthworks which had to be manned constantly. This was trench warfare, with all its physical penalties. Those on duty did four- or six-hour stints, often in cold, stagnant water as the trenches flooded. They were soon battling vermin and disease. Keeping dry was nearly impossible. As the rain came down for week after week, their shoes and clothes became sodden; they acquired sores and trench-foot; tempers grew short. Sickness was troubling the town, worsening as the population became weaker, but there was serious sickness outside too: Fairfax had his painful gout, while his soldiers succumbed to agues and dysentery, which they vividly called 'running flux'. Morale began to fail. So dismal was the daily grind, some soldiers hired replacements to stand in for them; the going rate was ten shillings a week. Regular batches of Londoners marched out to grab the money. Gideon was tempted, but resisted.

  He knew his brother, with an extra fifteen years and developing arthritis, did sometimes give in and hire a man to take his duties. Lambert was hauled before his captain, but once it emerged that he was suffering from the flux, he was designated sick and no more was said. He told Gideon he had applied for discharge.

  Mistakes had been made. The town port at the Hythe was not secured by Fairfax quickly enough, enabling quantities of grain, wine, salt, fish, and worst of all gunpowder to be secretly carted into town. This lengthened the siege considerably. Early on, the Royalists were able to leave the town and cross no man's land — the dead ground that was called the leaguer — to forage for food. Later, the blockade was tightened both by land and sea, and Fairfax managed to secure the loyalty of the local militias in Surrey and Essex, with whose help he covered all possible escape routes, especially the roads to the north. By the end of June the trap was tight. Slowly it became clear to everyone that they still had a long way to go.

  Through July the mood grew increasingly bitter. Fairfax brought in heavier guns to batter a Royalist observation post in the bell tower of St Mary's at the Wall, which stood on the highest point of the town. This sniper's nest right against the town walls had been occupied by a brass demi-cannon which did much damage in the hands of a superior gunner known as 'One-eye'd Thompson'. Colonel Rainborough was given credit for taking out 'One-eye'd Thompson'. At any rate the man was shot and the top of the tower destroyed. The gun, which was locally called Humpty Dumpty, was sent crashing down in smithereens and Parliamentary movements were no longer spied upon.

  A fierce sortie by the Royalists through the East Gate caused loss of life, though plainly the besieged were now suffering from shortage of ammunition. They still had too much food. On the 22nd of July, Rainborough led his men in an audacious raid. They crossed the swollen river at night to storm the last working cornmill, which until then had continued to provide the defenders with bread. To succeed in starving out the town it was vital to put the Middle Mi
ll out of action. Gideon was among the group that tackled the sluice; frozen and soaked through, they managed to cut it, while comrades tried to fire the mill building. The Royalists fought back with a desperate counter-attack and put out the fire, using their hats to bale water from the river. Rainborough's men suffered losses and were compelled to withdraw, but they had done enough damage to stop the mill from working. However, they did not know then that the enemy had other, horse-powered, millstones. The Colchester garrison imposed strict rationing, though the mayor seemed unwilling or unable to give similar orders to civilians; they were suffering so badly that they were ready to mutiny.

  The Parliamentarians squeezed closer. They battered the abbey gatehouse on the south side. After demolishing part of it, they managed to lob in grenades, which happened to hit the Royalists' main magazine. An enormous explosion killed many inside, destroyed the gatehouse, blew soldiers asunder and traumatised any defenders who struggled from the smoke and rubble. Close by was the private house of Sir Charles Lucas. The Parliamentarians broke in, under cover of the old walls, and when they found that the house had been stripped during riots some years previously, they wrecked the family tomb, committing foul acts of desecration on the bodies of the Lucas ancestors.

  A month later they were still waiting for the town to surrender, even though they reckoned Royalist ammunition had now fallen to a dangerous low and starvation was close. Both the defenders and the attackers had fired houses to prevent their opponents using them for cover. Defenders had been killed when they slipped out at night to cut grass for their horses, which were now so weak that a cull was ordered of one in three. All remaining salt in town was used, to preserve as many lean carcases as possible. The rest were cooked up in a communal roast. Outside, Gideon and his colleagues were tantalised by the meat cooking as its scented smoke wafted over the leaguer. Later Gideon, who had a sensitive nose, noticed that spices discovered in house searches were now being boiled up with oil and starch.

  He was already depressed. The puddingy wafts reminded him of his mother's warm, dry kitchen, always full of rich baking scents. It was a moment between guard duties; he was resting in limbo, as soldiers learn to do whenever action is not required of them. He had known about his mother's death for almost a year, but this was when it hit home. Grief for Parthenope overwhelmed him. He had never bidden her farewell; now Lambert and he would never enjoy her Dutch pudding or her caraway biscuits again. She would never make his favourite jumbles.

  The effects of bereavement can be put off for a long time, then some jolt catches people off guard. Gideon had grown physically and mentally tired. The benefits of army service — travel, new skills, camaraderie — no longer mattered. He had all the normal troubles of a soldier; he was bored, fearful, hungry, run down, resentful of the enemy, suspicious of those who had ordered him here, worn out by constantly watching for danger. Grief and homesickness came together, one last blow.

  Unbearably restless, he found a grey pony, a beast so small that when he mounted, his feet almost kicked into the turf. Colonel Rainborough spotted him. He knew his man, and perhaps noticed Gideon's unusual desolation.

  'Leaving us, Sergeant Jukes?' It was forbidden to be more than a mile outside the leaguer. A formal headcount was taken twice a day.

  'Taking a scout around, sir.'

  'Be back by roll-call.'

  'Yes sir. True unto death!'

  'Very good.'

  Whatever he had subconsciously intended, Gideon did not go far. He was shocked to find that in the fields around the town many wounded Parliamentarians were being tended under makeshift tents. He asked why they could not be taken to safety in London. He learned that casualty numbers were being concealed. Fairfax wanted to prevent the City money-men feeling nervous about his losses; he needed to deter ditherers from throwing in their lot with the Royalist rebels.

  Somewhere among the sick and wounded lay Gideon's brother Lambert, groaning and disabled by the flux.

  While he was out riding, Gideon found a weary messenger from Lancashire whom he led in to Fort Rainborough. The man was bringing news that in a three-day running victory near Preston, Cromwell and Lambert had defeated and destroyed the Covenanters' army. Both their infantry and cavalry had surrendered. At last there was hope.

  By now, August, the Parliamentarians had pressed so close to the walls that opposing soldiers could speak to and throw stones at each other. Starvation, lack of clean water, and resultant epidemics had made conditions inside the town intolerable. The civilians' plight was grim. Poor people crowded outside the commander's lodgings, wailing for relief. The garrison had suffered desertion and high casualties; the soldiers were saving pieces of their bread ration to attract passing dogs, knocking in their skulls with musket butts and then eating them. Horses were stolen from stables almost every night, then their meat sold on the black market from the Shambles. Civilians ate rats. When the rat supply dwindled they gnawed on candle-ends and even soap, trying to suck nourishment from the mutton fat in them. As commotions increased, a Royalist officer was alleged to have brutally told a woman who begged for food for her starving baby that the child would make good eating, well boiled up.

  It could not continue. Recriminations were ghastly on both sides. Parliamentary news-sheets denounced the Royalists for using the townsfolk as a human shield and for parading their County Committee hostages on the ramparts where they believed artillery fire was expected. Parliamentarians even muttered that the town had brought about its own misfortunes by admitting the Royalists, as if this loyal place had betrayed the cause, or had had any choice when faced with thousands of fully armed fugitive desperadoes. Fairfax's men were accused of using civilians for target practice; they did confess to burning the fingers of a fourteen-year-old messenger boy sent out to take a secret message to the Scots, though they had tried kinder tactics first, offering him a bribe to tell the truth. The Parliamentarians fired arrows and over the walls, carrying offers of amnesty to the rank and file; these were shot back bearing the message 'an answer from Colchester: as you may smell' and were discovered to be smeared with turds.

  Astrologers arrived. This failed to help anyone.

  Elsewhere the situation had moved on. There had been various reports of Royalist defeats. Wales was subdued, both south and north, and the outbursts of rebellion that had run through English counties like fire underground through peat were stamped out. But now came the final blow for the Royalists. News of Cromwell's complete massacre of the Scots' army was passed into Colchester by writing details on a paper kite; it was flown high over the town, then allowed to drop for civilians to pick up. Beset by pleading women and their screaming children, Lord Norwich agreed to open the gates and allow them to leave.

  It had happened before. Wives of town worthies had requested Fairfax's permission to depart, and were refused, though word had it the resourceful madams then smuggled themselves out by boat. Fairfax's orders were clear: no concessions. Now five hundred starving women scrambled out through the gates and approached Rainborough's regiment. As they rushed across the leaguer, the colonel had his men first fire blanks over their heads. When the women kept coming, running right up to the mouths of cannon, he sent soldiers to threaten to strip them if they refused to budge. Four were stripped as an example, at which the wretched women finally fled back to the town. The Royalists refused to open the gates to readmit them. As the fugitives huddled between the town walls and the besiegers' fortifications all night, the Tower Guard hunched in their bleak quarters, hating the situation. Fairfax threatened to shoot every man in the Royalist garrison if the women and their wailing children were kept in the leaguer, so they were let back in.

  Seventy-five days after the siege started, the Royalists made terms.

  Rainborough's regiment was the first into Colchester. Gideon was profoundly shocked by how little of the town remained and by the weak, starving people who still fought one another for the last scraps of animal feed, begging from the soldiers piteously. Not a
dog appeared. Houses had their roofs off; some were reduced to rubble; the elegant suburbs had been burned or dismantled; civic buildings had been battered and half destroyed. Fairfax had guaranteed that there would be no plundering, though in order to secure this promise the town had been forced to agree to pay a devastating fine of fourteen thousand pounds, the penalty for admitting the Royalists in the first place. It was unclear how the town would find the money. Colchester was ruined.

  The New Model Army moved in and took control quietly. The fortifications, which Fairfax immediately inspected to see just how his efforts had been repulsed for so long, now stood denuded of soldiers though still strong and in good repair. The few surviving horses had been collected up; they stood, heads down and skeletal, in St Mary's Churchyard. Weapons, flags and drums were piled bleakly in St James's Church. Only one and half barrels of gunpowder were left.

  Surrender of private soldiers and junior officers was taken at Fryer's Yard by the East Gate. They had been offered fair quarter, though lords, superior officers and gentlemen of distinction had assembled at the aptly named King's Head. Ireton argued fiercely for punitive treatment of the Royalist leaders.

  Out of the Parliamentarians' bitterness at being forced to fight again came a long-lasting controversy. They believed the surrender terms were fair: ordinary soldiers and townspeople were granted quarter; when the Parliamentary infantry marched in, no harm was done to them, they were given warm clothing and food. Prisoners of war received miserable rations, but that was still more than the starving people of Colchester had lived on for weeks. In fact few prisoners would make it home safely; for them, they would learn, quarter entailed being shut up in churches, then marched long distances across the country. Many of the three thousand private soldiers would be shipped to the sugar plantations in Barbados or imprisoned in remote prisons from which few ever emerged; their officers were sent to the galleys until friends and relatives ransomed them.