Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  The trooper winced. ‘All is not well, sir, I regret to report. A large part of foot has routed, the rest under mortal threat. General Leslie maintains his position lest the malignants make play to encircle the infantry.’

  ‘Our right flank? Fairfax?’

  ‘I know not, sir.’

  ‘What says Leven in this?’

  ‘My lord Leven has departed, sir.’

  ‘Expired?’

  The trooper scratched his chin awkwardly. ‘Fled, sir. As have my lords Fairfax and—’ He hesitated, studying his boots: ‘and Manchester.’

  Cromwell’s skin grew cold. ‘My own general.’ If all three rebel commanders had abandoned the field, then surely the end was near, and yet something nagged in the back of his mind. He had lived, miraculously, and nothing transpired without reason. ‘Help me,’ he said suddenly, going to retrieve his armour.

  ‘Sir, I—’

  Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell waved him away, ignoring the pain in his neck as he hefted the sack. He instinctively slid a hand to his heart, feeling the straight edges of the pocket Bible through his buff-coat. One of the section headings branded itself upon his mind, and he closed his eyes as he recited it. ‘A Soldier must consider that sometimes God’s people have the worst in battle as well as God’s enemies.’ He opened his eyes, fixing them on the trooper. ‘God’s plan is all laid out before us. We have had the worst. Now it is time to have the best.’

  Stryker watched the battle raging away to his left. The infantry fight that was consuming the centre of Marston Moor ebbed and flowed along the line of the ditch, and it looked as though the king’s men had the best of it, but still the two edges of the rebel front line, Manchester’s men nearest, Covenanters on the far side, were holding their ground, and it was a rallying cry for the waning spirits of the Army of Both Kingdoms. He wanted to be there, with the Royalist foot, to lend his steel and complete the victory, but knew he could not. His troop needed him, for, though they had repulsed the Parliamentarian cavalry, their wing remained precariously weak. Byron had vanished, caught up in his front line’s destruction, so that Lord Molyneux commanded the remnant, but already the opposing force of cavalry, two bodies of Eastern Association horse and a third made up of Scots, were edging across the moor for a renewed assault.

  ‘Keep the line!’ Molyneux shouted as he took up position on the rightmost periphery of the horse and steel blockade. Byron’s folly had been negated by Goring on the far side, and all that was required was a cool head and a steady nerve. They would be a barricade against the Earl of Manchester’s horsemen, who would be naturally reticent after the wounding – perhaps death – of their general, Cromwell, and as long as the flank held firm, the Royalist foot would roll over the fracturing rebel divisions, and the encroaching night would fall upon a great victory.

  ‘Keep the line!’ Stryker repeated the call. He was with his men, Brownell’s old command, at the centre of the line. On his right were the regiments belonging to Molyneux himself, and those of Tyldesley and Leveson, while on the left, most reassuringly, he saw the banners of Prince Rupert’s Regiment of Horse, the most fearsome cavalry in the land. The line was outnumbered by those that now rose to a slow walk towards them, but they were not deterred. ‘Keep the line!’ Stryker called again. ‘Pistols!’

  He loaded his own twin flintlocks, then slid his sword in and out of its scabbard to ensure the blood of Cromwell had not glued it fast. He was vaguely aware of more horsemen rumbling a few hundred yards to the rear, tracing the line of Wilstrop Wood, but he put them to the back of his mind. All that mattered was the charge that he knew they would soon face.

  The horsemen skirting Wilstrop Wood behind the expectant Royalist line wore no field sign, but they were not Cavaliers. Sir Thomas Fairfax stared straight ahead. His men, the human debris of a collapsed wing of horse, kept their gaze on him, though each of them prayed harder than ever they had before. Sir Thomas had made it through the enemy cavalry, leaving it to attack the Allied foot brigades, knowing that his failure had left those poor infantrymen so exposed. He had ridden hard, passing by the southern edge of the forest, the battle raging to his left, always watchful for enemy units hidden in the trees. There had been troopers haunting those ancient trunks, but they had been the flotsam of his own command, the very men smashed to smithereens by Goring, and they had emerged, little by little, from their hiding places, hoping that he would lead them to safety. Except that Sir Thomas Fairfax was not looking for safety; he was spoiling for a fight.

  The fugitive Roundheads, perhaps a hundred out of the original three thousand, formed line behind their general, tearing away their white handkerchiefs and cantering from one side of the blood-streaked moor to the other, crossing the ground immediately behind the Royalist horsemen preparing to face the Eastern Association riders. Sir Thomas gazed ruefully down at the line of the trench as his mount crossed it without breaking stride. Here the obstacle was barely a feature in the landscape, the depth shallow, the hedges low and sparse. If they only knew how difficult the crossing had been at the far side of the moor. As a lieutenant spurred ahead to explain their presence to the men riding beneath the cornets of the Earl of Manchester, Sir Thomas slumped in the saddle. He was half blind, his eye congealed with the blood from the wound in his cheek, and exhausted.

  Out of the blurry near distance cantered a man wrapped in leather and plate. Even through his dizzy reeling, Sir Thomas recognized the prominent nose, the wide mouth and the wart above the right eye. He noticed, too, heavy bandaging at the man’s neck. ‘You are hurt?’

  Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell seemed not to hear. ‘What news?’

  ‘My flank was routed,’ Sir Thomas said. He forced himself to stay in the saddle. ‘I am ashamed to report.’

  Cromwell looked past him. ‘These men you bring?’

  ‘Mine,’ Sir Thomas heard himself say. ‘Gathered from defeat.’

  Cromwell’s gaze narrowed. ‘And you have ridden here?’

  Sir Thomas gave a bark of laughter that hurt his chest. ‘All the way through the enemy.’

  ‘How, sir?’

  ‘Guile.’

  Cromwell laughed too, a deep, guttural storm. ‘God hath truly granted you great favour, Sir Thomas.’

  Sir Thomas forced himself upright. The horse, pistol ball still lodged in its rump, skittered sideways a yard. ‘You must take the flank, sir. Give our infantry succour, for our fortunes will fall as the moon rises. We are defeated in every quarter, save this.’

  Cromwell glanced again at the hundred newcomers. ‘That is my intent. And I will use these troopers for His purpose.’

  Sir Thomas made to argue, but his face throbbed an acute prompt. ‘I fear I am no use, Master Cromwell.’

  ‘No, Sir Thomas,’ Cromwell agreed. ‘But your gallantry will be forever praised. Give me your men. I will use them well, you have my word.’ He looked at a couple of Sir Thomas’s troopers. ‘Get him from the field.’

  As the troopers tugged at his wounded mount’s head collar, Fairfax glimpsed the approach of the man who commanded Cromwell’s third line of horsemen, Lieutenant-General David Leslie. ‘A charge?’ the Scot asked.

  ‘My men will tackle them head-on,’ Cromwell answered. He gazed back at his line of horsemen. ‘At the trot! Keep tight and the fight will be ours!’

  Leslie’s face grew taut. ‘I would use my men, General. They are keen to fight.’

  ‘With respect, General Leslie,’ Cromwell said firmly, ‘your men may be keen, but your steeds are too small and weak to break the malignant line.’

  Leslie bridled. ‘I have some of Balgonie’s regiment. Their lances are long, Cromwell.’ His voice was suddenly caustic: ‘Of great range, compared to a Cavalier sword.’

  Cromwell’s brow furrowed for a second, but then he nodded. ‘You take the flank. At the gallop. Use your lances, sir, for God will sharpen their points.’

  David Leslie offered a tight bow and turned his mount. ‘To work, gentlemen!’

>   Cromwell bellowed, his voice unwavering: ‘To work, I say, for it is upon the left flank that this battle shall turn!’

  Stryker only realized that the troops moving at their rear were not friendly when they circled completely round to the front and parleyed with a group of riders below Parliamentarian banners.

  The horsemen of the Eastern Association formed two lines and turned their walk into a trot. There was something unnerving about the advance. The core of the king’s cavalry were the gentry. Young, brash, arrogant men, born to the saddle, raised to the hunt and instilled with a reckless superiority that made them courageous and skilled. The Parliament men, by contrast, had none of this. They had required teaching, training, and, after too many defeats to count, they had come upon a system of warfare that suited their more pragmatic sensibilities. Where the Cavaliers favoured speed, the Roundheads favoured order, relying on organization and discipline to overcome the dashing opposition. As they crossed the ditch in good order, presenting a slow, measured approach, so the Royalist line, Stryker included, seemed uncertain of how to engage an enemy that seemed to deliberately dawdle.

  ‘Charge!’ Lord Molyneux screamed, just as Stryker was wondering whether the order would come at all. The Royalist line burst forth straight into the gallop, discharging pistols as they did so. But the enemy did not break, did not even falter, and then their own volley erupted, flashing bright in the encroaching gloom.

  Stryker shrank low, straightened when the immediate danger had passed, and dragged his sword free. The first Parliamentarian line struck home.

  It was not the melee Stryker had expected. When two forces met at the gallop, they scythed through one another, blades clashing as they crossed, only to wheel immediately about to engage in personal duels, intermingling so that field words and signs were the only way to differentiate friend from foe. But here there was no meld of man and horse, no crossing of the lines, no confusion. The Eastern Association troopers held their line together. Where the more advanced Cavaliers, those with the best steeds, smashed home, the rebel line parted, allowing the eager king’s men through in ones and twos, but then they came together once more, closing the gaps as if they had never opened. And the tactic was working precisely because the two forces were not evenly matched. There was a second line, more men from the Earl of Manchester’s pious army, and they isolated the overreaching Cavaliers, cutting them down as they crossed through the first line. Then the real fight began, and Stryker was there, his troops around him, slashing at whoever faced him. They were two masses of horsemen, like a pair of pike blocks at the press, each shoving and cleaving at the other, hoping their combined weight would cause the opposite wedge to splinter and collapse. It was a hard fight. A dirty, bloody, bitter fight. Skellen was near, for Stryker could hear the Gosport man’s filth-laced war-cry even though he could not see him. Hood would be somewhere in the line too, and Barkworth, and they snarled and smashed and hacked, aware that they were outnumbered but knowing that theirs was the force with the famed, seasoned regiments belonging to Prince Rupert of the Rhine. They would not, could not break, for Rupert’s Horse never lost a fight.

  Then the trumpets blew.

  David Leslie, Lieutenant-General of Horse, gritted his teeth and dipped his head as he steered his line to the right. They went east as soon as they crossed the ditch, peeling around the flank of the Royalist horsemen just as Cromwell led his first two lines directly into the enemy front rank. Leslie had the better part of a thousand men, and most were standard light cavalry, harquebusiers, who would do the work to which he set them without murmur of complaint. But it was the lancers he ordered into the vanguard.

  It was a curiosity of war that brought lancers to Yorkshire. The English had no time for them, preferring the heavily armed, brute strength of the harquebusier, but equipping a man in helmet and plate, not to mention the array of weapons a cavalryman brought to bear, made it necessary to put him on a large, powerful horse. Such creatures were difficult to come by in England, but north of the border it was next to impossible. Lancers, however, required smaller, lighter steeds. Theirs was not the tactic of weight and muscle, but of speed and manoeuvrability. That was why the Scottish army had lancers, and now they would show the sneering English how vital their contribution could be.

  Leslie tried to shout some encouragement, but found his dry tongue glued firm to his teeth, so he prayed silently, let his bowels open in his breeches, and slowed his horse to watch the lancers go to work.

  Stryker felt the blow. It came from his left, where Prince Rupert’s Regiment of Horse made up the broad line, and at first he wondered if they had been impacted by a cannon ball. The force made the whole line shiver, like a wave crashing through a gorge, and he glanced in the direction of the left flank as Vos forced a Parliamentarian’s horse back a step with a hammering hoof.

  The lancers had torn the Royalist flank ragged. He had not even seen them advance, too thick was the smoke from so many discharged pistols, but now he could not miss their horrific toll. The Scots pierced deep into Rupert’s prized troops, shredding their cohesion by surprise and by steel. Their long weapons snagged horse-flesh and punctured stomachs, crumpled breastplates and dented helms, the sheer speed of the charge propelling them into the heart of the Royalist block. And though they might have been driven out by cooler heads, they were met with pure, blind panic.

  Stryker, mired in the press with the Earl of Manchester’s men, parried a wild sword slash, offered one of his own, and then found himself moving. He had given no command, but Vos was pulled by a tide that was not to be dammed. He braced, thighs burning, clinging for his life, and then, in a heartbeat, the Royalist formation was gone. The packed ranks disintegrated, cracking and scattering, turning their backs in terror, screaming at their own men to move aside so that they might flee. Terror-stricken faces leered at him in the chaos, the faces of king’s men, hitherto unbeatable, blanched to ghostly wisps in the smoke. It was a rout of the worst kind, complete and unstoppable, and its tremors shuddered from Molyneux’s troopers all the way to Rupert’s. Pressed at the front by Cromwell’s grim machine, and on the flank by skewering Scots lances, the entire Royalist right wing crumbled and fled. And Major Stryker, carried on the current, fled too.

  Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, First Duke of Cumberland, First Earl of Holderness, President of Wales and supreme commander of Royalist forces on Marston Moor, rode his mighty black stallion at a furious gallop headlong into the flight of his very best cavalry. He did not realise at first, could not countenance anything but a victory by the cream of his army, but then he saw the red scarves intermingled with the shredded cornets of Lord Molyneux, of Thomas Leveson and of Thomas Tyldesley, and he knew that at least part of his second line had shattered. And then, as he weaved his way through the thundering stream of refugees, he glimpsed his own flag. A small, bullet-holed scrap of blue and black cloth, hanging limp from the staff gripped by an equally shot-through cornet of horse. He drew up hard, positioning himself in the midst of the routing horde, holding palms skyward.

  ‘S’wounds, do you run?’ he bellowed. ‘Follow me!’

  Some reined in when they caught sight of their prince, though most did not so much as spare him a glance. In the eventide murk many would not discern him from any other rider, while most simply heard nothing but a panicked pulse in their ears.

  The prince swore savagely, stared at the small group who had reformed with him, and saw a familiar face. It was one of scars, blackened by powder stains, with a single eye that glimmered quicksilver in the failing light.

  ‘Stryker!’ the prince snapped, kicking his stallion into the reclaimed party of troopers. ‘Speak to me!’

  ‘Manchester’s horse attacked, Highness,’ Stryker said rapidly. He knew how risible his explanation must be to the prince’s ears, and felt himself colour. In the end he simply shrugged. ‘The Scots swept our flank.’

  Rupert’s fierce stare lingered for a second, then he twisted in th
e saddle, summoning Sir Richard Crane with a quick wave. ‘Get your men across this goddamned road, Sir Richard! Block the craven bastards!’

  Prince Rupert drew his sword and kicked his black steed to face southwards. ‘Follow me, I say! We will unleash hell’s flames upon these upstart Roundheads!’

  Stryker’s blade was already naked, smeared from hilt to tip in blood that streaked dark on the steel. He let Vos walk to take position a short way behind Rupert. Over the tall general’s shoulder he could see thousands of helmets bobbing towards them in a vast swathe, like a string of grey pearls on a black cloth. These were not the broken Royalists, but the victorious Parliamentarians and Scots. They had not been unleashed to seek easy kills and easier plunder, but kept together, disciplined in their original formation, and they came to win a battle.

  ‘With me!’ Rupert screamed, holding his blade high. Boye was barking at his stallion’s hind legs, as if cajoling the beast to the fight. ‘God and the King! God and the King!’

  Stryker looked over his shoulder as the cry echoed again and again. He reckoned they had four hundred men, perhaps five; it was not nearly enough. In the gloom he saw Skellen’s laconic smile. The sergeant’s cap had been knocked away by a blade that had also scalped him, and rivulets of blood drew dark lines round his sepulchral eye-sockets and all the way down to his chin. Lieutenant Hood was at his side, breathing hard, and the feline gaze of Barkworth glowed a short way behind them. Stryker nodded to all three, and Prince Rupert ordered them to charge.

  It was not even a fight.

  The three tight-knit and slow-moving lines of rebel horsemen, made up of troopers loyal to the earls of Manchester and Leven, had received very few casualties, and they overran the Royalist counter-attack in seconds, their vast, deep line curving around the small body of Cavaliers, enfolding and swallowing them whole like the gaping maw of a ravenous monster.