Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  One of the secretary of state’s key duties was the transmission of the king’s will to others. However, when Falkland passed on Charles’s instructions to Rupert, the prince declared that he would not receive orders from anyone but his uncle. Falkland, unruffled by the insult, replied with dignity: ‘That it was his office to signify what the King bid him; which he should always do; and that his Highness, in neglecting it, neglected the King; who did neither the Prince, nor his own Service any good, by complying in the beginning with his rough Nature.’[129] Falkland quietly refused to serve in Rupert’s division, choosing instead to ride with the Commissary General of the Horse, Wilmot, on the left wing.

  There was further dissatisfaction in the King’s Life Guard. Its 300 men were recruited from those aristocrats and gentry who had no independent command, together with their most senior servants. The rest of the cavalry had taken to mocking the Lifeguard for being a ‘show troop’, a pampered adornment rather than a serious fighting unit. To counter this slur its commander, Lord Bernard Stuart, persuaded Charles to place the Life Guard in the place of greatest honour, the extreme right of the front line of his army. Rupert reluctantly incorporated them in the first of his two lines of cavalry, alongside his regiment and those of his brother Maurice and of their cousin, the Prince of Wales. This forward deployment of the lifeguards — well armed with their long swords, pairs of pistols, and battleaxes — deprived the Royalists of a reserve force, if the battle started to go awry.

  In the prelude to battle Charles rode among his units, his armour visible beneath a coat of black velvet, lined with royal ermine. He reminded his men of their noble purpose, while countering the enemies’ verbal barbs:

  ‘Friends and soldiers! You are called Cavaliers and Royalists in a disgraceful sense ... Now show yourselves no Malignants, but declare what courage and fidelity is within you. Fight for the peace of the kingdom and the Protestant religion. The value of Cavaliers hath honoured that name both in France and other countries, and now let it be known in England, as well as horseman or trooper. The name of Cavalier, which our enemies have striven to make odious, signifies no more than a gentleman serving his King on horseback. Show yourselves, therefore, now courageous Cavaliers, and beat back all opprobrious aspersions cast upon you.’[130]

  In the Parliamentary ranks Puritan ministers rode through the units, leading prayers whose content was little different from those being mouthed at the top of Edgehill. Churchmen on both sides convinced their men that they would be doing the Lord’s work later that day, when the killing began. ‘Such may the persons be,’ one Royalist priest was later to say, ‘and such the cause they maintain, that in doing them harm we shall do good, and sure then in wishing them harm we shall do no ill. Such may the persons be, and such the cause they maintain, that we may lawfully fight against them in the field…’[131]

  An early afternoon exchange of artillery opened the battle of Edgehill, with Parliament getting the better of the duel. Dragoons from both sides then fought a series of preliminary skirmishes, a contest won by the Royalists. Meanwhile, one of the King’s Life Guard recalled, ‘Prince Rupert passed from one wing to the other, giving positive orders to the Horse to march as close as possible keeping their ranks with sword in hand, to receive the enemy’s shot without firing either carbine or pistol, till we broke in amongst the enemy and then make use of our firearms as need should require.’[132] The prince then took his position at the head of the right wing, whose 1,400 troopers he had deployed in two lines. The second was to remain in reserve. Rupert led the front line in an orderly advance that progressed from walk, to rising trot, to full-blooded charge, swords drawn, firearms tucked away, spurs digging into their horses’ flanks. The battle cry was ‘The King and the Cause!’

  For the Parliamentarians, the enemy thundering towards them was the same demonic force that had swept to bloody victory at Powick Bridge. Colleagues eager to explain the shame of unexpected defeat had boosted the Cavaliers’ reputation, persuading Essex to place the bulk of his horse in the wing facing Prince Rupert. There had been reports, readily believed, that many of the rebel survivors were seen in Worcester, ‘most woefully cut and mangled, some having their ears cut off, some the flesh of their heads sliced off, some with their very skulls hanging down, and they ready to fall down dead, their pistols and carbines being hewed and hacked away in slices, which it seems they held up for guard of their heads’.[133] It was the legend of Powick Bridge, as much as the momentum of the charge, which condemned the Parliamentarian left wing at Edgehill.

  As the Royalists hit home, they levelled and fired their pistols and carbines. The rebel cavalry had tried to meet the impetus with their own, half-hearted, counter-charge, but it was no use. They poured back into the infantry behind and then continued their flight, some with such panic that by nightfall they reached St Albans, 40 miles away. Rupert’s men pushed on, annihilating the rebel musketeers on the ground before pursuing the broken enemy horse. Some Cavaliers headed for the baggage train, where the silver plate and personal possessions of senior Parliamentarians were seized. Others took the opportunity to pillage innocent civilians.

  Wilmot’s front line of Royalist cavalry on the left wing also rolled over their opponents. The terrain between them and the enemy was not suitable for a sweeping charge, being crisscrossed with ditches and containing pockets of Parliamentary musketeers, but Wilmot and his deputy, Sir Arthur Aston, led their men on. Met by a stuttering volley, they cut their way into Parliament’s ranks before firing into the body of the enemy, with devastating effect. The Parliamentarians joined their colleagues in flight.

  These twin successes tempted the second lines of the Royalist cavalry into fatal disobedience. Against Rupert’s clear instructions, they charged forward, their commanders, Sir John Byron and Lord Digby, eager to be in at the kill. This waywardness left the infantry and artillery shorn of mounted protection in the face of superior numbers. One of the prince’s colonels, Sir Charles Lucas — a colleague from the successful storming of Breda, several years earlier — rallied some of his men, intending to bring them immediately back to the battle’s centre. But a wave of fleeing enemy blocked his men’s return, and they plunged back into the headlong pursuit that Lucas had temporarily denied them.

  Parliamentary propagandists later asserted that Rupert was at the forefront of his frenzied men, urging them on, the plunderer-in-chief (it was later claimed that Prince Rupert’s conduct introduced the word ‘plunder’ to England: ‘Many towns and villages he plundered’, wrote May, ‘which is to say robbed (for at that time was the word first used in England, being born in Germany when that stately country was so miserably wasted and pillaged by foreign armies), and committed other outrages upon those who stood affected to the Parliament, executing some and hanging servants at their masters’ doors for not discovering of their masters.’ May, History of the Long Parliament, ed. 1854, p. 244). In truth, he took no part in the undisciplined rout. Instead, he rode among his men, imploring them to join him in a return to the battlefield. However, the adrenalin surge among his troopers, many of them fighting their first battle, was irresistible: the enemy’s thrilling disintegration, so complete and so immediate, lured them on.

  The social make-up of the Royalist cavalry in part explains their indiscipline: some were aristocrats and many were gentry — men who, in their own sphere, were used to giving, not receiving, orders. Besides, they were convinced that the day was already won. Now they saw their task, and their privilege, as being the mopping-up of a defeated enemy and the claiming of their just reward — plunder. Cavalrymen of all eras knew their role at such a moment in a battle. A manual for horse-borne troops advised 250 years later: ‘To obtain the greatest results from a successful engagement it must be followed by a pursuit, which must be vigorous and unceasing.’[134] The unbroken, spirited amateurs of Rupert’s squadrons felt compelled to pursue: it was what they had done on the hunting field since they could ride; it was part of their birthright; it was their
entitlement.

  A similar fiasco had occurred in 1264, during Henry III’s reign, at the battle of Lewes. The king’s son had led his over-excited cavalry off in a triumphant charge, leaving Henry and his infantry unprotected. When the prince returned, he found his father had been taken prisoner by Simon de Montfort’s rebel barons. Edgehill, like Lewes, was far from won when the cavalry left the field. During the absence of so many attacking units, the Parliamentarians diligently achieved huge advantages of their own. ‘When Prince Rupert return’d from the chase’, Clarendon later recalled, ‘he found a great alteration in the field, and his Majesty himself with few noblemen and a small retinue about him, and the hope of so glorious a day quite vanish’d.’[135] Fairfax’s men had gradually regained on foot what Rupert’s Cavaliers had claimed, then forfeited, on horseback.

  *

  The infantry battle formed its own distinctive part of the engagement, only starting once the main cavalry action had spun from the field under its own hectic energy. Sir Jacob Astley, the king’s Major General of Foot, had preceded the action by uttering his famous, soldier’s prayer: ‘Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day; but if I forget thee, do not thou forget me!’[136] He had then risen from his knees and shouted, ‘March on boys!’ He led his men against an enemy that enjoyed superior numbers, strong artillery fire, and, crucially, some cavalry support.

  Sir William Balfour was a Scots-born soldier who had served Charles as governor of the Tower of London. In this era of fluctuating loyalties, he was now Parliament’s Lieutenant General of Horse. Balfour had rescued some of his troopers from the Royalist rout and now funnelled them through the gaps between Essex’s three large brigades of foot. They bore down on, and broke, the Royalist centre. Lord Falkland, seeing this crisis unfold, tried to persuade Wilmot to regroup his cavalry and assist the infantry. Wilmot, however, dismissed the suggestion, replying: ‘My Lord, we have got the day, and let us live to enjoy the fruit thereof.’[137] Balfour’s squadrons rode on unchecked, reaching Charles’s cannon, slashing their harnesses, and eliminating them from the battle. They then rode back, past Royalist musketeers who failed to fire on them, believing them to be their own: the cavalry of both sides looked similar and the orange scarves worn by Essex’s men were difficult to see in the smoke-charged air of battle.

  When the Royalist infantry on the left-hand flank appreciated the predicament of their colleagues in the centre, they attempted to come to their rescue. However, Essex, alive to the situation, now deployed a body of his infantry to block them. He then ordered his heavily armed Lifeguard to join Balfour’s men in a three-pronged assault on Astley’s beleaguered line. The strength of the Parliamentarian attack prompted many to flee the field, scrambling up Edgehill’s slope in panic. In the confusion, a disaster of major proportions threatened Charles’s army.

  Sir Edmund Verney, knight marshal and hereditary bearer of the royal standard, was a reluctant Royalist. ‘I do not like the quarrel’, he remarked, when war became inevitable, ‘and do heartily wish that the King would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and in gratitude to follow my master.’[138] Assuming his duties at Edgehill, he carried the royal standard as both a symbol of the king’s military power, and as a rallying point for the Crown’s cause. He was unarmed, apart from the speared point of the banner, and was dressed in civilian clothes. His avowed intent was to lay down his life in the king’s service. Some Parliamentarians spied the standard fluttering invitingly among the king’s wavering infantry and spurred their horses towards it. Frenzied fighting followed, which saw Verney’s party whittled away by enemy swords. Sir Edmund battled on, using the point of the standard to good effect: he killed four rebels before being felled himself. So tight was his grip, even in death, that the rebel officer who captured the blood-splattered flag was forced to hack off Verney’s fist in order to carry away the prize.

  The infantry debacle claimed the life of that other fatalistic Royalist, The Earl of Lindsey. He strode out at the head of his regiment, before being felled by a shot high in the thigh. He was then taken prisoner and lay in some straw in a barn while bleeding heavily. Although the wound was not in itself life-threatening, he received no medical treatment. Lindsey died after several hours of blood loss, lying in the arms of his son, Lord Willoughby, another prisoner. If it had not been for his umbrage at Rupert’s special commission from his uncle, he would most likely have been safely at the rear of the action, directing proceedings from the king’s side.

  When matters in the centre of the battlefield tilted further Essex’s way, Charles’s companions urged him to flee, but he would not. The king knew that his presence was essential to his hard-pressed forces and bravely insisted on remaining with his men. Rupert eventually returned to his side, realising that his efforts to organise a meaningful cavalry force late in the day were doomed.

  As hopes of a great victory faded with the light, the only positive development was the recapture of the royal standard by John Smith, one of Rupert’s cavalry captains. Smith earned a battlefield knighthood from Charles for his valour. However, the talisman would not have been forfeited in the first place, had the Royalist horse been on the battlefield to protect it instead of careering across the surrounding countryside.

  Rupert was in time to see Essex prepare to close in on the right-hand side of the Royalist foot, the centre and left having already folded. But it was evening by this stage, and the lateness in the day and the reappearance of vestiges of Rupert’s horse dissuaded the earl from trying to finish off the enemy infantry.

  In the freezing night-time air, both sides reformed as best they could. Neither commander knew whose day it had been: by the standards of the time, which ever side left the field of battle was considered the loser, but Royalists and Parliamentarians both held their positions throughout a night remembered by survivors for its biting cold. Some 3,000 of Essex’s stragglers, who had failed to reach Edgehill in time for the battle, now caught up with their lord general and urged him to resume the fight the following day. Across the valley, on the ridge of Edgehill, Rupert also advocated the battle’s resumption at the earliest opportunity.

  However, there was shock for many of the combatants as the reality of warfare hit home. The scale of the casualties has been debated ever since, but between 1,500 and 3,000 men probably died at Edgehill, with many others fatally wounded. Nothing similar had been seen in England for over a century and a half. The struggle between Crown and Parliament had developed from a political contest to a military engagement where large numbers of compatriots had killed one another in the name of opposing causes.

  In the aftermath of battle, practical considerations came into play: Essex was reluctant to risk his forces in an attack on the Royalist position, since he would expose them to Rupert’s cavalry which, for all its indiscipline, was recognised as a dangerously destructive force. For their part, the Royalist infantry was in no condition to fight again. Three of its five brigades had been routed.

  Essex withdrew towards Warwick. When Rupert learned this, he persuaded his uncle to let him pursue the rebels with four mounted regiments. The prince attacked the enemy rearguard in Kineton, inflicting significant casualties and capturing prisoners, valuables, and correspondence. Among the letters addressed to the Earl of Essex were some from Blake, Rupert’s secretary, giving details of Royalist manoeuvres and requesting greater financial reward for his espionage. Rupert had Blake hanged at Oxford, days later.

  Parliamentarian sources accused the prince of murdering their wounded, but these claims were false. Thick fog stopped Rupert from pursuing further: the action in Kineton was the final episode of the battle of Edgehill.

  *

  The result of the battle was open to interpretation. While the Royalist cavalry had triumphed, the king’s infantry had been utterly defeated. The Parliamentarians, meanwhile, had witnessed Rupert’s destruction of their horse, while celebrating the success of their foot in the centre
of the field. More rebels had been killed and captured than had Royalists, and forty of the former’s regimental colours were taken, compared with a handful of Charles’s. However, more prominent figures had fallen in the king’s cause than had died for Parliament. In the wider context of the war, however, both sides had failed. Essex’s priority had been to close Charles’s route to London. In this he had failed. Equally, the Royalists had given battle at a time and place chosen by them, hopeful that they could decide the war in a day. They had seen their aims evaporate in the cloud of Digby and Byron’s indiscipline. Yet both sides quickly claimed to have triumphed: it was important, at this early stage, to be seen as the divinely-favoured party. Parliament rewarded Essex with a victor’s bounty of £5,000.

  The Royalists knew that they had thrown away their great chance. ‘Sometimes the good ordering of charging the Enemy causeth victory,’ wrote a Cavalier, later in the war, ‘and the contrary sometimes causeth the destruction of the whole body.’[139] Prince Rupert has to take ultimate responsibility for his cavalry’s failures, as well as its successes: at Edgehill, his squadrons’ order quickly unravelled. In mitigation, controlling troopers after a successful charge demanded a level of discipline that neither side possessed so early in the war, and which the Royalists were never to attain. Eliot Warburton, Rupert’s most partisan biographer, also blamed the character flaws of the prince’s men: ‘They never could be taught discipline; jealous and proud of their independence, and fiercely chary of their fancied personal importance, control over these wild and dashing troops was unattainable even by the stern Rupert.’[140] After Edgehill, the prince admitted that his men ‘skewed rather too much valour’.[141]

  One rebel observer, however, was impressed by the Royalist showing at Edgehill. Comparing the confidence of the Cavaliers with the diffidence of their own horsemen, Oliver Cromwell told his cousin John Hampden: ‘Your troopers are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, their troopers are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons, persons of quality. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour, courage and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or you will be beaten still.’[142] If Parliament failed in this, Cromwell was sure, it would be unable to better Rupert’s proud but wayward squadrons.