Towards the end of the year, Rupert appeared to be in the ascendant over his rivals. Parliamentarians reported with optimism: ‘Let me tell you, the power of Digby and the rest of the Irish [i.e., Roman Catholic] rebels faction is not so great with the King, at least, it is so given out, to the end we may think so, the more so sweeten them at Oxford in the opinion of us here: and none more forward to make peace, than Prince Rupert ...’[250]
Rupert, as commander of the army, was asked by the king to write a letter inviting peace negotiations. He addressed Essex, on 5 December:
My Lord,
I am commanded by his Majesty to desire of your Lordship safe conduct for the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Southampton, with their attendants, coaches, and horses, and other accommodations fitting for their journey towards London, during their stay, and in their return, when they shall think fit, from the Lords and Commons Assembled in the Parliament of England at Westminster, to bring to the Lords and Commons assembled in the Parliament of England, and the Commissioners of the Kingdom of Scotland now at London, an answer to the Propositions sent to his Majesty, for a safe and well grounded peace.
Your Lordship’s servant
Rupert[251]
It was far removed from his cocksure letter to Essex two years earlier, challenging the lord general to a duel. Indeed, the prince’s acknowledgement of Parliament as the legitimate assembly in England was an act of unprecedented humility. This concession had been agreed on by a majority of Charles’s advisers (a vote from which Rupert abstained, seeing himself as merely the communicator of his colleagues’ will). It was seen as a promising gesture in Westminster, the author of the rebel news-sheet Mercurius Britannicus writing: ‘This is so: we have Rupert’s hand for it, and the Duke [Richmond], and the Earl [Southampton], are continually expected here: This acknowledging of a Parliament is a good beginning, and gives great hope, that there may be a fair proceeding; whereas the want of this formal acknowledgement was a long time as a great gulf betwixt us and Peace.’[252]
However, Richmond and Southampton were unable to persuade Parliament to withdraw its more contentious demands. These were contained in ‘The Humble Desires and Propositions for a safe and well-grounded Peace’, the usual uneasy rebel blend of blind optimism, sensible compromise, and wilful insult. The fourteenth clause specified: ‘That the persons who shall expect no Pardon, be only these following: ...’. There then followed more than fifty names of prominent Royalist generals, advisers, and priests. The first two were: ‘Rupert and Maurice, Count Palatines of the Rhine ...’. There were many other points that Charles could not possibly accept, but leaving his most loyal followers vulnerable to retribution was one of the more compelling reasons for continuing the war.
Denied peace, singled out by Parliament as his uncle’s chief ‘malignant’, and exhausted by the court’s shenanigans, rumours circulated that Rupert would look to continue his military career overseas. ‘Nay, it is affirmed by some (who seem to know much),’ asserted the London Post, in mid December, ‘that Prince Rupert himself is now inclined to peace, whether he is weary of war finding it to be carried on in no part of Christendom, with greater violence, or whether England being now sufficiently wasted, he would exchange the wants of England, for the plenty and wealth of Venice: you heard that he hath been sent for by the States of Venice to be one of their Generals in their wars. Indeed, he hath a name in arms beyond the seas.’[253]
Yet Rupert still had an important role to play at the head of his uncle’s forces. His personal charisma was a potent weapon and wherever he travelled the Royalist cause prospered. However, the prince could not be everywhere at once, a fact bemoaned by colleagues reliant on the magic of his presence: ‘Your highness’s absence had cooled the affection of many,’ Dudley Wyatt wrote from Shropshire, in January 1645, ‘and consequently the hope of impunity raised many mutinous spirits.’[254] ‘The want of your Highness’s presence in these parts’, echoed Sir John Byron, writing from Chester three months later, ‘(though occasioned by inevitable incidents) & the continuance of the Rebels’ army so near unto us hath begot so much despair amongst all people here, that unless some speedy hopes of relief be given them, I much fear either a general revolt or neutrality ...’.[255]
The continuation of war was a draining affair. Supplying armies was costly and complicated, and manning them was ever more difficult: years of armed conflict had taken their toll, not just in lives lost, but also in incapacitating many survivors. Lorentz Gamb bowed out of the contest with a wonderfully understated adieu to Prince Maurice, in which he made light of a skirmish that had cost him many men, as well as his health: ‘For my part I hardly escaped with life having five deep wounds in my hand and right arm, whereof I doubt but I shall be lame forever ... I, having so escaped, could get not as much as quarter for myself, nor surgeon for [my] maimed soldiers, but was forced to leave each one to seek his fortune. Wherefore I humbly desire that your highness may be pleased to give me your recommendation in writing to his Majesty for my three years service, having lost all, and nothing wherewithal to subsist, and that your princely brother (whom heavens preserve) be not ignorant of it, thus praying for your happiness, and continual success, I rest your highness’s most humble servant during life.’[256]
Other avenues now had to be explored, to bring new recruits to the Royalist cause. Henrietta Maria secured an audience with Cardinal Mazarin, at which she hoped to persuade her native France to support her husband. However, Parliament knew of France’s military distractions on the Continent: ‘What reason have the French’, enquired one rebel commentator, ‘to pull an old house upon their heads in England, when with less money they may get new ones from Spain, and keep them when they have them without charge?’[257] Not even Henrietta Maria’s insistent pleas could divert France’s troops from the Thirty Years’ War.
Parliament faced similar problems with manpower and supply. At the end of 1644, Cromwell complained to his civilian masters that without more money to pay and feed his men, he would be unable to guarantee their future loyalty. He also became increasingly outspoken in his desire to push for victory, criticising those who failed to share his focus. There had been a suspicion earlier in the war that the Earl of Essex was reluctant to defeat his monarch: this would explain his failure to ram home advantages in the field. Now, Cromwell vented his distrust of the Earl of Manchester, whose reasonable weighing up of the odds facing the rebels — that one defeat could cost them their lives — was presented as defeatism. To the shock of many of his comrades, Cromwell declared that if he came across the king in battle, he would shoot him dead as happily as he would slay any lesser adversary.
Cromwell pushed for the transformation of the Parliamentary high command. He supported the Self-Denying Ordnance, which forbade Members of the Lords or Commons from serving as officers in the army. Cromwell was one of the few exceptions, receiving short-term commissions that recognised his indispensability in either sphere. However, the aristocratic generals who had failed to win the war thus far were jettisoned — their place was now in London, advising, rather than on the battlefield, fighting.
Parliament’s military capability was reinforced by Christian probity. Cromwell had bemoaned the inferior quality of the rebel troopers at Edgehill. He now harnessed religious fervour to his cause, turning his fighting East Anglians into some of the finest, most disciplined regiments engaged in the Civil War. Twelve years earlier British observers felt they had identified the secret to King Gustavus Adolphus’s success in war: ‘Fighting and Praying, and Praying and Fighting: thus hath the King of Sweden learn’d to conquer.’[258] Strong Protestant ethics, insisted upon by an uncompromising leader, had proved an irresistible aid on the battlefield.
The correlation between godliness and military effectiveness was recognised by both sides: the Bishop of Derry, preaching to Royalists in York in early 1644, had chided the worldly excesses of some in his congregation, promising that more devotion would lead inevitably to battlefield success:
‘It is a slander cast upon Religion,’ he claimed, ‘that it makes men cowards. The fear of God is the best armour against the fear of man. Religion is the root of Courage.’[259] Seven years later the Chief Justice of Munster was to expand on the same theme: ‘For not only that knowledge which is divine is from God, but skill in arms and expertness in wars, which though it may in a great measure be acquired by natural valour and understanding, voluntary industry, and long experiences, yet considering how many veteran Commanders of noble extraction and education, famous in feats of chivalry; have been foiled, broken in pieces, and beaten at their own weapons by a few gentlemen (in comparison) and ... mechanics and honest tradesmen, whose hearts the Lord hath drawn forth and engaged to fight his battles; we must needs acknowledge, that their valour, prowess and dexterity hath either been infused by God, or improved by him to a miraculous proficiency.’[260]
Sir Thomas Fairfax, the rebel commander, shared this creed. He borrowed from rigid Puritanism to bring a level of order to his troops that the Royalists could not match. During the winter of 1644-5, while peace negotiations between the two sides played out with their customary futility, Parliament built on the foundations of tight order revealed at Marston Moor. The result was England’s first truly professional fighting force, the New Model Army. It numbered 22,000 — a third of all rebel land forces.
The New Model Army’s cavalry and dragoons were of high quality, many drawn from Cromwell’s Eastern Association. The infantry was of less impressive heritage, many of them pressed men. However, once enlisted, they were obliged to observe ‘The Articles of War’, a rigid code of conduct with swingeing penalties for the disobedient: if a soldier swore, he was fined; if he blasphemed, he had his ‘tongue bored with a red-hot iron’; if he indulged in ‘rapes, ravishments and unnatural abuses’, he was executed. In return for accepting these conditions, Fairfax promised his men ‘coat and conduct money, wages and entertainments, and other necessary charges and allowances’.[261]
When the New Model Army marched out of Windsor, on 30 April 1645, Rupert had nothing to match it.
*
Fairfax was eager for action, but he found his enemy reluctant to fight. When he turned towards Taunton, the Royalists lifted their siege; when the New Model Army swivelled round to invest Oxford, Charles and his nephews marched quickly into the Midlands at the head of 11,000 men, leaving Will Legge to hold the town.
At the end of May the Royal field army proceeded to Leicester. Rupert’s demands of immediate surrender, coupled with threats of dire consequences if denied, were twice rejected. On the last day of the month he stormed the city, the charge led by the 500 infantrymen of Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats, their battle cry ‘God and the Prince!’ The deterioration in discipline in the Royalist army was revealed in the performance of this crack unit: ‘Rupert’s regiment got in with the first’, the Parliamentary journal Mercurius Britannicus recorded with disgust, ‘that was for the plunder, else you should have seen them hang an arse, as if they were going to a sermon.’[262] In all, the pillaging Royalists amassed ‘140 cart loads of the best goods and wares in the shops’[263] and sent them off to Newark for safekeeping.
The capture of Leicester was a huge fillip to the Royalists. With Clarendon reporting excellent recruiting figures from the southwest and Montrose prospering in Scotland, the king wrote to Henrietta Maria that things had never looked so promising for his cause. It seemed that Prince Rupert’s elevation to chief command had resulted in a sudden sea change in the king’s fortunes. Charles looked forward to a decisive conclusion to the war — ‘the last blow in the business’.
Parliament quit all its garrisons around Leicester and gloom spread among its supporters throughout the Midlands. ‘I am most heartily sorry for the ill success of our forces in all parties,’ wrote Sir Samuel Luke from Newport Pagnell, on 6 June, ‘which hath caused a dead heartedness in all people, that they are struck with such a panic fear, that, if I am not deceived, the Parliament cause was never in so declining a condition as at present.’[264]
The Royalist council of war debated how to capitalise on their unexpected advantage. There were three choices: to head west, to Worcester, and join up with Sir Charles Gerard’s army; to march north, to relieve Carlisle and fight the Scots; or to return to Oxford, and force Fairfax to lift the siege. Digby and his faction were for the Oxford option, playing on the king’s sense of chivalry by emphasising the plight that the ladies would face if the town fell and the victorious attackers had their way with them. Rupert was eager to push northwards again: he wanted to avenge Marston Moor, but also to appease the Northern Horse, whose troopers were desperate to return home. The debate was heated, the civilian courtiers fighting hard to re-establish influence after a period when Rupert and his military allies had held sway.
To the prince’s intense disappointment, Charles decided to march to the relief of Oxford. However, the Royal army had only reached Daventry when news came that Fairfax had abandoned his siege. This prompted a jubilant letter from Prince Rupert to Will Legge: ‘There was a plot to send the King to Oxford, but it is undone. The Chief of the Council was the fear some men [Digby and Ashburnham] had that the soldiers should take from the influence which now they possess with the King.’[265]
But, rather than push northwards as he had promised, Charles led his senior officers in a series of stag-hunts through the Northamptonshire countryside.
*
It was now that the Self-Denying Ordnance showed its worth: Essex, Manchester, and Waller were among those who pooled their combined battlefield experience in the Committee of Both Kingdoms in London, directing the generals in the field. There had been concern that Fairfax was hot-headed and would therefore be best deployed in the static business of siege warfare. But all appreciated that a crucial battle was now in the offing. The Moderate Intelligencer reported: ‘The fighting at this time is a business of great hazard to both parties, and he that hath the victory will gain much by it.’[266] It was essential, in such circumstances, for the field commander to have strategic independence and to be given the lieutenants that he wanted: Fairfax was given the freedom to act on his own initiative; Cromwell was given temporary command of the horse, as lieutenant general. The two men were ordered to unite their forces and bring the king to battle at the earliest opportunity.
On 12 June patrols from the two armies stumbled on each other just outside Northampton. Charles ordered a hasty retreat towards Leicester. The following night, it was later claimed, the king had a dream in which the ghost of the Earl of Strafford appeared, advising him not to give battle. Charles was roused from his sleep with news that Fairfax was closing in on the Royalists faster than had been thought possible. He summoned a midnight council of war at which Digby, Ashburnham, and their acolytes urged the king to turn and fight — underestimating a force that they had contemptuously nicknamed ‘the New Noddle’. They argued that it would be folly not to face the enemy so soon after it had failed in its siege of Oxford: the rebels must be demoralised by this failure and their own men would be dispirited if denied the chance of a great victory.
Rupert was equally insistent that it would be madness to risk all on the battlefield, while still at a numerical disadvantage. He advocated retreating to Leicester until reinforcements arrived. Gerard was expected at any moment, as was Goring, who had pleaded with the king to avoid battle until his return from the siege of Taunton. Goring’s cavalry was the pick of the Royalist horse, containing squadrons that had triumphed at Cropredy Bridge and helped save the day at the Second Battle of Newbury. Leicester’s walls had been quickly patched up, the weak points exploited by Rupert made strong, and the size of the Royalist army would make the speedy taking of the city impossible.
Charles, yet again, and this time disastrously, disregarded his nephew and opted to accept Digby’s advice. It ranks alongside his order to Rupert the previous summer — to fight the Anglo-Scottish army outside York — as one of the greatest strategic mistakes that the king made during
the Civil War.
*
The point chosen by Rupert to meet Fairfax and Cromwell was near to the village of Naseby. It was suited to his smaller numbers: only a mile wide, there were gorse bushes along the east side of the field and cramped enclosures to the west, ruling out rebel flanking attacks. Both armies would start the day by occupying opposing hills and the outcome would be decided at the dip of the parabola between them. This was a site that demanded victory: there was no hiding place for the defeated in the sweeping countryside beyond. The prince had been commanded to fight, so he had selected a killing zone where he would risk all.
In the early morning of Saturday, 14 June 1645, Rupert’s scouts erroneously reported that Fairfax was in retreat. In fact, the rebels were simply rearranging their lines to take advantage of the wind. Believing this faulty intelligence, the prince despatched a messenger to find his uncle, so the Royalists could be immediately unleashed on a disordered enemy.
By nine o’clock the Royalists were ready for action. The prince, resplendent in a scarlet cape, opted to lead the charge of his right-hand cavalry wing. Astley again commanded the infantry centre and Marmaduke Langdale rode at the head of the Northern Horse, on the left-hand wing. To distinguish themselves from the rebels, they tied beanstalks to their helmets. They were given as their battle cry, ‘Queen Mary’. The entire army was only 9,000 men.
Rupert dispensed with the traditional preliminaries of artillery bombardment. Cannon fire had reaped few benefits in previous battles for either side and, besides, the prince had only twelve guns. He chose, instead, to close with the enemy along his entire front.
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 18