Fairfax commanded his infantry at the centre, with Cromwell to his right and Ireton to his left, opposite Rupert. Cromwell’s recent arrival in the rebel camp with 4,000 men, meant that the Parliamentarians had 16,000 soldiers, outnumbering the Royalists by nearly two to one. They wore no distinguishing marks and their battle cry was ‘God is our strength’.
Both sides had agreed to engage and on spying one another across the valley early in the morning, the armies had each signalled their thirst for action with gigantic roars. Everyone knew what was at stake: ‘About eleven o’clock,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘the trumpets began to sound, the drums to beat, the horses to neigh and prance, and now thought both sides, An afternoon for a Kingdom: Caesar or nothing was we suppose the voice of one army, The Liberties of England of the other: and thus they charged each other with all their might and equal courage.’[267]
Naseby was, in many ways, a fitting military climax to the Civil War, various episodes within its furious energy reminiscent of previous engagements. As at Edgehill and Marston Moor, Rupert’s cavaliers were magnificent in attack, drawing admiration from enemy onlookers. Colonel Okey commanded Parliament’s dragoons drawn up behind a hedge, who fired their muskets into the flank of Rupert’s cavalry as they passed. Okey was moved to record the stirring sight of ‘the Royalists moving on in a very stately and gallant style’ as they galloped past him.[268] Another rebel conceded that Rupert’s wing charged ‘with such gallantry as few in the Army ever saw the like’.[269] Ireton’s men were broken and their leader received two wounds.
With the rest of the Royalist army heavily outnumbered, it was essential that Rupert should now wheel his soldiers about and bring them swiftly back to the battlefield for further action. However, he instead led his men to the enemy baggage train. Colonel Bartlett, commander of its guard, was intrigued to see a red-caped cavalryman trot up to him and assumed that the man greeting him with such civility was Fairfax. Taking his hat off, Bartlett asked how the day was going. He did not receive the answer he was expecting: to his astonishment, a Parliamentary correspondent reported, ‘The Cavalier whom we since heard was Rupert, asked him and the rest, if they would have quarter, and they cried no, gave fire and instantly beat them off.’[270] Bartlett’s stubborn resistance detained the prince and his men for a crucial period, when their services were urgently needed elsewhere.
The Northern Horse, demoralised and tired, made up the left-hand cavalry wing. They had long wanted to return to their homes, to protect their lands and families. The king’s refusal to honour his promise to head northwards, after the abortive lunge towards Oxford, had left them mutinous and distracted. Rupert ordered them to attack Parliament’s right wing, led by Cromwell — a manoeuvre that involved leaving a strong defensive position and charging uphill at a powerful and confident enemy. Many on both sides were veterans of Marston Moor and although the fighting was unforgiving, the result was similar. Langdale’s men were forced to retreat, at first in an orderly manner, picking their way through the gorse as they fell back. Eventually, though, the sheer weight of the Ironsides drove them from the field.
One of the broken Royalist cavalry regiments had embroidered their colours with the words, ‘Come, Cuckolds’, and had embellished this message with the image of a pair of horns. This flag was captured by the rebels, who then ‘held the Horns and Motto towards the Enemy, and so charged them’.[271] Both sides shared a common nationality that revealed itself in an exuberant irreverence and a very Anglo-Saxon sense of humour.
Charles’s infantry showed great courage, surprising the enemy with its resilience. It started the foot battle promisingly, locking with the first rebel brigades in the face of artillery and musket fire. The king’s musketeers discharged their weapons before falling on Fairfax’s troops, using their weapons as clubs, while the Royalist pikemen remained compact and focused, their points breaking their opponents’ line, which fell back. However, on reaching the top of the hill, an awful sight confronted them: two more lines of enemy, until now hidden from view, were standing in battle order, ready to receive them. Astley’s men faltered, knowing they could not hope to repeat their heroics once, let alone twice, more. At this moment, Cromwell’s cavalry reserves ploughed into them and the fields around Naseby village became a place of slaughter.
As Newcastle’s Whitecoats had done at Marston Moor, now Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats became martyrs in a hopeless cause. While many other Royalist infantry units accepted the inevitable and surrendered to Fairfax, the Prince’s infantry regiment levelled their pikes and chose to fight on. The arrival of rebel cavalry hastened their end, ‘... the right wing of our Horse (wherein the General was in person),’ remembered a Parliamentarian eyewitness, ‘charged in the flank of the blue regiment of the enemy’s Foot, who stood to it, till the last man, abundance of them slain, and all the rest surrounded, wounded, and taken’.[272] Fairfax called up his own regiment and a one-sided duel took place between the two commanders’ crack units, the rebels finishing off the Royalists by staving in their skulls with the butt ends of their muskets.
The king still hoped that the day could be his. Wearing gilt armour, he trotted round the beleaguered pockets of his remaining men shouting, ‘One charge more, gentlemen! One charge more, and the day is ours!’[273] But the sheer quantity of Cromwell and Fairfax’s men smothered any hopes Charles had of reconstituting his splintered force. The king called for those around him to join him in a desperate charge. He was about to gallop towards the enemy when one of his Scottish courtiers, the Earl of Carnworth, seized Charles’s bridle and chided the monarch for his foolhardiness: ‘Will you go upon your death in an instant?’[274] He then led the king away from the field, snuffing out the last hope of Royalist victory and precipitating the rout that saw the defeated break for Leicester, Lichfield, and Newark.
At Naseby 800 Royalists lost their lives, 500 on the battlefield and 300 cut down by Cromwell’s pursuing cavalry. Parliamentary pamphlets were abuzz with the scale of the victory, listing the officers taken in this, the decisive battle of the Civil War. Five thousand Royalists were captured, the majority infantry. Of these, 500 were officers: they were sent to London, to be paraded through the streets like vanquished barbarians, adding exotic colour to the scenes of triumph.
Savagery blossomed in the aftermath of the battle. The king’s army included female camp followers — officers’ wives, cooks and servants, whores — who were caught; many were killed, while others had their features slashed in acts of deliberate disfigurement. The false justification for this outrage was that these women were Irish Papists of no morality. The Irish were fair game in the minds of bigoted Puritans: a Parliamentary naval officer expressed commonly held contempt for them when he called them ‘that ungodly crew of Revolters’[275] and one of the propaganda sheets referred to them as ‘unnatural Monsters’.[276] The women’s murder and brutalisation was a result of rampant religious intolerance.
There was no shame at this bloodshed, an early battlefield report merely mentioning in passing: ‘The Irish women Prince Rupert brought on the field (wives of the bloody Rebels in Ireland — his Majesty’s dearly beloved subjects) our soldiers would grant no quarter to, about 100 slain of them, and most of the rest of the whores that attended that wicked Army are marked in the face or nose, with a slash or cut.’[277] Other pamphlets reckoned the number of women murdered between three and four hundred.
Early, excited reports that Prince Rupert had been taken alive proved to be unfounded: he slipped away, a commander who had suffered heavy battlefield defeat for the second time in a year. His sumpter horse was taken, as was his standard — along with those of his uncle, aunt, and brother. Two hundred wagons were filled by the victors with valuables and provisions — including, as one rebel recalled, ‘great store of biscuit and cheese, a seasonable refreshment for our soldiers that had marched so hard, and the night before had not a bit of bread to a regiment for their refreshment’.[278]
Of huge embarrassment to Charles w
as the discovery of the cabinet containing his personal correspondence with Henrietta Maria. This revealed him to be negotiating with foreign, Catholic powers to aid him against Parliament. Politically, these letters were catastrophic for the king. They played into the hands of his bitterest enemies, whose message was hateful distrust of a monarch they held responsible for all the misery of the war. When the king learnt that his cabinet was lost, he ordered that those who had failed to guard it properly should be hung.
*
There were many reasons why the battle of Naseby ended in disaster for Charles: he should not have fought when at such a numerical disadvantage; he would have been wise to await the arrival of Goring’s cavalry and Gerard’s foot; and the Northern Horse had betrayed their flickering morale in the face of Cromwell’s unblinking Ironsides. However, Rupert’s inability to learn from previous experience made defeat more likely and more complete.
If the prince had been in a fixed command post at Marston Moor, it is less likely that he would have lost the battle. However, he had been wrong-footed by the sudden enemy charge and then was forced to flee for his life. At Naseby, though, he had a choice. He could have left the right cavalry wing to Maurice, while keeping a controlling overview of the battle. Instead, he decided to lead the cavaliers’ assault.
Rupert’s private papers show that he had hoped to annihilate the squadrons opposing him quickly, then lead his men back to the battlefield, surprising Cromwell’s cavalry from the rear. But this was an ambitious plan that was always likely to fail. Even if Ireton’s men had put up weaker resistance, the sheer number of rebel foot soldiers arrayed in the folds of the land between Rupert and the rear of Cromwell’s position was always likely to be decisive. Attacking the baggage train was therefore probably not — as subsequent generations have been taught — yet another sign of hopeless, Cavalier, indiscipline. Rather, it was an attempt by Rupert to find an alternative route for his men, so they could swing round on the enemy’s unprotected rear. Whatever the hypotheses, the absence of the prince’s troopers from the centre of the battlefield proved catastrophic.
The Northern Horse’s reputation suffered greatly at Naseby. Both sides saw its retreat as a major contribution to the Royalist defeat: ‘Langdale’s brigade ran away basely, and lost the King the day’,[279] was the conclusion of one Parliamentarian. But blame for the misuse of a force low in morale, against the Puritan powerhouse of the New Model Army, must be laid at Rupert’s feet. It would have been wiser to leave them to fight a defensive battle while the right wing sallied forth with its customary verve; indeed, the infantry would also have been better off receiving, rather than initiating, an attack. A more considered general — someone like Lindsey, in fact — would have served his king better that day.
The prince had belatedly taken command of an army whose discipline — never its strong point — had gently unravelled during the course of the war. ‘Nothing could equal the gallantry of the Cavaliers,’ Parliament acknowledged with relief, ‘except their want of discipline.’[280] Rupert’s role had increasingly become that of a commissar, trying desperately to keep his forces provisioned and armed so the military struggle could continue. These priorities left him with little time to drill his men or to hone their military skills: the Royalist army had some fine units, but the majority suffered from any combination of war-weariness, homesickness, disillusionment, or a penchant for plunder. In the face of Fairfax and Cromwell’s New Model Army, aided by well-armed auxiliaries, they were shown up for the amateurs that many of them had always been.
To what extent one man can be blamed for a failure to deal with every aspect of a wide command, without committed support from the king or his council of war, is the yardstick against which Rupert should be judged as a commander. However, it is clear that Naseby was a mismatch, because Parliament’s army was more numerous and more professional than Charles’s force. The prince was left hoping for victory, in a battle that he did not want, as he tried to hold the Royalist cause together. Fairfax and Cromwell, meanwhile, had enjoyed the luxury of planning for a decisive engagement, and then had the calibre and weight of men to see their plans through.
Militarily, the commitment of his men to a battlefront advance against a superior enemy revealed Rupert’s misplaced optimism. A pair of pragmatists called his bluff: their military nous, supported by a sincere and deep-seated religious fervour, proved to be an irresistible combination. Naseby was Rupert’s last land battle as overall commander, fought when he was just 24 years old. It is as well to admit that, despite his startling bravery, his fighting skill, and his dynamic presence, he failed in this role.
The prince’s inability to play at politics left him exposed after Naseby. Digby blamed the prince for the defeat, pointing in particular to the failure to use artillery before battle was joined. But Rupert’s real crime had been allowing Digby to hold such sway over a malleable monarch. This time, the secretary of state could not resist the opportunity to kick his rival while he was down.
Chapter Eleven - No Hope of Better Things
‘Sir, the Crown of England is and will be where it ought to be, we fight to maintain it there; but the King, misled by evil counsellors or through a seduced heart, hath left his Parliament and his people, under God the best assurance of his Crown and family. The maintenance of this schism is the ground of this unhappy war on your part, and what sad effects it hath produced in the three kingdoms is visible to all men.’
Sir Thomas Fairfax’s Summons to Prince Rupert, outside Bristol, 4 September 1645
Rupert was aware that the defeat at Naseby left him vulnerable to his enemies at Court. A ciphered letter to his great friend Legge, the governor of Oxford, reveals a wearied acceptance of his exposure:
Dear Will,
... Pray let me know what is said among you concerning our defeat. Doubtless the fault of it will be put upon Rupert ... Since this business, I find Digby hath omitted nothing which might prejudice Rupert, and this day hath drawn a letter for the King to Prince Charles, in which he crosses all things that hath befell here in Rupert’s behalf. I have showed this to the King, and in earnest; and if, thereupon, he should go and send it, I shall be forced to quit generalship ...
Your faithful friend,
Rupert.[281]
Digby’s servant, Felton, spread the slander that, on seeing the size of the army arrayed against the Royalists, Lord Astley had tried to stop Rupert from fighting. The prince had disregarded the veteran’s advice, Felton said, so must take full responsibility for the ensuing disaster; by implication, Digby’s insistence on fighting was not to blame.
Felton was lying, but in the aftermath of defeat, with scapegoats much sought after, the falsehood took root. Legge, eager to salvage the prince’s reputation, asked Digby to explain whether he was behind the slander. He received a less than straightforward reply, from a man that — even his Parliamentary enemies acknowledged — had a way of producing, ‘good lines, at which he is as good as the best’.[282]
My dear Governor,
... I am sure that Prince Rupert hath so little kindness for me, as I daily find he hath, it imports both to me and mine to be much the more cautious not to speak anything that may be wrested to his prejudice. I can but lament my misfortune that Prince Rupert is neither gainable nor tenable by me, though I have endured it with all the industry and justness unto him in the world, and lament your absence from him ... But I conjure you, if you preserve that justice and kindness for me which I will not doubt, if you hear anything from Prince Rupert concerning me, suspend your judgement. As for the particular aspersion upon him which you mention, of fighting against advice, he is very much wronged in it, whether you mean in the general or in the particular of that day.
I shall only say this freely to you, that I think a principal occasion of our misfortune was the want of you with us; for had you been there, I am persuaded that when once we have come up so near them as they could not go from us, you would at least have asked some questions ...
Your faithfullest friend and servant,
George Digby[283]
Legge, usually so measured, started his reply with customary reserve. However, he could not hide his anger for long:
My dear Lord,
... I do assure your Lordship it was out of great respect to you that your servant, Felton, did not feel a reward for his folly ... what I accused him of in my letter to you, were no more than what he confessed himself to me he reported; which was, that Prince Rupert did that day [at Naseby] fight contrary to the opinions of my Lord Astley…
With people much distracted for the great loss, these words went far to the Prince’s prejudice; and though he writes to your Secretary that this report was raised on him out of malice to you, he assures your Lordship it will not be beaten out of the heads of many that his report was out of malice to the Prince.
I am extremely afflicted to understand from you that Prince Rupert and yourself should be upon so unkindly terms, and I protest I have cordially endeavoured, with all my interest in his Highness, to incline him to a friendship with your Lordship conceiving it a matter of advantage to my master’s service, to have good intelligence between persons so eminently employed in his affairs ... But, my Lord, I often found this a hard matter to hold between you; and truly, my Lord, your last letter to me gives me some cause to think your Lordship not altogether free from what he often accused you of as the reason of his jealousies; which was, that you did both say and do things to his prejudice contrary to your professions, not in an open and direct line, but obscurely and obliquely; and this way, under your Lordship’s pardon, I find your letter, in my understanding, very full of. For, where your Lordship would excuse him of the particular and general aspersions, yet you come with such objections against the conduct of that business, as would, to men ignorant of the Prince, make him incapable of common sense in his profession.
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 19