For my part, my Lord, I am so well acquainted with the Prince’s way, that I am confident all his General Officers and Commanders knew beforehand how or in what manner he intended to fight; and when, as you say, all mankind were of opinion to fight, his part was to put it in execution ... And, for the not calling of a Council for the instant, truly, the Prince having before laid his business, were there need of it, the blame must be as much yours as any man’s ...
I cannot but conceive it the partiality of your Lordship’s wonted favours towards me, that you impute the misfortune of the day to my absence ...
But your Lordship says, you write none of these things with reflection; yet, let me frankly tell your Lordship, no impartial man that reads your letters to me and others, will free you from that, nay, charge you with it in a very great measure: and this truth you must pardon me in declaring to you. And assure yourself you are not free from great blame towards Prince Rupert; and no man will give you this free language at a cheaper rate than myself, though many discourse of it.[284]
Legge wanted Digby to understand that there were many in the Royalist camp who knew him for what he was and heartily despised him. Legge also needed Digby to appreciate that he was among those who preferred to look to Rupert for honest leadership, to rescue them from a rampant Parliament, and from the danger of sly, self-serving courtiers.
*
A surprising optimism pervaded the Royalist ranks immediately after the drubbing received at Naseby. The king and Rupert had made for Hereford, quickly linking up with Gerard’s 2,000 men, who could have made such a difference in Northamptonshire, days before. Charles still believed he had enough men to form an effective force: 4,000 of his cavalry had escaped from Naseby and there was also Goring’s army of 9,000 men in the southwest, as well as Montrose’s Irish and Scots in the Highlands. An air of denial hung over the scattered Royalist forces, as they dreamt of a new dawn.
Small triumphs followed, fanning the flames of unreality. A further recruitment drive was ordered for Wales, in the hope that another infantry corps could be raised. In the general euphoria that followed the trauma of defeat, nobody wanted to acknowledge that Naseby had seen not just a haemorrhaging of men, but also a mass forfeiting of arms: the muskets required to arm the force had been left scattered on the battlefield, providing a bountiful harvest for the victorious Parliamentarians and leaving the Royalists woefully short of firepower.
Meanwhile, the prince had to move to the southwest, his dual mission a liaison with the Prince of Wales and the bolstering of Bristol’s defences. The king was considering transferring there from Oxford and planned to ferry his new, Welsh recruits across the Bristol Channel as soon as they were ready. Further urgency was caused by fear that Fairfax might besiege the city — the general had quickly recaptured Leicester and was now moving southwestwards to tackle Goring outside Taunton.
Goring quickly lifted his siege and tried to avoid the approaching force, which outnumbered him two to one. However, on 10 July, he was taken by surprise at Langport: although few of his men were killed during the battle, half his cavalry was captured. Goring retreated into the southwest peninsula, leaving Fairfax with an empty stage. The New Model Army, its confidence boosted by a success it attributed to divine favour, now pushed on, quickly storming Barnstaple, and then taking Bath and Sherborne before July was out. Lord Digby lost Sherborne: his Royalist enemies were suspicious of this defeat, wondering whether the secretary of state had treacherously brought about this reverse, in collusion with the Roundheads.
After Langport, Rupert recognised that his uncle’s cause was lost. Charles had greeted the reversal of Naseby with his usual dilatoriness: he passed three weeks in Ragland Castle with ‘sports and entertainment’ in the morning, and engaging in ‘controversies on questions of divinity in the evening’.[285] The prince wrote from Bristol to his friend the Duke of Richmond, on 28 July, urging him to let the king hear from a trusted mouth what was evident to so many. Rupert’s advice was that ‘His Majesty hath now no way left to preserve his posterity, kingdom and nobility but by a treaty. I believe it a more prudent way to retain something than to lose all.’[286] No doubt he was mindful of his father’s fate, after accepting the throne of Bohemia.
The king took the advice in the right spirit, accepting the military reality of the situation while looking for salvation from a higher power: ‘If I had any other quarrel but the defence of my religion, crown, and friends, you had full reason for your advice. For I confess that speaking as a mere soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of my ruin. Yet as a Christian I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels and traitors to prosper, nor this cause to be overthrown, and whatever personal punishment it shall please him to inflict on me must not make me repine, let alone give over this quarrel.’[287] This letter was intercepted, the vulnerability of the monarch’s lines of communication a symptom of Parliament’s tightening net.
Rupert had expected the king to head for Bristol, where he hoped to provide his uncle with protection. However, to Rupert’s consternation, he learnt that Charles was contemplating heading to Scotland with his cavalry — a ‘strange undertaking’, in Rupert’s estimation, which seemed, at best, to have a slim chance of success. The prince also worried that the Royalist position in the south, already precarious, would be made desperate if deprived of its figurehead.
Rupert felt increasingly isolated from his uncle. Unaware that many letters from the king had gone astray, he wrongly concluded that Charles’s apparent silence reflected anger at his frank advice. ‘He did send me no commands,’ Rupert grumbled to Will Legge, ‘and, to say truth, my humour is to do no man service against his will. They say he is gone northward. I have had no answer to ten letters I wrote; but from the Duke of Richmond, to whom I wrote plainly, and bid be plain with the King, and desire him to consider of some way which might lead to a treaty, rather than undo his posterity. How this pleases I know not; but, rather than not do my duty, and speak my mind freely, I will take his unjust pleasure.’[288]
A week later the king wrote revealing his continuing affection for his nephew and his abiding optimism that the royal cause would prosper in the end: ‘And now, because it is possible that it will be a long time before I see you, I earnestly desire you to have an implicit faith in my friendship and affection to you, for I assure you I hold myself interested equally to protect you as one of my children; so that you shall share largely with me, if ever it shall please God to send happy days unto Your loving Uncle and most faithful Friend, Charles.’[289]
It seems strange, the king’s acceptance of his military commander’s absence from his side, when so hard-pressed by a rampant enemy. However, Rupert was happy to distance himself from his enemy, Digby, explaining in cipher to a curious Legge: ‘You do well to wonder why Prince Rupert is not with the King, but when you know the Lord Digby’s intentions to ruin him, you will then not find it strange. But all this shall not hinder me from doing my duty where I am.’[290] This was written from Bristol, scene of one of Rupert’s greater triumphs earlier in the war, but now a city in peril: it was increasingly cut off from the rest of the Civil War by a naval blockade and encircling Roundhead land forces. The speedy capture of Bridgwater on 23 July, after concerted attacks, gave further evidence of the effectiveness of the New Model Army: the town had been expected to withstand a lengthy siege, despite Goring’s defeat at nearby Langport. Its fall deprived the Royalists of a useful staging post for arms and supplies in the west and southwest.
Bristol was in a wretched state, impoverished by the continued warfare and afflicted by a summer outbreak of plague: ‘They have few carts in the city,’ a rebel wrote, ‘but carry all upon their heads, for the most part. The sickness is still hot in the town, and it is also in the great fort, and in the castle; yet Sir Thomas Fairfax keeps Rupert and some others of note in Bristol, and draws out the line, and is in good hopes to take it, the citizens, for the most part, longing to be rid of the Cavaliers.’[291] Agai
nst this desperate backdrop, Rupert had to meet an imminent, full-blooded siege.
The prince reacted to the threat with his usual drive. He set his men to work, stiffening the city’s flimsy defences and foraging for food. A rough census of the city informed him that 2,500 families — approximately 12,500 inhabitants — would need provisions. He told the citizens to prepare for a six-month siege. Those that were unable to afford extra supplies were assisted by 2,000 measures of corn, ordered by Rupert from Wales. Cattle from the surrounding area were driven into Bristol, to provide milk and beef during the coming blockade. However, despite the prince’s efforts, the city could not be properly prepared for the rebels’ arrival: ‘The townsmen’, Parliament was informed, ‘being unprovided for a siege, have great scarcity of victuals, which, [it] is probable, may cause them to mutiny, but indeed the castle, and the Prince’s fort, the great fort, where Rupert quarters, is well victualled.’[292] On 12 August the prince wrote to his uncle that, provided the citizens did not rise up, he hoped to be able to hold Bristol for four months. Given the lesson of Bridgwater, and the small size of the Bristol garrison, this assessment owed more to bravado than to realism.
Unsure of the citizens’ support, Rupert tried to pacify the ‘clubmen’ of the southwest. These were civilian resistance fighters who, fed up with the abuses of Royalists and rebels, had taken to attacking both their tormentors. Their rudimentary weaponry was offset by their passionate desire to protect their property and families. By this stage of the war, with Parliament’s forces increasingly disciplined, Charles’s forces were more often seen as the clubmen’s enemy. The Royalist Sir John Oglander conceded that some of his colleagues had brought their animosity on themselves: ‘They imputed their failures to want of money, for they would idly spend it as fast as they had it, not caring how they burdened the country, thereby making of their friends their enemies.’[293] Rupert was unable to appease the clubmen: they had been too alienated by past Royalist excesses to be brought to heel now.
The Parliamentarian army continued to close in: Sherborne Castle (Sir Walter Raleigh’s old home) was stormed, Bath was abandoned, and Frome was captured. Rupert was left to face the rebels with a garrison of just 1,500 men and a very limited supply of gunpowder — pleas to Sir Edward Nicholas for reinforcements and armaments had gone unheeded, and the one Royalist ship sent to help him was kept at bay by the rebel fleet. The prince found himself with the same problem that Nathaniel Fiennes had faced, the previous year, when Rupert had attacked Bristol: how to defend the city’s 4 miles of perimeter walls, with their sporadic fortifications and with an inadequate force?
Rupert and his senior officers became increasingly despondent. Nothing had been heard from the king or his advisers for an age and there seemed to be no hope of relief. Meanwhile, irreplaceable provisions were being consumed quickly. The prince summoned his council of war — ‘composed’, in Warburton’s words, ‘of the most daring and gallant men that the war had spared’[294] — and examined the choices left open to them. Baron de Gomme, Rupert’s Engineer-General, gave a grim account of the defences’ shortcomings, concluding that the thin, low walls of the city would not be able to withstand a vigorous assault.
The council of war contemplated Rupert’s breaking out from Bristol with the cavalry, leaving the infantry to fend for itself, but, it was later revealed, ‘This, by all of us the Colonels of posts and Officers, was thought neither safe nor honourable.’[295] A second fighting option was for Rupert to pour his best troops into the castle and fort, and to hold these bastions for as long as possible. However, all present knew that everyone not chosen for this task would be at the mercy of the enemy. Besides, the castle and fort would not be able to hold out for long. ‘Seeing that neither of the former ways could be taken,’ the surviving members of the council were to recall, ‘we were all resolved to fall upon the best general defence that could be made of the whole, wherein we might all share alike.’[296]
*
On 22 August, units of the New Model Army arrived outside Bristol, in advance of the main force under Fairfax and Cromwell. The prince sent Sir Richard Crane, recognised by rebel pamphleteers as a ‘great favourer of Rupert’s’[297] to skirmish with the approaching enemy. Crane’s mission was short-lived: he was shot through the thighs — serious wounds that soon led to his death. This was one of several losses that further demoralised the prince: Sir Bernard Astley (son of Lord Astley, the erstwhile Royalist infantry commander) was ambushed, wounded in the shoulder and leg, and captured; and Colonel Daniell, who had been present at the attempted arrest of the Five Members, was shot seven times in the same action, ignorant surgery ensuring a speedy despatch. These casualties underlined the cost of pointless resistance.
Fairfax spent the following week laying the foundations for an armed assault. While rebel spies tried, unsuccessfully, to foment insurrection in the city, Fairfax pushed his cannon and his ships hard against the Royalist defences, ‘and so hath made Bristol an in-land-town’.[298] Fairfax was aided by 2,000 clubmen, who beat a Royalist garrison out of Portishead.
Bristol’s defenders experienced growing tension. They expected a night attack each time that dusk fell, and their nerves and reserves of gunpowder were worn down by dummy attacks on successive nights. Rupert twice ordered his men to prepare to venture out against the Roundhead encirclement, but he backed down on both occasions. Fairfax’s men grew in confidence: ‘Rupert is resolved of a desperate sally,’ one of his officers informed the Speaker of the House of Commons from the front line. ‘I hope he will be received, these two nights past, he prepared but durst not come out: This morning at break of the day, I never saw men take Horse and advance more cheerfully than ours did, having an Alarum that he was coming.’[299] Rupert was no longer the feared Royalist talisman of the early years of the war.
On 29 August the New Model Army erected a bridge across the Avon: it now had a foothold on both sides of the river, completing the city’s isolation. Six days later, Fairfax sent a trumpeter into Bristol, formally summoning Rupert to surrender. Pamphleteers painted the scene with relish: ‘So soon as the Prince received the paper,’ one propagandist alleged, tapping into the caricature image of the Cavalier, ‘he looking in it, swore God damn him it was a summons, and called for a cup of sack and sat down and read it and detained the trumpeter in Bristol.’[300]
The manner in which Fairfax addressed the prince shows regard for a distinguished foe, whose lineage and character demanded respect: ‘I take into consideration your Royal birth, and relation to the Crown of England, your honour, courage, and the virtue of your person’, Fairfax wrote. He then played on the well-known division between the prince’s and Digby’s factions, claiming that, in the suppressing of the king’s ‘evil counsellors’, Fairfax and Rupert shared a common cause: ‘to bring those wicked instruments to justice that have misled him, is a principal ground of our fighting’,[301] the rebel leader stated.
At the same time, Fairfax presented the surrender of Bristol as a chance for Rupert to wash clean his bloodstained hands, and to repay the Palatine debt to their doughty English allies: ‘Let all England judge whether the burning of its towns, ruining its cities, and destroying its people be a good requital from a person of your family, which hath had the prayers, tears, purses, and blood of its Parliament and people; and, if you look on either as now divided, which hath ever had that same party both in Parliament and amongst the people most zealous for their assistance and restitution, which you now oppose and seek to destroy, and whose constant grief has been that their desires to serve your family have been ever hindered or made fruitless by that same party about his Majesty, whose counsels you act, and whose interests you pursue in this unnatural war.’[302]
There was enough in Fairfax’s clever construction to intrigue the prince. Surrender was a difficult concept for a former prisoner of war, whose proud reputation was to meet potential reversals with bold attack. The accusations cast against Digby and his clique resonated with Rupert. Similar
ly thought-provoking was the reminder of what would happen if the New Model Army were forced to attack. Prince Rupert and his senior officers, all seasoned fighters, knew the rules of war: a failure to surrender could expose not only their soldiers and the citizens of Bristol to the mercy of the Parliamentarians, but would also endanger the lives of the wives of Royalist officers who were in the city. Futile death and widespread destruction would be the only rewards for stubborn resistance.
Fairfax set about further undermining Royalist morale. He took to eating in the open, clearly confident of success and ready to deliver the final attack at any moment. He emphasised the point by inspecting his troops and Rupert’s defensive lines in full view of the Royalists. ‘And when the General had viewed all, he came to his own Cannon, and viewed them all to see how they were planted, and how levelled, particularly the great twisted piece…’[303]
Rupert stalled. He asked for permission to send to the king, to gain his approval for the surrender. Fairfax, who knew what the prince did not — that Charles was within 60 miles of the city and that Goring was also hoping to come to Bristol’s relief — refused this request. Rupert then demanded that Sir Thomas have his Summons sanctioned by Parliament, in London. This attempt at time-wasting was dismissed out of hand: the prince had overplayed his extremely limited hand.
At 2 a.m. on 10 September 1645, the New Model Army began the storming of Bristol. Four great guns signalled an attack every bit as ferocious as Rupert’s assault of the previous year. Major Price, a Royalist, held the fort for three hours, before being overwhelmed by rebels on scaling ladders: no quarter was offered — he and all his men were slain. Meanwhile, the clubmen caused terror around Bedminster, forcing Rupert’s men back towards the city’s centre. ‘Ours being made masters of the most part of the Town,’ recalled a Roundhead eyewitness, ‘Rupert fled into the Castle; our men being about to plant Pieces [of artillery] against it, Rupert sent for a Parley to them: the Soldiers were unwilling, but the General, out of his noble resolutions to spare the Town, Rupert having fired it in three small places, condescended to it, which by six that night produced these Articles ...’[304]
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 20