The 'Third English Civil War' (
1649–
1651) was the third of three wars known as the
English Civil War (or Wars) which refers to the series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between
Parliamentarians, or, as they were formerly known roundheads and
Royalists from
1642 until
1652 and include the
First English Civil War (
1642–
1646) and the
Second English Civil War (
1648–
1649).
Overview
The
Preston campaign of the Second Civil War was undertaken under the direction of the
Scots Parliament, not the
Kirk, and it needed the execution of King
Charles I to bring about a union of all Scottish parties against the
English Independents. Even so,
Charles II. in exile had to submit to long negotiations and hard conditions before he was allowed to put himself at the head of the Scottish armies. The
Marquess of Huntly was executed for taking up arms for the king on
March 22 1649.
Marquess of Montrose, under Charles's directions, made a last attempt to rally the Scottish Royalists early in
1650. But Charles merely used Montrose as a threat to obtain better conditions for himself from the
Covenanters, and when the noblest of all the Royalists was defeated at the
Battle of Carbisdale (
April 27), delivered up to his pursuers (
May 4), and executed (
May 21,
1650), he was not ashamed to give way to the demands of the Covenanters, and to place himself at the head of Montrose's executioners. His father, whatever his faults, had at least chosen to die for an ideal, the
Church of England. Charles II. now proposed to regain the throne by allowing
Scotland to impose
Presbyterianism on
England, and dismissed all the faithful
Cavaliers who had followed him to exile.
Cromwell in Ireland
''Main article:
Cromwellian conquest of Ireland''.
Ireland had been at war since the
rebellion of 1641, with most of the island being controlled by the
Irish Confederates. In 1648, in the wake of Charles I's arrest, and the growing threat to them from the armies of the English Parliament, the Confederates signed a treaty of alliance with the English Royalists. The joint Royalist and Confederate forces under
Ormonde attempted to eliminate the Parliamentary army holding
Dublin, but were routed at the
battle of Rathmines by a Parliamentary army commanded by Colonel
Michael Jones. As the former Member of Parliament
Admiral Robert Blake blockaded
Prince Rupert of the Rhine's fleet in
Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell was able to land at
Dublin on
August 15,
1649 with the army to quell Royalist alliance in
Ireland. The alliance, which was a compromise that gave command of the Irish Confederate forces to the English Royalists, was very shaky from the start, with many Confederates unhappy with the leadership of Ormonde. Indeed the Confederates had fought a mini civil war among themselves in 1648 over this alliance, with
Owen Roe O'Neill's
Ulster army leaving the Confederation and only re-joining it after Cromwell had actually landed in Ireland.
Partly as a result of this disunity, the Irish/Royalist coalition was driven from eastern Ireland by Cromwell, who beat down all resistance by his skill, and even more by his ruthless severity, in a brief campaign of nine months (storming of
Drogheda,
September 11, and of
Wexford,
October 11, by Cromwell; capture of the
Irish Confederate capital
Kilkenny,
March 28,
1650, and of
Clonmel,
May 10).
Cromwell returned to England, on the urgings of the Parliament, at the end of May 1650 in order to lead an army to Scotland, where the
Covenanters had proclaimed
Charles II as king. On
June 26 Fairfax, who had been anxious and uneasy since the execution of the king, resigned the command-in-chief of the army to his lieutenant-general. The pretext, rather than the reason, of Fairfax's resignation was his unwillingness to lead an English army to reduce Scotland.
Cromwell turned over his command in Ireland to
Henry Ireton. It took two more years of prolonged siege and guerrilla warfare, before the last major Irish resistance was ended, after the
fall of Galway in late 1652. The last Confederate Catholic troops surrendered in mid 1653.
The Invasion of Scotland
This important step had been resolved upon as soon as it was clear that Charles II. would come to terms with the Covenanters. From this point the Third Civil War became a war of England against Scotland. Here at least the Independents carried the whole of England with them. Few Englishman cared to accept a settlement at the hands of a victorious foreign army, and on
June 28 1650, five days after Charles II. had sworn to the Covenant, the newly appointed lord-general Oliver Cromwell was on his way to the Border to take command of the English army. About the same time a new militia act was passed that was destined to give full and decisive effect to the national spirit of England in the great final campaign of the war.
Meanwhile the motto ''frappez fort, frappez vite'' was carried out at once by the regular forces. On
July 19 Cromwell made the final arrangements at
Berwick-on-Tweed. Major-General
Thomas Harrison, a gallant soldier and an extreme Independent, a
Fifth Monarchist, was to command the regular and auxiliary forces left in England, and to secure the Commonwealth against
Royalists and
Presbyterians. Cromwell took with him
Charles Fleetwood as lieutenant-general and
John Lambert as major-general, and his forces numbered about 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. His opponent
David Leslie (his comrade of
Marston Moor) had a much larger force, but its degree of training was inferior, it was more than tainted by the political dissensions of the people at large, and it was, in great part at any rate, raised by forced enlistment. On
July 22 Cromwell crossed the
river Tweed. He marched on
Edinburgh by the sea coast, through
Dunbar,
Haddington and
Musselburgh, living almost entirely on supplies landed by the fleet which accompanied him, for the country itself was incapable of supporting even a small army, and on the
July 29, he found Leslie's army drawn up and entrenched in a position extending from
Leith to
Edinburgh.
Operations around Edinburgh
The same day a sharp but indecisive fight took place on the lower slopes of
Arthur's Seat, after which Cromwell, having felt the strength of Leslie's line, drew back to Musselburgh. Leslie's horse followed him up sharply, and another action was fought, after which the Scots assaulted Musselburgh without success. Militarily Leslie had the best of it in these affairs, but it was precisely this moment that the Kirk party chose to institute a searching three days' examination of the political and religious sentiments of his army. The result was that the army was "purged" of 80 officers and 3000 soldiers as it lay within musket shot of the enemy. Cromwell was more concerned, however, with the supply question than with the distracted army of the Scots. On
August 6, he had to fall back as far as Dunbar to enable the fleet to land supplies in safety, the port of Musselburgh being unsafe in the violent and stormy weather which prevailed. He soon returned to Musselburgh and prepared to force Leslie to battle. In preparation for an extended manoeuvre three days' rations were served out. Tents were also issued, perhaps for the first time in the civil wars, for it was a regular professional army, which had to be cared for, made comfortable and economized, that was now carrying on the work of the volunteers of the first war.
[1] Even after Cromwell started on his manoeuvre, the Scottish army was still in the midst of its political troubles, and, certain though he was that nothing but victory in the field would give an assured peace, he was obliged to intervene in the confused negotiations of the various Scottish parties. At last, however, Charles II. made a show of agreeing to the demands of his strange supporters, and Leslie was free to move. Cromwell had now entered the hill country, with a view to occupying
South Queensferry and thus blocking up Edinburgh. Leslie had the shorter road and barred the way at
Corstorphine Hill (
August 21). Cromwell, though now far from his base, manoeuvred again to his right, Leslie meeting him once more at
Gogar (
August 27). The Scottish lines at that point were strong enough to dismay even Cromwell, and the manoeuvre on Queensferry was at last given up. It had cost the English army severe losses in sick, and much suffering in the autumn nights on the bleak hillsides.
Dunbar
On the
August 28, Cromwell fell back on
Musselburgh, and on
August 31, after embarking his non-effective men, to Dunbar. Leslie followed him up, and wished to fight a battle at Dunbar on Sunday, the 1st of September. But again the kirk intervened, this time to forbid Leslie to break the Sabbath, and the unfortunate Scottish commander could only establish himself on
Doon Hill, near Dunbar, and send a force to
Cockburnspath to bar the Berwick road. He had now 23,000 men to Cromwell's 11,000, and proposed, ''faute de mieux'', to starve Cromwell into surrender. But the English army was composed of "ragged soldiers with bright muskets," and had a great captain of undisputed authority at their head. Leslie's, on the other hand, had lost such discipline as it had ever possessed, and was now, under outside influences, thoroughly disintegrated. Cromwell wrote home, indeed, that he was "upon an engagement very difficult," but, desperate as his position seemed, he felt the pulse of his opponent and steadily refused to take his army away by sea. He had not to wait long. It was now the turn of Leslie's men on the hillside to endure patiently privation and exposure, and after one night's bivouac, Leslie, too readily inferring that the enemy was about to escape by sea, came down to fight. The
Battle of Dunbar opened in the early morning of
September 3. It was the most brilliant of all Oliver's victories. Before the sun was high in the heavens the Scottish army had ceased to exist.
Royalism in Scotland
After Dunbar it was easy for the victorious army to overrun southern Scotland, more especially as the dissensions of the enemy were embittered by the defeat of which they had been the prime cause. The Kirk indeed put Dunbar to the account of its own remissness in not purging their army more thoroughly, but, as Cromwell wrote on
September 4, the Kirk had "done its do." "I believe their king will set up on his own score," he continued, and indeed, now that the army of the Kirk was destroyed and they themselves were secure behind the
Forth and based on the friendly Highlands, Charles and the Cavaliers were in a position not only to defy Cromwell, but also to force the Scottish national spirit of resistance to the invader into a purely Royalist channel. Cromwell had only received a few drafts and reinforcements from England, and for the present he could but block up
Edinburgh Castle (which surrendered on Christmas eve), and try to bring up adequate forces and material for the siege of
Stirling an attempt which was frustrated by the badness of the roads and the violence of the weather. The rest of the early winter of
1650 was thus occupied in semi-military, semi-political operations between detachments of the English army and certain armed forces of the Kirk party which still maintained a precarious existence in the western Lowlands, and in police work against the
moss-troopers of the Border counties. Early in February
1651, still in the midst of terrible weather, Cromwell made another resolute but futile attempt to reach Stirling. This time he himself fell sick, and his losses had to be made good by drafts of recruits from England, many of whom came most unwillingly to serve in the cold wet bivouacs that the newspapers had graphically reported.
The English Militia
About this time there occurred in England two events which had a most important bearing on the campaign. The first was the detection of a widespread Royalist-Presbyterian conspiracy how widespread no one knew, for those of its promoters who were captured and executed certainly formed but a small fraction of the whole number. Major-General Harrison was ordered to
Lancashire in April to watch the north Welsh,
earl of Derby on the
Isle of Man and Border Royalists, and military precautions were taken in various parts of England. The second was the revival of the militia. Since 1644 there had been no general employment of local forces, the quarrel having fallen into the hands of the regular armies by force of circumstances. The New Model, though a national army, resembled
Wellington's British
Peninsular army more than the soldiers of the
levée en masse of the
French Revolution and the
American Civil War. It was now engaged in prosecuting a war of aggression against the hereditary foe over the Border strictly the task of a professional army with a national basis. The militia was indeed raw and untrained. Some of the Essex men "fell flat on their faces on the sound of a cannon." In the north of England Harrison complained to Cromwell of the "badness" of his men, and the lord general sympathized, having "had much such stuff" sent him to make good the losses in trained men. Even he for a moment lost touch with the spirit of the people. His recruits were unwilling drafts for foreign service, but in England the new levies were trusted to defend their homes, and the militia was soon triumphantly to justify its existence on the day of
Worcester.
Inverkeithing
While David Leslie organized and drilled the king's new army beyond the Forth, Cromwell was, slowly and with frequent relapses, recovering from his illness. The English army marched to
Glasgow in April, then returned to
Edinburgh. The motives of the march and that of the return are alike obscure, but it may be conjectured that, the forces in England under Harrison having now assembled in
Lancashire, the Edinburgh-
Newcastle-
York road had to be covered by the main army. Be this as it may, Cromwell's health again broke down and his life was despaired of. Only late in June were operations actively resumed between Stirling and
Linlithgow. At first Cromwell sought without success to bring Leslie to battle, but he stormed
Callendar House near
Falkirk on
July 13, and on
July 16, he began the execution of a brilliant and successful manoeuvre. A force from Queensferry, covered by the English fleet, was thrown across the
Firth of Forth to
North Ferry. Lambert followed with reinforcements, and defeated a detachment of Leslie's army at the
Battle of Inverkeithing on the
July 20. Leslie drew back at once, but managed to find a fresh strong position in front of Stirling, whence he defied Cromwell again. At this juncture Cromwell prepared to pass his whole army across the
Firth. His contemplated manoeuvre of course gave up to the enemy all the roads into England, and before undertaking it the lord general held a consultation with Harrison, as the result of which that officer took over the direct defence of the whole Border. But his mind was made up even before this, for on the day he met Harrison at
Linlithgow three-quarters of his whole army had already crossed into Fife.
Burntisland, surrendered to Lambert on
July 29, gave Cromwell a good harbour upon which to base his subsequent movements. On
July 30, the English marched upon
Perth, and the investment of this place, the key to Leslie's supply area, forced the crisis at once. Whether Leslie would have preferred to manoeuvre Cromwell from his vantage-ground or not is immaterial; the young king and the now predominant Royalist element at headquarters seized the long-awaited opportunity at once, and on the
July 31, leaving Cromwell to his own devices, the Royal army marched southward to raise the Royal standard in England.
The Third Scottish Invasion of England
Then began the last campaign of the English Civil War. Charles II expected complete success. In Scotland, ''vis-a-vis'' the extreme Covenanters, he was a king on conditions, and he was glad enough to find himself in England with some thirty solidly organized regiments under Royalist officers and with no regular army in front of him. He hoped, too, to rally not merely the old faithful Royalists, but also the overwhelming numerical strength of the English Presbyterians to his standard. His army was kept well in hand, no excesses were allowed, and in a week the Royalists covered 150 miles in marked contrast to the
duke of Hamilton's ill-fated expedition of
1648. On
August 8, the troops were given a well-earned rest between
Penrith and
Kendal.
But the Royalists were mistaken in supposing that the enemy was taken aback by their new move. Everything had been foreseen both by Cromwell and by the
Council of State in
Westminster. The latter had called out the greater part of the militia on
August 7. Lieutenant-General Fleetwood began to draw together the midland contingents at
Banbury, the London trained bands turned out for field service no fewer than 14,000 strong. Every suspected Royalist was closely watched, and the magazines of arms in the country-houses of the gentry were for the most part removed into the strong places. On his part Cromwell had quietly made his preparations.
Perth passed into his hands on
August 2, and he brought back his army to
Leith by
August 5. Thence he dispatched Lambert with a cavalry corps to harass the invaders. Harrison was already at Newcastle picking the best of the county mounted-troops to add to his own regulars. On
August 9, Charles was at
Kendal, Lambert hovering in his rear, and Harrison marching swiftly to bar his way at the
Mersey.
Thomas Fairfax emerged for a moment from his retirement to organize the
Yorkshire levies, and the best of these as well as of the
Lancashire,
Cheshire and
Staffordshire militias were directed upon
Warrington, which point Harrison reached on the
August 15, a few hours in front of Charles's advanced guard. Lambert too, slipping round the left flank of the enemy, joined Harrison, and the English fell back (
August 16), slowly and without letting themselves be drawn into a fight, along the London road.
Campaign of Worcester
Cromwell meanwhile, leaving
George Monck with the least efficient regiments to carry on the war in Scotland, had reached the
river Tyne in seven days, and thence, marching 20 miles a day in extreme heat with the country people carrying their arms and equipment the regulars entered
Ferrybridge on the
August 19, at which date Lambert, Harrison and the north-western militia were about
Congleton. It seemed probable that a great battle would take place between
Lichfield and
Coventry on or just after
August 25, and that Cromwell, Harrison, Lambert and Fleetwood would all take part in it. But the scene and the date of the denouement were changed by the enemy's movements. Shortly after leaving Warrington the young king had resolved to abandon the direct march on London and to make for the
Severn valley, where his father had found the most constant and the most numerous adherents in the first war, and which had been the centre of gravity of the English Royalist movement of 1648. Sir
Edward Massey, formerly the Parliamentary governor of
Gloucester, was now with Charles, and it was hoped that he would induce his fellow Presbyterians to take arms. The military quality of the Welsh border Royalists was well proved, that of the
Gloucestershire Presbyterians not less so, and, based on Gloucester and Worcester as his father had been based on Oxford, Charles II. hoped, not unnaturally, to deal with an Independent minority more effectually than Charles I. had done with a Parliamentary majority of the people of England. But even the pure Royalism which now ruled in the invading army could not alter the fact that it was a Scottish army, and it was not an Independent faction but all England that took arms against it. Charles arrived at Worcester on
August 22, and spent five days in resting the troops, preparing for further operations, and gathering and arming the few recruits who came in. It is unnecessary to argue that the delay was fatal; it was a necessity of the case foreseen and accepted when the march to Worcester had been decided upon, and had the other course, that of marching on London via
Lichfield, been taken the battle would have been fought three days earlier with the same result. Cromwell, the lord general, had during his march south thrown out successively two flying columns under Colonel Robert Lilburne to deal with the Lancashire Royalists under the earl of Derby. Lilburne entirely routed the enemy at the
Battle of Wigan Lane on
August 25 and as affairs turned out Cromwell merely shifted the area of his concentration two marches to the south-west, to
Evesham. Early on the
August 28, Lambert surprised the passage of the Severn at
Upton, 6 miles below Worcester, and in the action which followed Massey was severely wounded. Fleetwood followed Lambert. The enemy was now only 16,000 strong and disheartened by the apathy with which they had been received in districts formerly all their own. Cromwell, for the first and last time in his military career, had a two-to-one numerical superiority.
The "Crowning Mercy"
He took his measures deliberately. Colonel
Robert Lilburne from Lancashire and Major
Mercer with the Worcestershire horse were to secure
Bewdley Bridge on the enemy's line of retreat. Lambert and Fleetwood were to force their way across the
Teme (a little river on which
Prince Rupert of the Rhine had won his first victory in 1642) and attack St John's, the western suburb of Worcester.
Cromwell himself and the main army were to attack the town itself. On
September 3, the anniversary of Dunbar, the programme was carried out exactly. Fleetwood forced the passage of the Teme, and the bridging train (which had been carefully organized for the purpose) bridged both the Teme and the Severn. Then Cromwell on the left bank and Fleetwood on the right swept in a semicircle 4 miles long up to Worcester. Every hedgerow was contested by the stubborn Royalists, but Fleetwood's men would not be denied, and Cromwell's extreme right on the eastern side of the town repelled, after three hours of hard fighting, the last desperate attempt of the Royalists to break out.
The
Battle of Worcester was indeed, as a German critic has pointed out, the prototype of
Sedan. Everywhere the defences were stormed as darkness came on, regulars and militia fighting with equal gallantry, and the few thousands of the Royalists who escaped during the night were easily captured by Lilburne and Mercer, or by the militia which watched every road in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Even the country people brought in scores of prisoners, for officers and men alike, stunned by the suddenness of the disaster, offered no resistance.
Charles escaped after many adventures, but he was one of the few men in his army who regained a place of safety. The Parliamentary militia were sent home within a week. Cromwell, who had ridiculed "such stuff" six months ago, knew them better now. "Your new raised forces," he wrote to the
House, "did perform singular good service, for which they deserve a very high estimation and acknowledgment." Worcester resembled Sedan in much more than outward form. Both were fought by "nations in arms," by citizen soldiers who had their hearts in the struggle, and could be trusted not only to fight their hardest but to march their best. Only with such troops would a general dare to place a deep river between the two halves of his army or to send away detachments beforehand to reap the fruits of victory, in certain anticipation of winning the victory with the remainder. The sense of duty, which the raw militia possessed in so high a degree, ensured the arrival and the action of every column at the appointed time and place. The result was, in brief, one of those rare victories in which a pursuit is superfluous a "crowning mercy," as Cromwell called it.
There is little of note in the closing operations. General Monck had completed his task of
mopped up remnants of Royalist resistance in Scotland by May
1652; and Scotland, which had twice attempted to impose its will on England, found itself reduced to the position of an English province under martial law. Under the terms of the "
Tender of Union", the Scots were given 30 seats in a united Parliament in London, with Monck appointed as the military governor of Scotland.
References
★
Further reading
★
General History of the Highlands 1650 - 1660
Footnotes
1. The tents were evidently issued for regular marches, not for cross-country manoeuvres against the enemy. These manoeuvres, as we have seen, often took several days. The ''bon general ordinaire'' of the 17th and 18th centuries framed his manoeuvres on a smaller scale so as not to expose his expensive and highly trained soldiers to discomfort and the consequent temptation to desert.
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
