Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
October the 23rd, 1642, a Sunday. We're in the heart of England, near the village of Kyneton in the county of Warwickshire. It's a crisp autumn morning. Across a misty rolling valley, two armies form up. On the slope of Edge Hill, under a fluttering royal standard, are 12,000 royalists, there to fight for their king. A mile opposite, under the cross of St George, are a similar number of parliamentarians.
the self-proclaimed soldiers of the people. An air of confusion hangs. Nobody's quite sure how to even get this battle started. It's been so long since anybody in England has fought a proper war that the organizers are reduced to consulting instruction manuals. Swedish military strategy is currently all the rage. It's musketeers in the center, check. Pikemen on either side, check. Time wears on. Patience is straining.
The mounted troops soothe their restless charges. The infantry grow resentful at being pushed around by the clueless toffs. They know that in the end, the hurly-burly will come down to them. Them and their sixteen-foot lances, two bristling hedgehog walls ramming into each other. By the time they're ready, it's past lunchtime. Delegations ride into no-man's land for a parley. Both sides confirm they'll begin at two o'clock.
But as they return to their lines, someone in the parliamentary artillery gets itchy fingers and looses off a cannon. And so begins the first major engagement of the English Civil War. Back down the Banbury Road, arriving too late to take any meaningful part, is the officer in charge of a Cambridgeshire cavalry troop, a member of parliament named Oliver Cromwell. From Noiser, this is part two of the Cromwell story.
And this is Real Dictators. England has been torn by civil war before. It was the Wars of the Roses 150 years earlier that placed the Tudors on the throne. But no war fought on home soil will have the destructiveness of the conflicts about to ravage these isles. The English Civil War will be just one component.
Across fourteen long years, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, to give them their more accurate title, will account for over half a million dead. Proportionately, in England alone, they will kill more people than World Wars I and II combined. There will not be a village, a family, that remains untouched by the carnage that is about to roll out across the realms. Death and destruction will rage from Newmarket to New England,
Dublin to Dundee, Dunkirk to Virginia. Let's scroll back a few months to where we left off at the end of the last episode. In the summer of 1642, Ireland is still in open rebellion. The Scots, meanwhile, recently occupied North East England. The relationship between Crown and Parliament has been broken irreparably. King Charles has fled London and raised his standard at Nottingham.
It's an open declaration of war on Parliament, and by extension, his people. Charles intends to take the capital and restore royal authority. Parliament aims to bring the King home and to the negotiating table. This is a battle for the monarchy's soul. Dr. Anna Kaye.
One of the things you have to really remember about civil war is that it was not a fight between people who wanted a republic and people who wanted a monarchy. Both sides, on the sort of, what are we fighting for, wanted to retain a monarchy. It was all about what kind of religious arrangements there should be and what the extent of the power of the king should be. At the outbreak of war, Oliver Cromwell has no military experience whatsoever. But circumstances will push him to the fore. Professor John Morrill.
I mean, everyone can see the horrors of what a civil war will be.
Most people still think that in the end, this can be sorted out by a negotiation and compromise. And what's more, if the king wins, which of course historically was very likely, then you've been fighting against him, then your estates are at risk. So most people are catching summer colds. Most people are getting flu. Most people are trying to avoid making a decision. And it's at that point, the control of the local armies, regional armies, falls to the hardliners.
Bromwell becomes one of the hardliners. Right now, he is a humble, untried captain in the regional East Anglian Army, answerable to the Earl of Manchester.
Cromwell has no background at all, as far as we know. He wasn't even in the militia, which would have meant he'd have been trained a few days a year. So he comes at it completely fresh. And I think he's lucky in that in the very early months, he is mainly involved in small cavalry skirmishes with people who are equally innocent of warfare. Overall, command of the parliamentary army has gone to Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. He is the obvious choice.
one of the few senior parliamentarians with any military experience. Plus, he has an axe to grind. His father lost his head to Elizabeth I. Unfortunately, the current Earl is a figure of fun. He's a bit of a drunkard, indecisive. His much younger wife has run off with another man, citing impotence on the part of her husband. This will be the source of battlefield taunts, not just from the enemy, but his own troops too.
Professor Peter Gawne. He's quite long in the tooth. He's quite an elderly figure by the time of the Civil War. He's a competent commander rather than a dynamic commander. He's able to lead some good campaigns, but overall it's a patchy military record. He makes mistakes, he makes miscalculations. On the royalist side, it's the king himself who is the nominal military supremo.
One of those red lines that Charles wouldn't negotiate on by right, by God, I am Commander-in-Chief. And that right the way through the war. And he is an active commander. He does play a role on the battlefield at Edge Hill and Newbury, but he often delegates command. Charles has his own issues of maintenance. At Nottingham on August the 22nd, the Royal Standard is raised defiantly, but a howling wind blows it down. At 400 square feet...
Thicker than a very thick carpet, and now sopping wet, it will prove too heavy to lift again. And not many people have turned up, a paltry 800 horse and 300 footmen. But the king is assured that there are legions of loyal Welshmen spoiling for a fight. So he makes his way west to Shrewsbury. At this time there is no standing army. Troops are raised according to need.
Neither side can boast companies of regulars. The bands of local militia are renowned more for drinking skills than weapons drills. That is not to doubt the bravery of ordinary Englishmen. The yeomen of England and indeed Wales have been the backbone of campaigns since Agincourt, only not since medieval times pitched against each other. In numbers, to begin with, Parliament has the upper hand. Essex has enlisted a contingent of London apprentice boys.
They're identifiable by their short, cropped hair, a new rebellious trend. It will earn the army a derogatory nickname: "Roundheads." The king's officers with their silks and frills and feathers will be dismissed by their opponents as decadent Spanish-style caballeros, cavaliers. As the armies assemble, ideology recedes. The country breaks along tribal lines.
The nobility and the provincial peasantry rally to the royalists. The tradesmen and the merchants to Parliament. Geographically, the North and West are for the King. The South and East for Westminster. It's the urban progressives versus the rural conservatives. The metropolitan versus the shire. New money versus old. There are anomalies. The earls of Essex and Manchester are among a band of rebel nobles supporting Parliament.
Geographically too, there are outliers. England's second city is the great port of Bristol. Though situated deep in the King's West Country, it's in the hands of the parliamentarians. But the cleavages of the Civil War will dominate English life and politics for centuries. Arguably they still do. Across the land, ancient settlements, their walled foundations not much changed since the Middle Ages, begin fortifying. Arms and money are in the hands of Parliament.
The King must strike before his resources run out. He's still big box office though. His march to Shrewsbury bears fruit. Within the month, 10,000 recruits come drifting out of the Welsh mountains. The King also has an ace up his sleeve, a star signing. He comes in the shape of his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Age 22, Rupert is a dashing cavalry officer, a young stud who has swashed and buckled his way through the battlefields of the continent. He is quite the character, with his flowing locks and dandy outfits. He speaks English with a heavy German accent. According to legend, he travels and fights with his pet poodle, Boy, tucked into his tunic. Rupert's men are known to fire twin pistols from horseback.
It's his signature twist on the cavalry charge. But Flash Rupert is also a bit of a hothead, not a team player. Managing this marquee signing will become an issue in itself. Professor Clare Jackson
So one of the tragedies of the civil wars is the extent to which families are inevitably divided. One brother might take up arms for the royalist side and another might take up arms for the parliamentarians. Exactly the same happened with Charles I's own family. So his sister Elizabeth of Bohemia is in exile in the Netherlands. Her oldest son, Charles Louis, and she side with parliament. Quite controversially, they come over to England.
Charles Louis's younger brother, Prince Rupert, becomes one of Charles I's prominent cavalry commanders and also his other brother, Prince Maurice. And these two German brothers not only have a huge amount of experience fighting during the Thirty Years' War, but they also bring a reputation with them of sort of continental butchery. Essex tracks the king's men westwards. There are skirmishes around Worcester. Rupert boasts that these snivelling roundheads are there for the taking.
By October the 12th, the Royalist army begins massing for the big push south. In an age of poor roads and thick woodlands, the armies lose sight of each other. Then in the early hours of October the 23rd, Rupert's scouts spy the fires of Essex's encampment. The King could sidestep the enemy altogether and march straight on London, but excitable Rupert advises Uncle Charles to seize the advantage. They'll finish this thing right here.
And so, in the Warwickshire countryside, the first mass engagement of the Civil War takes place. In military terms, it's amateurish. After an hour of artillery bombardment, the manoeuvres are tentative. Neither side is comfortable yet with the prospect of slaughtering fellow countrymen. And there is a lack of discipline. The sight of Rupert's charges causes the roundheads to scatter
But when the Prince chases the stragglers and attempts to loot the baggage wagons, the Royalists lose their shape. Victory is not consolidated. There are about a thousand dead and three thousand wounded at the Battle of Edge Hill, as it will be named. As both sides tactically retreat, it's a score draw at best, quite tepid compared with the rampant savagery that will soon unfold. When the King enters the town of Banbury, then Oxford,
He's met with cheering crowds, but he has failed to land the killer blow. And now, instead of storming London, he prefers to take a cautious, scenic advance up the Thames Valley. In November, the King is beaten back just west of the capital at Turnham Green. There are rumours of atrocities, some fictitious, some genuine, of roundhead soldiers being used by Cavaliers as human shields, of the mutilation of prisoners,
Already the media is playing a part. With winter closing in, the campaign season of 1642 comes to a close. Troops are unable to sustain themselves through the barren months. The roads are impassable. The King retires to a snowbound Oxford. It will be his new forward base, his rival capital. At the end of 1642 there are now two Englands. Back in Cambridgeshire, Cromwell spends the long dark months drilling local units.
He stumps up 100 pounds from his own pocket to spend on arms and raises two companies of volunteers. From the periphery at Edge Hill, he saw enough to know that victory will only come with effective cavalry, still the most important unit in battle. Light cavalry too, just breastplates and open-fronted helmets, enabling his mobile troops to shoot as well as wield a sword from the saddle. As the snows thaw, his training pays off.
Cromwell rises up remarkably quickly through the ranks. Initially, he's a gentleman, he's an MP, so he's commissioned, even though he has no military experience, summer 1642, as captain of a troop of horse, probably 60 to 80 mounted soldiers.
Early in 1643, he's promoted as colonel of a horse regiment, cavalry regiment, in Parliament's biggest, most successful regional army, which is the Army of the Eastern Association. And what really makes him is that the Army of the Eastern Association is ordered by Parliament to go and fight further north, leaving him as the most senior of the junior officers to protect East Anglia.
So he has a very limited brief which is keeping royalists raiding into East Anglia and he makes a great success of it. By the time the army of East Anglia comes back, he's run a whole series of skirmishes that make them think this is someone who really is useful to us and so they put him in charge of the cavalry of the east of England. And that was the big breakthrough. And he's going to do things his way. Cromwell is clear in his purpose. Social standing is irrelevant. Talent is everything.
Discipline is strict. Men are fined for swearing. Being drunk will see you whipped. He also forbids the use of the term "roundhead." His men respond well to his methods.
And what really comes to the fore is that he has this ability to personally connect with the soldiers, to sort of tune in to the things that are going to stir their souls and make them willing to fight and die at his side. He's brilliant at that. And he walks among his men, he eats with them. You know, he's there on the bench next to his men, drinking, talking. He loves jokes and funny stories. You know, he's a very good kind of mess room officer.
At Royalist Oxford, meanwhile, it's all about hard cash. The war was meant to have been wrapped up inside a few months. There's now a problem of how to finance it. The dons of Oxford University melt their gold plates. Other money-raising schemes are floated. In particular, there is a cunning plan. It's the night of February 22nd, 1643. We're in Bridlington, Yorkshire. It's the lone Royalist port along this stretch of coast.
The North Sea has been cutting up rough, but a Dutch warship and its escorts have managed to come in close. Under cover of darkness, they put ashore their precious cargo and, just as importantly, their VIP passenger. Stepping out of a rowing boat onto the beach comes Queen Henrietta Maria. She has brought with her a crucial haul. The ship's holds are laden with arms, munitions, plus £80,000 in cash.
When the King left London, he had the good sense to bring his royal treasures with him, and Henrietta Maria has taken them to Holland. There she pawned the crown jewels. The Dutch vessels get out first. A squadron of parliamentary frigates has been in hot pursuit. Danger past, Bridlington turns in for the night. But the parliamentarians haven't given up the chase. In the early hours, a vessel heaves close to the harbour wall and opens fire.
Sleepy Bridlington is devastated by a hailstorm of cannonballs. The Queen and her handmaidens rush out in their nightclothes to shelter in a ditch. The royal dwarf, Geoffrey Hudson, charges heroically to the quayside to wave his cutlass. After two hours, the frigate moves off. Job done. But Henrietta is alive, if shell-shocked. And the next day, she heads south, toting her booty.
One thing we often tend to forget is how cosmopolitan and continental the Stuarts were. Charles I is married to a French wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, and actually for her as a devout Catholic, she really can't understand a lot of the arguments taking place between Episcopalians and Presbyterians who all seem to her to be complete heretics. But what she has is utter trust and faith in her husband and is actually very proactive on his behalf, seeking to raise money.
the Royal Navy, it defected to Parliament almost to a man, almost to a ship at the start of the Civil War. So pursued by parliamentarian vessels, she is able, under fire, to land and disembark at Bridlington. She's then got the problem with a convoy of moving out of royalist territory in Yorkshire, in Northern England, to get to the King and to bring the resources where they're really needed.
And there's a cat and mouse game. Which route will the convoy take from mainly royalist Yorkshire to get down to Oxford? Prince Rupert gets active in the Midlands, clearing a path. He takes the hamlet of Birmingham and the cathedral city of Lichfield.
He shows his burning love for the country by putting Birmingham to the flame. And Henrietta Marie, virtually unscathed, is able to get herself and reinforcements and supplies to the king. The royalists are in business again, armed to the teeth, ready for another tilt at London. Rupert mocks the hapless parliamentarians. Unlike Cromwell's light troops, Essex's cavalry have taken to trussing themselves up in ridiculous full-body armour.
They've earned the nickname of 'lobsters'. Dashing Rupert is having these comic crustaceans for lunch. In July, following a crushing royalist victory, he takes Bristol. Things are looking good. Word is filtering back of defections, of roundheads losing their nerve. The mood on the streets of London turns from rebellion to frustration. When the leading MP John Pym rides to Parliament,
He is assaulted by a mob of angry women who threaten to chuck him in the Thames. But Pym is yesterday's man. He is in secret terminally ill. And John Hampton, his likely successor, has already been killed in action. The cry for decisive leadership is loud. For not just a politician but a soldier, one who can stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood.
In July, Cromwell expels the last royalists from East Anglia and wins the key city of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. He is the only parliamentarian commander yet to taste defeat. And it has been noted he's made Lieutenant General
And of course it becomes a snowball because then every battle you win or skirmish you win becomes an expression of how much God thinks you're doing the right thing. And if you can articulate that to your men as well as believing it in your own head, then you get this kind of absolutely sort of molten sense of being the chosen ones. And that was very, very powerful. As Cromwell puts it famously, trust in God and keep your powder dry. That said, the Royalists still command the majority of English territory.
The port of Bristol is now a viable rival to London, and by securing the Severn Valley beyond, they can control the waterways through England's heartland. But there's a problem: the river city of Gloucester is still in Parliamentarian hands. The attempt to take it is one of the numerous sieges that will characterise the war. This one becomes a huge drain on Royalist resources, cannonballs thudding into the town walls for weeks on end.
One large siege cannon is hauled by the Royalists to the top of a nearby church, but the Parliamentarians manage to knock it down. The cannon goes by a nickname: Humpty Dumpty. Its destruction will become the origin of a rhyme. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again. If you thought Humpty was an egg, blame Lewis Carroll.
The Royalists pull back from Gloucester in September, but they're caught in a clash with Essex's men at Newbury. There has clearly been an upgrade in military capabilities on both sides. A third of all troops are casualties. The scale of the slaughter alarms everybody. Neither army has what it takes to deliver the coup de grace.
There are now dissenting nobles on both sides who wonder whether they shouldn't just settle this thing in a gentlemanly fashion, meet at an appointed field and fight it out in a one-off, winner-takes-all clash, a cup final. But the parliamentary ultras will countenance no such thing. It's victory or nothing. And if they can't do it themselves, then they'll do it with outside help. They're not alone. Charles, it is rumoured, is already extending feelers to third parties.
The King looks west to Ireland, he cobbles together a truce with the Irish Catholics, leaving them in control of most of the island of Ireland, and that will enable him to bring mainly Protestant troops back from Ireland to mainland England and Wales to fight for him. But there's a problem there, there's all sorts of problems. The King doing a deal with Irish Catholics who had so recently killed Irish Protestants, even many of his own supporters think that's very dubious.
Parliament casts its eyes in a different direction. Far more fruitful, Parliament looks north to Scotland. The Scots don't trust the King. They believe that if the King wins the Civil War in England and Wales he will reverse or try and re-impose his political and religious control over Scotland. So they are quite open to doing a deal with the English parliamentarians. It seems an obvious partnership. Both governments are united in a common Puritan purpose.
Plus the ease with which the Scots cut through north-east England back in the Bishops' Wars shows that they are a force to be reckoned with. Squeezed between north and south, the Royalists will have to fight a war on two fronts. There is little political incentive for the Scots to get involved in this English war, but there is something that could grease the wheels. Parliament would never admit that it's hiring a mercenary army.
But the Scottish Government agrees to send a military mission in return for a financial settlement. £31,000 a month, plus equipment. Not everybody in Westminster welcomes the move, but those who object to Scottish intervention are sidelined. The military alliance is dressed up with a manifesto. It's called the Solemn League and Covenant, and it comes with a further catch.
Scottish assistance is conditional on England adopting Scots-style Presbyterianism as its official national church. With a large Presbyterian lobby in the Commons, the bill sails through. The Anglo-Scottish Treaty is signed off on September 25th, 1643. Again, there is no question here of the monarchy's abolition. If Charles is there by divine right, who is anyone to question God's will?
It's just a matter of how to harness this ordained monarch into a modern political system. Securing the Scottish alliance is the last act on the part of the old parliamentary order. On December the 8th, John Pym dies. Professor Nicholas of Shaughnessy.
He is the galvanising force. Cromwell comes in much later. He's not one of the five members. Pym and his cohorts, they are the ones who lead the rhetorical, constitutional and parliamentary rebellion. The treaty also floats a brand new concept, joint rule of England and Scotland by a committee of the two kingdoms. Crucially, though, the English signatories have left themselves a get-out clause.
The proviso that everything in the agreement is according to the word of God. This is important because a split is developing within the body of English Puritans. On the one hand the Presbyterians, advocates of a state religion. On the other, those who prefer to see the church removed from politics and controlled by congregations. They are known as the Independents and they include one Oliver Cromwell.
The King's advisers have been watching. What legitimacy does the English Parliament have, asks Charles, if this leaderless body is now being ridden roughshod by extremists, ones who are now signing irregular covenants with foreign nations? In a bold political move, the King declares Parliament to be illegitimate. He summons all those who have been ejected from Westminster and forms his own counter-Parliament.
There are 83 peers and 175 members who meet in Oxford in January 1644. The King not only has most of the country behind him now, but has his own rival government. For the likes of Cromwell, this is a standoff that can only be solved with overwhelming military force. On January 22nd, the very day that the Oxford Parliament convenes,
A Scottish army of 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse is crossing the River Tweed. They are led by the Earl of Leven, veteran general of the Thirty Years' War. The first order of business for the Scots is to besiege the town of Newcastle, and the plan works. By the spring of 1644, the war's axis is shifted to the north of England. It leaves the royalist southern flank exposed.
Cromwell's Eastern Association moves up and starts attacking the Cavalier stronghold of York. Prince Rupert races to relieve the city, but it's his Cavalier attitude, by now a byword for recklessness, which will condemn both him and the Royalist army. The King sends him a note. It contains an ambiguous written order. Rupert interprets it as a command to make a stand in the field. Charles will later deny this was his intention.
Alongside the Royalist Marquess of Newcastle, Rupert rallies the troops for an open pitched battle. Newcastle makes a boast: his elite shock troops, nicknamed "Lams" because of their white woollen uniforms, will have their jackets stained red with roundhead blood. July 2nd, 1644 is a day of alternating rain and sunshine. At first light, psalms can be heard rising from the ranks of the parliamentary army.
They have been enticed into battle west of York, On the open, wind-swept Marston Moor. But the Cavaliers are no match for this new Anglo-Scottish force, Not in the same league, not any more. The Royalist army is obliterated. "God made them a stubble to our swords," recounts Cromwell. "Then we took their regiments afoot with our cavalry, And overthrew all that we encountered." Even Rupert's pet poodle is a casualty.
Marston Moor is considered to be the bloodiest battle ever fought on English or British soil. Little quarter is given. While thunder rumbles overhead, Cromwell's cavalry chase the royal stragglers down the surrounding lanes. Along a three-mile stretch, 4,000 corpses pile up against the dry stone walls. There is personal tragedy for Cromwell. His nephew, Valentine, has his legs smashed by a cannonball.
He dies under the surgeon's saw. This follows the death of his own second son, Oliver. He'd succumbed to smallpox while garrisoned down south. Cromwell has a near miss himself at Marston Moor. At the height of the battle, a musket ball skims his neck, forcing him to leave temporarily to have his wound patched up. But ultimately, it's Newcastle's lambs who've been led to the slaughter. The only blood staining their jackets is their own.
So the really decisive factor in tipping the balance towards Parliament is the decision of the Scots to join on Parliament's side the decisive Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. Cromwell himself, in his reports of the battle, accords himself a very major role, but he certainly couldn't have achieved that victory without the Scots. Nonetheless, there was little doubt as to who is the driving force in the Parliamentarian army. He was a total amateur at the outset of the war.
But Cromwell seems born to soldiering. Not only has he trained up an effective fighting force, but he is always there in the thick of it, calm and disciplined amid the carnage. And he is a superb orator and rabble-rouser, arguably better than he is a political speaker. He can ride into any given town to convince thousands of young men to rally to die for his cause. There is an air of invincibility about him, a destiny. The men have a nickname for him,
the same one that is being applied to his hard-as-nails cavalry, Ironsides. Cromwell is phenomenally skilled at ensuring that the reports of decisive encounters such as Marston Moor are reported in the ways in which he is shown to best advantage. So this sort of cult of personality is reflected in print and that means that Cromwell's achievements are known about by much larger readerships than would ever have been the case in previous decades.
The King is down on his uppers. Queen Henrietta Maria gives birth to a new daughter. She then abandons her family, baby and all, and disappears back to France. She will never see her husband again. With a sense of the inevitable, the Royalists enter into peace talks. The rival delegations spend twenty days in the taverns and inns of Uxbridge, near London. It's February, the close season, and the mood is convivial, optimistic, boozy,
There is a sticking point. Extensive concessions are being demanded of Charles before he resumes the throne. But the Cavalier high up seem convinced they can talk his majesty round. Cromwell could ride into the sunset here, but his well-honed skills tell him that this is far from a done deal. And predictably, the talks break down. Back at Parliament, Cromwell lets rip. He has differences with his Scottish allies, he declares.
He is opposed to Presbyterian uniformity. They didn't overthrow one established church only to replace it with another. And he's also miffed about the lukewarm conduct of the war. If they'd fought like they did at Marston Moor, it would have all been over long ago. In the hands of nobles like Essex and Manchester, the army is too soft. The way Cromwell sees it, they're far too ready to compromise.
Manchester protests, "If we beat the King 99 times, he will still be our King and we his subjects. If he beats us once, we shall all be hanged." Cromwell replies, "My Lord, if it be so, then why did we take up arms in the first place?" Cromwell demands wholesale reform of the parliamentary army, and it must begin with the removal of these lordships from command.
I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.
A lot of parliamentarians had assumed that this would be a very sort of short campaign, that Charles would clearly recognise that his MPs were very upset and would reach a settlement. And that doesn't happen. And one of the major sort of divisions of opinion that emerges in late 1644 is between the Earl of Manchester and his second-in-command, who happens to be the 45-year-old MP for Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell certainly did share the wider feeling amongst many of the military and political leaders on the parliamentarian side that Marston Moor aside, parliamentarian armies had underperformed during 1644. The potential fruits of Marston Moor had been squandered by lacklustre command, indecision, not wanting maybe even to inflict a full defeat on the king.
When Manchester threatens to impeach Cromwell for his impertinence, there are huge ructions, but Cromwell carries the day. The result is an act of Parliament called the Self-Denying Ordinance. It comes into law in April 1645. It prohibits aristocrats from holding office in the parliamentary army, and it marks the end for nobles like Essex and Manchester. Parliament is too shrewd to let Cromwell be the new Commander-in-Chief.
They don't want a Julius Caesar, a general who seizes political power. Instead, supreme command goes to Sir Thomas Fairfax. But nobody doubts that Cromwell is the dominant figure. He is appointed General of the Horse. Technically, the act also bars MPs from holding rank. Cromwell, as the member for Cambridge, should be forced to step down, just like the nobles. But, with victory in sight, who in Parliament is going to sack their most brilliant soldier?
Extenuating circumstances are found, extensions are granted, and besides, Cromwell's men are refusing to fight without him. For the first two years, he's only appointed for a few months at a time. But the trouble is he's proving his worth so much, and the top general, Sir Thomas Fairfax, desperately wants him as his cavalry commander. The parliamentary army is restructured, no longer regionalised but a national force.
Cromwell's own Eastern Association is used as the template. There are modern, efficient lines of command. The men are well-disciplined, well-equipped, properly paid. And they will wear a consistent uniform, a red coat. Conscription goes into overdrive. There will be 11 new parliamentary regiments of horse, 12 of foot, plus artillery. It will be known as the New Model Army. Parliamentary resolve has been stiffened.
As if to make the point, Archbishop Lord, Charles' old spiritual enforcer, is dragged from the tower. He's been banged up there for four years. The frail elderly cleric staggers blinking into the sunlight before being hauled off to be executed. Cromwell is right to take the initiative. Across England, there are outbreaks of royalist rioting. And there's been a big defection. The Marquess of Montrose decides to switch sides.
He throws his lot in with the King, promising to unite Scotland behind the crown. Montrose is currently at large in the north of Scotland with a rebel army, packed with Catholic Highlanders and Irish imports. This thing is far from over. The longer the delay, the more the Parliamentarians stand to lose. It will become Cromwell's personal motto: "Pax Quirito Bello" – "Let peace be soared through war".
Word is already out that the King is trying to reclaim his territory in central England. He's marching on Leicester. Cromwell's men stomp to the Midlands. They have a new quick march technique. It's an athletic stiff-legged motion learned from the armies on the continent, the goose step. On June 14th at Naseby in Northamptonshire, the new model army delivers a devastating smackdown.
The Battle of Naseby is where he really shows that he's come to full maturity. Now, something similar had happened at Marston Moor, but it's even more dramatic at Naseby. So he's got this extraordinary discipline. And, you know, when I do a one-man reenactment of Naseby, which I've been known to do, I get people to stand where the Royalists' front line was. They thought the Parmenters were probably retreating because their scouting wasn't very good.
And then the first thing they know is they hear Cromwell soldiers singing psalms. And then they come over the brow of the hill in full military array. And they're downhill, they're downwind, and between them and Cromwell is quite steep ground. And they think basically, oh, s***. The victory is clinical, bloodthirsty. Afterwards, in a frenzy, Cromwell's men put to the sword a hundred or so women found in the royalist camp.
slaughtered for being Catholic agents, speakers of an alien tongue, possibly even witches. Most likely, they were Welsh. There will be no more reconciliation, decrees Cromwell. What has been done today is God's will.
You know, there are pamphlets written in the Civil War, but this is part of the mindset that's hard for us to get, that God is so imminent, is so present, that he will bend bullets. So when the Royalists fire their bullets, they will steer past the Parmentarians. And when the Parmentarians fire their bullets, he will steer them into them. And people claim that they've seen this. They can give eyewitness testimony of God being that present.
He is one of the most original talents ever to take to the field. It's not just about tactics, it's not just about his leadership. It's about his idea of imbuing the army, not only with high morale, but also, if you like, with ideology, with belief, with high-mindedness, with, to use a more modern term, bigotry. Professor Miholo Shukra.
There's no question but that many of those who fought in the New Model Army on the side of Parliament did have strong religious beliefs and convictions, but that doesn't necessarily make it an army of God.
Cromwell himself, he was a classic Puritan. He sees himself very much as doing God's will and as being God's emersi on earth. And that gives a great strength and determination to the man in terms of his actions. But as somebody famously said, Cromwell often wrestled with his conscience, but usually he won. Basically, he could sort of justify anything he had done in his own religious context. Amid the carnage of Naseby,
The parliamentarians find something, something devastating, incriminating. In the King's baggage train is a stash of correspondence. His Majesty has written personal, desperate invitations for military intervention to anyone who might listen. The Irish, the French, the Dutch. He's even offered up Orkney and the Shetland Islands in return for Danish assistance.
Over the next few months, fortress by fortress, town by town, the last vestiges of royalist support will be snuffed out. In the Scottish borders, Montrose's rebel army is trounced. Prince Rupert had promised the King that he would hold Bristol till Christmas. By September 1645 it's been surrendered. Charles will disown his mercurial nephew. In this final phase, Cromwell is the driving force.
He plays a significant role during the last year of the war, from summer 1645 to summer 1646. Effectively a big mopping up operation against remaining royalist regional armies and bases. And that's how Cromwell ends the main civil war, in that mopping up operation that by early summer 1646 had secured a full unconditional military victory for Parliament.
For his pains, Cromwell is awarded grants of land by Parliament, worth two and a half thousand pounds. His commission with the New Model Army is renewed for a further six months, whatever the law might say. He moves his family to London, and a house on Drury Lane. For King Charles, whatever way he looks at it, it's game over. He might still flee across the Channel, but that would send him into exile.
Instead, still hoping for reconciliation, he plays his Scottish card. As a proud steward, he puts his faith in his Caledonian compatriots. He will turn himself in to a Scottish brigade camped out in Nottinghamshire. With Cromwell closing in on Oxford, the King escapes disguised as a servant. On May 5th, 1646, just a few miles from where he raised his standard so defiantly four years earlier,
Charles presents himself to the Earl of Leven, but if he thinks he is to be Leven's VIP guest, he's sorely mistaken. He's now a hostage, an extremely valuable one. Charles is taken at first to Newcastle, setting off a series of negotiations that will run through the rest of the year. To the Scots, the King is a bargaining chip, but they don't quite know how to play him.
Do they force Charles to accept the covenant and unite Scotland under him as a Presbyterian nation, or could they reboot Presbyterianism in an Anglo-Scottish union?
The initiative still sort of really lies with the King to reach a settlement and a lot of the terms that are presented to him at different junctures throughout the civil wars really don't change very much in substance. And one of the frustrations for those around Charles is his refusal to negotiate or to agree something and then immediately to form a different alliance and restart the wars. And eventually Parliament concludes that he is not to be trusted.
Ultimately, for the Scots, holding the King seems to be more trouble than it's worth. After nine months there is still no resolution. Let the English sort it out. As always, it comes down to money. Just as in the Bishops' Wars the Scottish forces will only remove themselves from English territory, as well as hand over the King, for a fee, they are still owed a staggering £400,000 in back payments for taking part in this English scrap.
London can cough that up for a start. There are some who protest. The Earl of Lauderdale claims that by selling their king, his fellow Scots would be hissed at by all nations. Yea, the dogs in the street would piss upon them. But in January 1647, for a king's ransom, Charles I is handed over to the English parliamentarians. He has certain stipulations. His safety must be guaranteed. He must be allowed to retain his servants.
its mere detail. The King of England is now a captive of the enemy, the Parliament of Oliver Cromwell. In the next episode, with the King in captivity, both sides seek a settlement. But when Charles escapes to plot a second civil war, all trust is broken. For Cromwell, there is only one course of action, a solution that will plunge the British Isles into unknown territory. His Majesty must be put on trial.
That's next time. Everroot Dog Supplements can help keep your dog feeling their best every day. Ever playful. Ever curious. Ever thriving. Shop Everroot Dog Supplements on Amazon today. From multi-benefit to skin and coat to hip and joint. Because every dog deserves to feel their best. Everroot Dog Supplements. Powered by Purina.
