User:Harrias/Edgehill

The Battle of Edgehill (or Edge Hill) was a pitched battle of the First English Civil War. It was fought near Edge Hill and Kineton in southern Warwickshire on Sunday, 23 October 1642.

All attempts at constitutional compromise between King Charles and Parliament broke down early in 1642. Both King and Parliament raised large armies to gain their way by force of arms. In October, at his temporary base near Shrewsbury, the King decided to march on London in order to force a decisive confrontation with Parliament's main army, commanded by the Earl of Essex.

Late on 22 October, both armies unexpectedly found the enemy to be close by. The next day, the Royalist army descended from Edge Hill to force battle. After the Parliamentarian artillery opened a cannonade, the Royalists attacked. Both armies consisted mostly of inexperienced and sometimes ill-equipped troops. Many men from both sides fled or fell out to loot enemy baggage, and neither army was able to gain a decisive advantage.

After the battle, the King resumed his march on London, but was not strong enough to overcome the defending militia before Essex's army could reinforce them. The inconclusive result of the Battle of Edgehill prevented either faction gaining a quick victory in the war, which eventually lasted four years.

Background
In 1642, disagreements between the English Parliament and its monarch on religious, fiscal and legislative matters had been ongoing for over half a century. At the beginning of January that year, King Charles unsuccessfully attempted to arrest five Members of Parliament who were opposing him. Having failed, and realising that Parliament had more support in London than he did, Charles fled the capital, and both sides began preparing for war. Both sides were attempting to recruit the existing militia and new men into their armies. Parliament passed the Militia Ordinance in March 1642 without Royal assent, granting themselves control of the militia. In response, Charles granted commissions of array to his commanders, a medieval device for levying soldiers which had not been used since 1557.

Despite the manoeuvrings between the King and Parliament, there remained an illusion that the two sides were still governing the country together. This illusion ended when Charles moved to York in mid-March, fearing that he would be captured if he remained in the south of England. The first open conflict between the two sides occurred at Kingston-upon-Hull, where a large arsenal housed arms and equipment collected for the earlier Bishops' Wars. During the first Siege of Hull, Charles was twice refused entrance into the town, in April and July, by the Parliamentarian governor. Charles was successful in raising men to the Royalist cause in the north of England, the East Midlands and Wales, but without control of a significant arsenal, he lacked the means to arm them. In contrast, Parliament drew troops from the south-east of England, had plentiful arms, and controlled the navy.

On 22 August, Charles took a decisive step by raising his royal standard in Nottingham, effectively declaring war on Parliament. In response to the King's actions, Parliament dispatched its own army under the command of the Earl of Essex, with the intention of drawing Charles into battle. Essex marched first to Northampton, where he gathered an army of roughly 20,000 men: around double the number raised by the King in Nottingham. Charles subsequently moved west towards Shrewsbury, where he hoped to be able to assemble the Royalist regiments being raised in the Wales and the north- and south-west of England. Essex moved his army parallel to the King's, from Northampton to Worcester. A forward party of the Parliamentarian army was decisively beaten by Prince Rupert's cavalry at the Battle of Powick Bridge, enhancing the reputation of both Rupert and the Royalist cavalry, but in the face of the superior Parliamentarian numbers, the Royalists were still forced to abandon Worcester.

Prelude
By early October, the King's army was almost complete at Shrewsbury. He held a council of war, at which two courses of action were considered, either to attack Essex's army at Worcester or to advance towards London; it was thought that moving on the capital had the potential to quickly finish the war. The intention was not necessarily to avoid a battle with the Parliamentarian army; if Essex attempted to block their path, they would engage him in battle. The Earl of Clarendon, who was part of the council, said that "it was thought more counsellable to march directly towards London, it being morally sure, that the earl of Essex would put himself in their way." As the Royalists had the superior cavalry, they wanted to avoid a battle in the more enclosed countryside around Worcester, whereas the Midlands landscape was typically more open.

Accordingly, Charles marched his army out of Shrewsbury on 12 October; splitting his force to mask their intentions. After initially feigning towards Worcester, he then sent some of his force around the north of Birmingham while the rest travelled to the south of the city. On 19 October, they had reached Kenilworth, and were a clear day's march ahead of the Parliamentarians, who had hurriedly left Worcester in chase. By 22 October, the Royalist army was quartered in the villages around Edgcote, and was threatening the Parliamentarian post at Banbury. The garrison of Banbury sent messengers to Warwick Castle pleading for help. Essex, who had just arrived, ordered an immediate march to Kineton to bring relief to Banbury, even though his army had straggled and not all his troops were present. That evening, there were clashes between outposts and quartermasters' parties in and around Kineton, and the Royalists had their first inkling that Essex's army was close by.

Around midnight on the 22/23 October, realising that the landscape was favourable to his cavalry, the King issued orders for his army to turn around and muster for battle on top of the escarpment of Edgehill, blocking the Parliamentarian's path to London. His forces were still scattered around the area, but the hill provided an easy, visible rendezvous point for the army to gather. The main body the Parliamentarian army formed up around Kineton, around 4.5 miles away, but his infantry rearguard and artillery had not yet arrived. Essex received news between 8 and 9 a.m. on 23 October, that the Cavaliers were massed on Edgehill. He was reluctant to engage; he still was still below full-strength, and the Royalist position was too strong, as the escarpment rose 100 metres above the vale, at a gradient as steep as 25% (1 in 4) in places. Essex moved his army into a defensive position on a smaller rise, described at the time as "a little round rising hill", with some hedges on the right hand side, which formed a natural barrier.

Opposing forces
England had no standing army in the seventeenth century. King Charles called upon his Gentlemen Pensioners, a single cavalry troop that acted as his bodyguard, and the Yeomen of the Guard, but beyond that both sides had to recruit soldiers to fight for them. They vied for control over the trained bands, county militias whose military training was often minimal. Alongside the commissions of array issued by the King, other men were given commissions as Royalist officers, and were expected to raise their own regiments. Although both armies were composed of very raw soldiers, they had several experienced officers who had previously fought in the Dutch or Swedish armies during the Thirty Years' War.

In general, the Parliamentarian army was better equipped than their Royalist counterparts; they had three full troops of cuirassiers, a type of cavalry that was armoured from head to knee, and armed with two pistols and a sword. Most of the cavalry on both sides were harquebusiers, who were armoured with just a helmet and plate armour on their torso, and carried a sword, two pistols and a carbine. In reality, while most of the Parliamentarian army met this standard, much of the Royalist cavalry was lacking various items, and some carried only a sword. Despite being less well equipped, the Royalist cavalry was superior to Parliament's at this stage of the war; after arriving late to the battle, Oliver Cromwell wrote to John Hampden—who was his cousin, and one of the Parliamentarian leaders—to complain about the quality of the Parliamentarian cavalry in comparison to their Royalist counterparts.

The same was true of the infantry: most of the Royalist pikemen lacked any armour, while their musketeers did not carry swords, making them more vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. Several hundred of them lacked any sort of weapon apart from clubs or improvised polearms. Again, the Parliamentarians were better equipped, though many were still lacking parts of their armour. The ideal balance between musketeers and pikemen was reckoned to be around two musketeers per pikemen; the Parliamentarians mostly managed a ratio of 3:2, but the Royalists shortage of guns meant that their ratio was 1:1.

Estimates of the sizes of the two armies have varied greatly; James II of England, who was present at the battle as the Duke of York, aged nine, later estimated that the Royalists had roughly 8,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalry facing between 10,000 and 11,000 Parliamentarian infantry and more than 2,500 cavalry. In contrast, the official report to Parliament recorded that the King was accompanied by between 14,000 and 18,000, in comparison to around 10,000 in the Parliamentarian army. In 1877, the military historian W. G. Ross analysed an array of contemporary accounts, and suggested that there were 13,000 to 14,000 Royalists, of which about 4,000 were cavalry, and in the region of 14,000 Parliamentarians, including 3,000 cavalry. These figures were accepted by the majority of historians until Peter Young reassessed the numbers in his 1967 book about the battle. According to Young's estimates, the Royalist army numbered around 14,300, featuring about 2,800 cavalry, while the Parliamentarians had around 14,870 with 2,150 cavalry. In 2010, Aaron Graham looked more closely at the estimates for Essex's army, and made a revised assessment of roughly 10,000 Parliamentarian infantry, and suggested that it was likely that both sides had broadly similar numbers of both infantry and cavalry.

Deployment
The Royalists took to the field first, but ongoing disputes between factions in their army's command caused friction in the lead up to the battle. The Earl of Lindsey had active command of the army, but Prince Rupert had the King's ear, and the two had a series of rows regarding strategy. Ultimately, on the morning of the battle, the two disagreed about a suitable battle formation for the infantry. Lindsey, who had fought in the army of Maurice, Prince of Orange, favoured what was known as the Dutch style. In their history of the battle, the historians Keith Roberts and John Tincey suggest that the Dutch style was considered easier for the inexperienced Royalist soldiers at Edgehill to adopt, and would have consisted of regiments split into three sections; a group of pikemen in the centre flanked by musketeers on either side. Rupert was a keen student of military theory, and inspired by the victories of Gustavus Adolphus, he wanted to use a Swedish style. This involved splitting brigades into three or four squadrons, in a chevron or diamond shape. Rupert got his way; according to Clarendon, "the king was so indulgent to him [Rupert] that he took his advice in all things relating to the army." Lindsey, having had his authority undermined, declared that "since he was not fit to be a general, he would die a colonel in the head of his regiment". There is some speculation as to who took over command of the Royalist army; Charles and Rupert have both been suggested, but modern sources have tended to support the theory that it was given to Patrick Ruthven, the Earl of Forth.

The battle plan drawn by Sir Bernard de Gomme for Prince Rupert shows the infantry split into five battalions; three on the front line and two in support, using four squadron diamonds. According to some contemporary reports though, the infantry was split into nine battalions. Based on these reports, Roberts and Tincey suggest an alternative battle plan with five battalions on the front line and four in support, in which each battalion uses the three-squadron chevron formation. Sir Jacob Astley had active command of the infantry, as Sergeant-Major-General of Foot. The Royalist right wing of cavalry and dragoons was led by Prince Rupert, with Sir John Byron in support. The King's own Lifeguard of Horse insisted on joining Rupert's front line, leaving the King with no cavalry reserve under his own command. The left wing consisted of horse under Sir Henry Wilmot, with Lord Digby, the King's secretary of state, in support and Colonel Arthur Aston's dragoons on his left flank. The lighter artillery pieces were spread across the front line, while the six heavy cannons were estimated by Young to be around 300 yards behind the right-hand infantry brigade, where it was guarded by a regiment of firelocks.

The Parliamentarians adopted a defensive position; their infantry, comprising twelve regiments, was gathered into three brigades of around 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers each, commanded by Sir John Meldrum, Charles Essex and Thomas Ballard. Wanklyn says that each regiment maintained its autonomy, rather than them merging into Spanish style tercios. Essex's army adopted a popular variation of the Dutch system; rather than the traditional ten-deep formation, he preferred six files of eight per division. Like Lindsey, Essex had fought with the Dutch army, and was comfortable with their methods. As parts of his army were still marching towards the battleground while he was deploying, he was unable to deploy the army according to his prepared plan, and had to adapt it for what regiments he had available. Clarendon praised his adaptability in deployment as that which "could be expected from a wise general." Based on contemporary accounts, Roberts and Tincey suggest that the Parliamentarian infantry had seven regiments on the front line with five at the rear, in a chequerboard formation. Within each regiment, the pikemen were flanked by musketeers.

The Parliamentarian left wing consisted of a loosely organised cavalry brigade of twenty four unregimented troops under Sir James Ramsay, interspersed with 400 musketeers: another Swedish tactic devised by Adolphus, and much used around Europe. A further 300 musketeers were placed in a hedge which flanked the battleground. Essex placed a further fourteen cavalry troops, commanded by Sir William Balfour, on the right wing. Beyond them, on the extreme right flank, were two regiments of dragoons. Four additional troops of cavalry, Sir William Balfour and Sir Philip Stapleton, were held in reserve behind the front line of the infantry.

Opening moves
Eager to draw the Parliamentarians into battle, and seeing that Essex was unwilling to attack their position atop the Edgehill escarpment, the Royalists descended the slope. The steepness of the hill made the manoeuvre difficult; the Royalist chronicler Richard Bulstrode related that the infantry were able to get down ways that the cavalry could not, and ultimately they had to send their dragoons down first to cover their movements. It also meant that if the Royalists were broken in the battle, they would struggle to escape back up the hill. Commanders rode up and down both lines, encouraging their soldiers for the upcoming fight; Ramsay told the Parliamentarians that they were facing "Papists, Atheists, and Irreligious persons", while the King declared that "Matters are now to be declared with swords, not by words."

The battle began with Parliamentarian cannon fire, at around 2pm. The accounts of one of the Parliamentarian officers, Edmund Ludlow, relates that: "Our General having commanded to fire upon the enemy, it was done twice". After allowing the Royalists to redeploy their army at the foot of the hill, modern historians are unsure why Essex then chose to attack, especially as he was still below full-strength. In their book about the battle, Christopher Scott, Alan Turton and Eric Gruber von Arni put forward a theory that it might have been unintentional; that a gun was accidentally fired, and this prompted the other gun-crews to follow suit. Young offers an alternative theory, that the sight of Charles rousing his men to cheers provoked the attack. The two sides exchanged artillery fire for a time; Ludlow claims it was for an hour, though modern historians think it was unlikely to have been so long. The Parliamentarians had the better of the exchange; they had more guns, were more accurate, and the terrain was favourable to them. If the Royalist attack fell short, the cannonballs, fired downhill, were absorbed by the ploughed earth in front of Essex's army, whereas the uphill trajectory of the Parliamentarian fire allowed their shots to bounce into the Royalist lines. It was recorded that the first casualty of the battle was Lieutenant Francis Bowles, a Royalist in Richard Feilding's Regiment of Foot. During the initial bombardment, Charles had remained on the front line, where he had intended to stay and lead his men into battle, but was dissuaded from this by his generals, who escorted him to a hill, later dubbed Bullet Hill, at the rear of their army.

On each flank, the Royalist dragoons advanced through difficult terrain consisting of hedges, ditches and briar patches towards the Parliamentarian musketeers and dragoons that had been deployed along the hedges. Despite being outnumbered roughly two-to-one, the Royalists succeeded in routing their enemy on both flanks, clearing the way for their cavalry to attack without fear of flanking fire. Scott, Turton and Gruber von Arni suggest that the Parliamentarian musketeers were inexperienced skirmishers, more used to regimental fire in which each rank fired in rotation, and thus ill-prepared to deal with the close range fighting required.

Cavalry attack
As the Royalist skirmishers cleared the hedges, one Parliamentarian cavalryman broke ranks; Lieutenant John van der Gerish discarded his orange-tawny scarf (Essex's colours) and rode to the Royalist line, where he relayed a message that Sir Faithful Fortescue and his troop intended to change sides. With this news, and the hedges clear of enemy musketeers, Prince Rupert ordered a cavalry attack. He gave his men instructions that they were to advance on the Parliamentarians and withhold their fire until they "broke in amongst the enemy". In James II's account of the battle, he describes the cavalry attack as a slow march, rather than a charge. Rupert's attack targeted the left-wing of the Parliamentarian army; the cavalry and musketeers commanded by Ramsay. The Parliamentarians held their ground rather than counter-attacking, and fired at the approaching enemy. During a break in the gunfire, Fortescue led his troop out from the Parliamentarian lines and fired his pistol into the ground; the pre-arranged signal to swap sides. His men turned about and joined the Royalist attack, but many forgot to remove their scarves.

As the lines drew closer, the intensity of the attack increased: the Royalists became within range of more of the Parliamentarian guns; and Rupert's cavalry accelerated to a trot or a canter. In the face of the attack, most of Ramsey's men fired their weapons before the Royalists came within their guns' effective range, and the Royalist cavalry continued their advance without taking significant losses. Already shaken by witnessing the rout of their skirmishers, some of Ramsey's men began to desert. Accounts of the battle generally relate that the entire left wing of the Parliamentarian army was almost immediately routed under this attack; both Young, and Roberts and Tincey, follow this narrative. Scott, Turton and Gruber von Arni give the Parliamentarians a little more credit. Based on the official Royalist account of the battle, which said that the Parliamentarians broke within fifteen minutes, they suggest that it is more likely that some of the 1,500 soldiers under Ramsey held for almost that long, and that many histories of the battle have been coloured by an "over-zealous enthusiasm for the romance surrounding Prince Rupert." Either way, within quarter of an hour, Ramsay's entire wing was broken, and fled the battle.

Old
Wilmot charged about the same time on the other flank. Feilding's outnumbered troops quickly gave way, and Wilmot and Digby also chased them to Kineton where the Royalist horse fell out to loot the Parliamentarian baggage. Sir Charles Lucas and Lord Grandison rallied about 200 men, but when they tried to charge the Parliamentarian rear, they were distracted by fugitives from Charles Essex's routed brigade.

The Royalist infantry also advanced in the centre under Ruthven. Many of the Parliamentarian foot had already run away as their cavalry disappeared, and others fled as the infantry came to close quarters. The brigades of Sir Thomas Ballard and Sir John Meldrum nevertheless stood their ground. The Parliamentarian cavalry regiments of Stapleton and Balfour emerged through gaps in the line of Parliamentarian foot soldiers, and charged the Royalist infantry. With no Royalist cavalry to oppose them, they put many units to flight.

The King had left himself without any proper reserve. As his centre gave way, he ordered one of his officers to conduct his sons Charles (the Prince of Wales) and James (the Duke of York) to safety while Ruthven rallied his infantry. Some of Balfour's men charged so far into the Royalist position that they menaced the princes' escort and briefly overran the Royalist artillery before withdrawing. In the front ranks, Lord Lindsey was killed, and Sir Edmund Verney died defending the Royal Standard, which was captured by Parliamentarian Ensign Arthur Young.

By this time, some of the Royalist horse had rallied and were returning from Kineton. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Welch (variously spelled Welch, Welsh, or Walsh) of Wilmot's Horse recaptured the Royal Standard by a subterfuge as it was being taken to the Parliamentarian rear as a trophy. Welch also captured two Parliamentarian cannon. As the light began to fade, the battle ended with a fire fight from either side of a dividing ditch, before nightfall eventually brought a natural close to hostilities. The Royalists had been forced back to the position they had originally advanced from, but had regrouped.

Outcome
By the following morning the King and his army returned to the Edgehill escarpment and Essex's army returned to Kineton. It was a bitterly cold night with a hard frost. This was suggested by contemporary reports as the reason many of the wounded survived, since the cold allowed many wounds to congeal, saving the wounded from bleeding to death or succumbing to infection.

The following day, both armies partially formed up again, but neither was willing to resume the battle. Charles sent a herald to Essex with a message of pardon if he would agree to the King's terms, but the messenger was roughly handled and forced to return without delivering his message. Although Essex had been reinforced by some of his units which had lagged behind on the march, he withdrew during the evening and the majority of his army marched to Warwick Castle, abandoning seven guns on the battlefield.

In the early hours of Tuesday 25th, Prince Rupert led a strong detachment of horse and dragoons and launched a surprise attack upon what remained of the Parliamentarian baggage train at Kineton and killed many of the battle's wounded survivors discovered within the village.

Essex's decision to return northwards to Warwick allowed the King to continue southwards in the direction of London. Rupert urged this course, and was prepared to undertake it with his cavalry alone. With Essex's army still intact, the King chose to move more deliberately, with the whole army. After capturing Banbury on 27 October, he advanced via Oxford, Aylesbury and Reading. Essex meanwhile had moved directly to London. Reinforced by the London Trained Bands and many citizen volunteers, his army proved to be too strong for the King to contemplate another battle when the Royalists advanced to Turnham Green. The King withdrew to Oxford, which he made his capital for the rest of the war. With both sides almost evenly matched, it would drag on ruinously for years.

It is generally acknowledged that the Royalist cavalry's lack of discipline prevented a clear Royalist victory at Edgehill. Not for the last time in the war, they would gallop after fleeing enemy and then break ranks to plunder, rather than rally to attack the enemy infantry. Byron's and Digby's men in particular, were not involved in the first clashes and should have been kept in hand rather than allowed to gallop off the battlefield. Patrick Ruthven was elevated to the rank of Lord General of the King's Army, confirming his role as acting commander in the battle.

On the Parliamentarian side, Sir James Ramsay who had commanded the left wing horse which had been routed during the battle, was tried by court-martial at St. Albans on 5 November. The court reported that he had done all that it became a gallant man to do.

The last survivor of the battle, William Hiseland, fought also at Malplaquet sixty-seven years later.

The Welch medal
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Welch, who had recaptured the royal standard, was knighted banneret on the field by King Charles I next morning. The King also granted a patent for a gold medal to be made (the first to be awarded to an individual for action on a battlefield) commemorating the event in Welch's honour. Captain John Smith also claimed a supporting part in the rescue of the royal standard and was accordingly also knighted banneret, but the medal was minted in Sir Robert Welch's name and honour.

When in exile with Prince Charles, Welch committed a grave error of etiquette defending Prince Rupert. Coupled with his friend Prince Rupert's political unpopularity among the Royalist exiles and the fact that Welch was an Irishman, Welch's part at Edgehill was afterwards denigrated to the benefit of Smith (an Englishman) who was thus erroneously perpetuated as the hero in subsequent historical publications.