[1645 A.D.] reached the foot of the Grampians, where he remained concealed till he heard of the landing of the Irish. He directed them to join him in Athol, where at their head he unfurled the royal standard, and summoned the clans to arms. They responded to his call; he poured down on the Lowlands; at Tippermuir (Sept. 1) he defeated the lord Elcho, and then entered and plundered the town of Perth. He then moved northwards; the bridge of Dee was defended by Lord Burleigh, but his men fled at the first shock, and the ferocious followers of Montrose entered Aberdeen pell-mell with them. The town was given up to pillage and massacre for four days. The Irish, we are told, displayed a thriftiness in their barbarity such as one might rather have looked for in the Scots, for they stripped their victims naked before they murdered them, lest their clothes should be spoilt.

The approach of Argyll with a superior force obliged Montrose to quit Aberdeen on the fifth day. He moved toward the Spey, and finding its opposite bank guarded he buried his ordnance in a morass, and went up the stream till he reached the forests of Strath Spey and the mountains of Badenoch. He then descended into Athol and Angus, still followed by Argyll, and suddenly crossing the Grampians, again moved northwards in hopes of rousing the Gordons to arms. At Fyvie Castle he was nearly surrounded, but after sustaining the repeated attacks of a superior force, he retired by night, and effected his retreat to Badenoch. Argyll, wearied out, as it was now far in the winter, returned to his castle of Inverary, where he deemed himself in perfect security. But the energetic and vindictive Montrose amidst the snows of December (13th), penetrated by passes only trodden by the herdsmen in summer into Argyllshire. The savage Irish, and no less savage clansmen, let all their fury loose on the devoted district; the inhabitants were massacred, the cattle driven off or destroyed, the houses and corn burnt. Argyll himself only escaped by putting to sea in an open boat.

After seven weeks spent in the work of devastation, Montrose moved toward Inverness. Argyll, who had rallied the scattered Campbells, was now with three thousand men at Inverlochy, at the western extremity of the chain of Highland lakes. By a secret and circuitous route, Montrose returned and fell on his vanguard by night. The moon giving her light, the troops skirmished till day. In the morning (Feb. 2, 1645) the fight began: Argyll, in whose character there was little of chivalry, viewed from a boat in the lake the noble but unavailing struggles of his gallant Campbells, and the slaughter of one half of their number. Montrose, elate with his victory, wrote to the king promising soon to come to his aid with a gallant army; and this letter arriving during the treaty of Uxbridge, aided to prevent the sanguine monarch from complying with terms on which peace might have been effected. Montrose returned to the north; the Grants and Gordons joined him; he spread his ravages as before; Dundee was stormed and partly burnt (Apr. 4). But the approach of a superior force under Baillie and that soldier of fortune Hurry, now again against the king, obliged him to return to the mountains with some loss. Baillie then entered Athol, while Hurry moved northwards after Montrose, to whom he gave battle at Aldean, near Nairn, and was defeated with the loss of two thousand men. Baillie himself was soon after overthrown at Alford on the Don.

THE NEW MODEL ARMY, AND NASEBY

The English parliament had now completed their New Model. It consisted of six thousand horse divided into ten regiments, one thousand dragoons,

[1645 A.D.]

and fourteen thousand foot in twelve regiments of ten companies each. These regiments were composed of men from the old armies, chiefly those of a religious cast and inclined to the party of the Independents. A more rigorous discipline was introduced than had hitherto prevailed, and thus was formed that noble army, which, actuated by a higher principle than the mere love of pay and plunder, never encountered a defeat, and has left its memory a subject of admiration to posterity. The king had given given the nominal command of his forces to the prince of Wales, but the real power to Prince Rupert as his lieutenant. He had also sent the prince to Bristol, ostensibly to command in the west, but really because, as he himself used to express it, "he and his son were too great a prize to be ventured in one bottom."

Goring and Greenvil had separate commands in the west, and the license in which these profligate commanders indulged their men, and the atrocities committed by them, gave origin to a defensive association among the countrypeople in the counties of Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, and Devon, and a similar association appeared in Gloucester and Worcester. The object of these people, who were named, from their principal weapon, clubmen, was to preserve their property from the hands of both parties; and as the royalists were the greater plunderers, their hostility was chiefly directed against them. Many of the loyal gentry however countenanced them, in hopes of being able hereafter to render them serviceable to the royal cause. About a third of the kingdom still obeyed the king; his army was more numerous than the New Model, but it was scattered and divided; its officers were at discord, and the men demoralised. He was, however, the first to take the field, and leaving Oxford (May 7) at the head of ten thousand men, of whom more than one half were cavalry, he proceeded to raise the siege of Chester. The enemy retired at the rumour of his approach.u

It was apprehended that Charles intended to join his army with the triumphant forces of Montrose in Scotland; and the Scottish army in England, which was then advancing to the south-east, hastily fell back upon Westmoreland and Cumberland to guard the approaches to Carlisle and the western borders. But Charles, after his success at Chester, turned round to the southeast, and soon carried the important city of Leicester by assault. This movement revived all the apprehensions about the associated counties in the east; and Fairfax, abandoning the siege of Oxford, marched into Northamptonshire, where he arrived on the 7th of June. His friend Cromwell was then in the Isle of Ely, most actively organising the militia there. At this critical moment, Fairfax and a general council of war, which he had called, requested the house of commons to dispense again in Cromwell's case with the Self-Denying Ordinance, and appoint him lieutenant-general, that second post in the army, which in all probability had purposely been left vacant from the beginning for Master Oliver. The house, which must have known by this time that no man so entirely possessed the confidence of the cavalry and of a great part of the army, sent him down a commission as lieutenant-general for three months; and Cromwell joined Fairfax just in time to be present at that great battle which was to decide the important question, "what the liberties and laws of England, and what the king's power and prerogative, should hereafter be."

The king, whose head-quarters were at Daventry, was amusing himself with field-sports, and his troops were foraging and plundering in all directions, when, on the 11th of June, old Sir Marmaduke Langdale brought him news of the unexpected approach of Fairfax. The royalist outposts were concentrated and strengthened; but, on the morning of the 12th, Fairfax beat them up at Borough Hill, and spread the alarm into the very lodgings of the king. The

[1645 A.D.]

parliamentarians, however, who were then very weak in cavalry, did not think fit to venture any further attempt. On the morning of the 13th, at about six o'clock, Fairfax called a council of war, and, in the midst of their debates, to the exceeding joy of the whole army, Lieutenant-General Cromwell reached head-quarters with a choice regiment of 600 horse raised by the associated counties of the east. Then all deliberation and hesitation were at an end, the drums beat, the trumpets sounded to horse, and the whole body of parliamentarians were drawn up under arms.

On Saturday, June the 14th, by three o'clock in the morning, Fairfax put himself in march from Gilling to Naseby. At five o'clock he halted close to Naseby, and shortly after several bodies of his majesty's horse showed themselves on the top of a hill in battle array. [At the very opening of the battle, Rossiter rode up with cavalry sufficient to raise the parliamentary army to nearly 14,000, almost twice the force of Charles who had 7,500.] The fieldword of the royalists was "God and Queen Mary!" that of the parliament, "God our strength!" The royalists began the battle, "marching up in good order, a swift march, with abundance of alacrity, gallantry, and resolution." As in other battles, fortune at first seemed to flatter Charles, for the left wing of the parliament was worsted by the furious onslaught of Rupert. Ireton was wounded in the thigh with a pike, in the face with a halbert, and his horse being killed under him, he was made prisoner, and kept by the royalists during the greater part of the battle. Rupert, however, with his usual rashness, spurred on too far; the scattered foot rallied in his rear round their guns; and the broken horse of the left wing formed, closed, and rode up to support the centre and the right. Cromwell's charge, though gallantly met by Sir Marmaduke Langdale, was brilliant and decisive: after firing at close charge and standing to it at the sword's point, the left wing of the royalists was broken, and driven far beyond all the king's foot. [Fairfax with his own hand killed an ensign, and seized his colours. When the soldier to whose charge he committed them boasted of the deed as his own, Fairfax said, "Let him retain that honour; I have to-day acquired enough beside."]

There was terrible fighting after this: the unflinching Skippon was dangerously wounded, and Cromwell was several times in peril. But a tremendous charge, conducted by the parliamentarians from several points at once, completely broke up the last steady body of the king's infantry. According to Clarendon, Rupert's cavalry thought they had acted their parts, and could never be brought to rally again in order, or to charge the enemy. They stood, with the rest, spiritless and inactive, till Cromwell and Fairfax were ready to charge them with horse and foot, and to ply them with their own artillery. Despair made Charles courageous, and, placing himself among them, he cried out, "One charge more, and we recover the day!" but he could not prevail with them to stand the shock of horse, foot, and ordnance, and they presently fled in disorder, both fronts and reserves, hotly pursued by Cromwell's horse, who took many prisoners.

Charles left behind him on the field five thousand prisoners, including an immense number of officers of all ranks, besides many of his household servants. There were also taken twelve brass pieces of ordnance, two mortar

[The worst fate was reserved for the unhappy women who followed the camp. About a hundred being of Irish birth, were knocked on the head without mercy. The faces of the English harlots were gashed in order to render them forever hideous, and it is not improbable that some officers' and soldiers' wives shared the fate of their frailer sisters. Puritanism was intolerant of vice, and it had no pity for the sex on which its hideous burden falls most heavily." GARDINER. Later parliament gave an order at Fairfax's request that all the Irish prisoners should be put to death without mercy; this seems not to have been entirely carried out.]

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pieces, eight thousand stand of arms, forty barrels of powder, all the bag and baggage, the rich pillage which the royalist soldiers had got just before at Leicester, above one hundred colours, the king's baggage, several coaches, and his majesty's private cabinet of papers and letters, which last were a means of sealing his doom. [The slain were one hundred killed in the battle and three hundred in the retreat.] With Cromwell's horse thundering close in his rear, the king got into Leicester; but not judging it safe to remain there, he rode off to Hereford. At Hereford, Prince Rupert, before any decision was taken as to what the king should do next, left his uncle, and made haste to Bristol, that he might put that place into a condition to resist a powerful and victorious enemy, which he had reason to believe would in a short time appear before it. Meanwhile Fairfax marched with his victorious army to Leicester, which was soon surrendered to him, and, leaving a garrison there, he moved westward, that he might both pursue the king and raise the siege of Taunton. The day after the battle the lord-general sent Colonel John Fiennes and his regiment up to London with the prisoners and colours taken, and with a short letter to the speaker of the house of commons, wherein Fairfax humbly desired that the honour of this great, never-to-be-forgotten mercy might be given to God in an extraordinary day of thanksgiving.

Cromwell, on the day of the battle, wrote to the parliament, averring that this was none other but the hand of God, and that to him alone belonged the glory. "The general," continued Cromwell, "served you with all faithfulness and honour, and the best commendation I can give him is, that I dare say he attributes all to God, and would rather perish than assume to himself. Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are trusty; I beseach you in the name of God not to discourage them.

He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [This sentence was expurged by the commons when they published the letter.]

THE KING'S LETTERS AND INSINCERITY

But these letters were far inferior in interest to the epistles taken in the king's cabinet, now publicly read in London at a common hall, before a great assembly of citizens and many members of both houses of parliament, where leave was given to as many as pleased or knew the king's hand-writing to peruse and examine them all, in order to refute the report of those who said that the letters were counterfeit. And shortly after, a selection from them was printed and published by command of parliament.

"From the reading of these letters," says May, "many discourses of the people arose. For in them appeared his transactions with the Irish rebels, and with the queen for assistance from France and the duke of Lorraine. Many good men were sorry that the king's actions agreed no better with his words. They were vexed also that the king was so much ruled by the will of his wife as to do everything by her prescript, and that peace, war, religion, and parliament should be at her disposal. It appeared, besides, out of those letters, with what mind the king treated with the parliament at Uxbridge, and what could be hoped for by that treaty." The reading of these letters is generally considered to have been as fatal to his cause as the field of Naseby where they were taken. The royalists themselves were startled by his contemptuous ingratitude; and men who had hitherto inclined to loyalty began to lose all respect for his character. From this time nothing prospered with the king.cc

[1645 A.D.]

A frequent topic in these letters is a treaty with the duke of Lorraine for his army of ten thousand men, to aid the royal cause in England. Charles also writes to the queen (Mar. 5), "I give thee power to promise in my name, to whom thou thinkest most fit, that I will take away all the penal laws against the Roman Catholics in England as soon as God shall enable me to do it, so as by their means or in their favours I may have so powerful assistance as may deserve so great a favour, and enable me to do it." Sir Kenelm Digby was at this time going to Rome to solicit aid from the pope, and the king had written to Ormonde (February 27), commanding him "to conclude a peace with the Irish, whatever it cost; so that my Protestant subjects there may be secured, and my regal authority there be preserved"; he had even sent Glamorgan on his secret mission to Ireland.

Each day brought tidings of losses.

Leicester had surrendered when Fairfax appeared. He then marched to the relief of Taunton, whence Goring retired at his approach; but Fairfax brought him to action at Lamport in Somerset (July 10), and defeated him. Bridgewater, deemed impregnable, surrendered (23rd). Bath and Sherborne submitted. In the north, Scarborough, Pontefract, and Carlisle had yielded; and the Scots, who had been engaged in the siege of this last, came and sat down before Hereford. king, quitting Wales, hastened to Newark, and finding that the Scottish horse were in pursuit of him, he burst into and ravaged the eastern counties, and at length (August 28th) reached Oxford in safety.

The

Here he was cheered with intelligence of another victory gained by Montrose. This indefatigable chief, having again issued from the mountains with a force of five thousand men, spread devastation over the country to the Forth. Baillie was advantageously

HEREFORDSHIRE HEADQUARTERS OF PRINCE posted at Kilsyth, near Stirling, and he

wished to act on the defensive, but, like Pompey at Pharsalia, he was overruled by the committee of estates, and obliged to move from his strong position and prepare for battle. Ere his men were drawn up (August 15th) his horse were driven back on the foot, and the Irish and clansmen rushed on with wild yells and savage gestures. His troops broke and fled; they were pursued for the space of fourteen miles, and five thousand men, it is said, were slain. All Scotland was now open to Montrose. Glasgow and other towns submitted; the citizens of Edinburgh sent him their royalist prisoners; the marquis of Douglas and other nobles joined him, and a parliament was summoned to meet at Glasgow.

At this news, the Scottish horse under David Leslie, who were now (August 26th) at Nottingham, hastened back to their own country; and the king leaving Oxford with five thousand men, came and raised the siege of Hereford.