Throughout history, the failure to conclusively deal
with a defeated enemy leader often resulted in renewed bouts of violence.
Of this revanchist phenomenon, there is perhaps no greater example than the
English Civil War. After a promising start, the forces of King Charles had been outmatched in
battle after battle until finally, in June 1645, the core of the royalist army was irredeemably
broken at the Battle of Naseby. However, despite suffering this string of crushing losses, Charles
still resolved to continue fighting, motivated by a sincere belief in a monarch’s divine right
to rule. The subsequent flurry of events that followed would eventually result in the Second
English Civil War and its conclusion at Preston. With Charles having a hard time as monarch, it might be nice to also see some successful
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you use our special link in the description, so you might as well give it a go. After its crushing defeat at Parliamentarian hands
in Northamptonshire, the royalist cause in England began spinning into complete freefall. Although
the king realised that his prospects were grim, he still had a few thousand good cavalry with which
he quickly traveled to the Welsh border, where there was the faint hope of reinforcement. Back in
the midlands and fresh from recapturing Leicester on June 18th, Fairfax didn’t bother pursuing
Charles, instead marching towards Taunton. There, the last fully constituted royalist field army
- about 9,000 strong and under Goring’s command, was besieging the city. Receiving word that he
was about to be attacked by the superior New Model Army, Goring lifted the siege and attempted
to withdraw towards Bridgewater. Unfortunately for this ardent kingsman, Fairfax was too quick, and
engaged him at Langport on July 10th, destroying the final royalist field force. If the destruction
of Goring’s army and parliament’s subsequent occupation of the west country wasn’t bad enough,
Fairfax then marched north to snare Bristol, the king’s last great manufacturing hub and prime
gateway to Ireland. In the aftermath of Naseby, Charles valued the city’s security so much that
the illustrious Prince Rupert, demoralized but still fiercely loyal, was appointed its governor
and ordered to keep it against the enemy at all costs1. So confident was he that assurances were
given to the king that Bristol could hold until at least Christmas. However, not even the man
who was arguably Charles’ foremost commander could withstand Fairfax’s momentum. After a
miserable siege of just 18 days, a hopeless Rupert surrendered Bristol on September 10th in
return for mercy and an escort back to Oxford. When the king got word of the prince’s abandonment
of Bristol he was utterly distraught. In response, a royal letter of condemnation was penned
containing, among others things - ‘What is to be done after one who is so near me both in blood and
friendship submits himself to so mean an action?’ For the royalists, the bad news just kept on
coming. Only three days after the ‘Betrayal of Bristol’, as conspiratorial royalist courtiers
dubbed it, news reached Oxford that the Marquis of Montrose - Charles’ singular ray of hope in
Scotland, had been defeated at Philiphaugh with the loss of his entire army2. Although the marquis
continued to cause trouble, there would be no salvation from the north. Increasingly deprived of
options, the king marched north in an attempt to relieve Chester, the hypothetical landing point
for any Irish confederate soldiers who might come to aid him. He arrived on the 23rd, but was
quickly bested in battle and forced to withdraw back to Oxford via Newark. The following months
were an extended litany of bitter disappointment and failure among the royalist partisans. Though
there were no major battles which took place, garrisons fell one by one until by early 1646,
parliament controlled most of the country. Fearing for his son and heir’s safety, Charles
sent the Prince of Wales to France at around this time. The final act of the First Civil War
played out at Stow-on-the-Wold on March 21st, when New Model units under Richard
Brereton intercepted and defeated a 3,000 strong royalist contingent moving back
south to reinforce Oxford’s skeleton garrison. Some of the cavalry managed to break out of the
trap and reach Charles’ position, but the army’s commander Lord Astley and the majority of its
Welsh levies capitulated without much resistance. As he was led off the field, Astley turned
to his men and said “You have done your work, boys, and may go play, unless you will fall out
among yourselves.” With enemy armies closing in all around Oxford3, Charles slipped out of the
city with only two companions and went north. For months, covert negotiations under French
supervision4 had been taking place between the king and the Covenanters, who were deeply
unsatisfied with their treatment by parliament. Having received promises that he would be treated
honourably and would not be forced to do anything which ‘troubled his conscience’, Charles
entered Leven’s camp at Newark on May 5th and was taken prisoner. The king now had protection in
custody, while the Scots had an invaluable piece on the chessboard. Keen to keep him secure,
they moved back to Newcastle on the 13th. At about the same time, tension between the king’s
jailors and the English parliament were reaching a fever pitch. On August 12th, The Committee of
Both Kingdoms’ Scottish Commissioners informed their counterparts that, although the war was won,
they were only prepared to withdraw their army from Northern England if the £1.8 million they
were owed as compensation was paid. The quickly splintering factions managed to reach a financial
settlement, but it was clear that, above even this, the Covenanters were furious at parliament’s
disregard of the Solemn League and Covenant. Rendering the Scots’ war aims even less plausible
was the failure to convert the captive king to Presbyterianism, or at least to agree to impose it
on his kingdom as parliament had promised before. The king’s sheer obstinance
and repeated plots to escape eventually made the Scots believe
that he wasn’t worth the trouble. On January 28th 1647, they agreed to sell
Charles to the English parliament in return for installments of outstanding payments totalling
£400,000. With that done, the Scottish army began withdrawing back into their own country and
demobilising after almost half a decade at war. The king, meanwhile, was transported
to house arrest at Holdenby, repeatedly being met by cheering crowds on the
way. In London, parliament was not the strong, relatively united faction which had managed to
win the civil war. Instead, without Charles as a strong enemy to come together against, the rift
between the ‘Presbytarian’ moderates and the more radical ‘Independents’ grew dangerously
wide. In late February and early March, Members of the Presbytarian faction, who
generally sought accomodation with the king, were busy shooting themselves in the foot by
unilaterally disbanding the New Model Army’s infantry regiments, which were often led by
Independents. To make the slight even more cutting, this was to be done without payment
of outstanding wages that the troops were owed. The army had a number of other motivations,
including the politics espoused by a group of aspiring egalitarians known as Levellers.
They believed that the army’s anti-royalist triumph was to herald a new age of equality
and the elimination of wealth and privilege. Squabbling within parliament continued for
the next few months until the until-now relatively neutral Oliver Cromwell, who
was both a prominent MP and an equally prominent New Model Army commander, began
realising his position was unsustainable. Amidst rumours of a Presbytarian plot to seize
the king and use him for their own political ends, Cromwell probably condoned the dispatch of an
‘arch-agitator’ known as George Joyce to Holdenby at the end of May, tasked with taking the king
into his own custody. On the morning of June 3rd, Charles I walked out of Holdenby House and set
off for Newmarket accompanied by Joyce’s troopers. There, the politically neutral Sir Thomas Fairfax
and his New Model Army were gathered, and the army’s mood was growing more restless. In London,
the revelation of Charles’ military apprehension gave Cromwell the excuse he needed to cross
his own personal rubicon. Quitting parliament entirely, he rode north to personally lead the New
Model Army, with whom he was incredibly popular. When Cromwell and Charles first met for
talks, relations were actually quite cordial, contrary to what later events would imply. The
parliamentary cavalry general even informed a friend that the king was ‘the uprightest and
most conscientious man of his three kingdoms’. Behind the scenes however, Charles continued
his clandestine communications with the Scots, aiming to keep all his options open. For the time
being, Cromwell and the army had other problems to distract them. At the end of July 1647, riots,
sparked by the continuing wartime tax rate, spiraled out of control in the English capital.
The violence led to a number of ‘Independent’ MPs fleeing to the army’s protection5,
including the speaker of the house. Legitimised by the speaker’s presence in their
camp, Fairfax and Cromwell led the New Model Army into London and put it under military
occupation. When the situation was considered safe, the king was escorted from Newmarket
and installed at Hampton Court, where the imprisoned monarch still doggedly refused any
settlement which wasn’t entirely on his terms. Instead, Charles hoped that the obvious divisions
between the various parliamentary factions could be widened and exploited for his own ends. That
political strategy initially seemed to be working well when, on October 18th, five Leveller officers
presented the army ‘grandees’, led by Lord General Fairfax, with The Case of the Army Truly Stated.
This was a revolutionary manifesto calling for radical reforms including, but not limited to: the
dissolution of parliament and the implementation of a new constitution which would give ‘all the
free born’ the right to vote. So that disruption in the New Model Army could be avoided, Fairfax
opened the so-called Putney Debates to address the issue. Although Cromwell’s rejection of such
a constitutional change decided the issue, the anti-monarchical nature of the discussion reached
and frightened the king. Fearing for his safety, or just sick of being cooped up, Charles escaped
in late November and eventually ended up at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, in an
even less favourable imprisonment than before. If this irritation wasn’t enough to harden
Cromwell’s attitude towards the king, the more severe intelligence that he was receiving
certainly was. Just after Christmas 1647, Charles I secretly signed an agreement with
the Scots known as the ‘Engagement’, a military alliance between the king and his northern realm
in return for state enforced Presbyterianism. After much debate at the Edinburgh assembly,
those royalists who became known as the ‘Engagers’ gained a majority and, on April 20th 1648, issued
a declaration which accused the English parliament of breaking the previously established Solemn
League and Covenant. It also demanded uniformity of religion and the complete disbandment of the
New Model Army, which the Scots considered to be the most troublesome piece on the chessboard. This
was completely impossible for the English and so, only a week later, the Engagers began mobilising
for war against their recently dismissed ally. Bt this time, however, parliament and its
renegade army were already dealing with the embers of unrest in England. In late March, A
spontaneous revolt in support of the king had broken out in Wales led by Colonel John Poyer.
However, it was quelled in short order by the swiftly moving Cromwell. Meanwhile in the north
of England, the efforts of revanchist royalist commander Marmaduke Langdale were limited due
to the intervention of General John Lambert. This wasn’t the end of parliament’s troubles.
In late May, an overly draconian parliamentary commissioner in Kent provoked an uprising
which, while enjoying some initial success, was eventually confined within the city of
Colchester, which was put under siege on June 12th. Although all of these revolts still posed a
threat on their own, everyone on parliament’s side knew that an invasion from Scotland was imminent.
As one of Charles’ allies stated “It is Scotland, and Scotland only, can save the King and England.
All others have their rise from the expectation of Scotland.” The decisive campaign of the
short Second Civil War was about to take place. The royalist storm finally broke on July 8th,
when a roughly 10,000 strong Scottish army under the Duke of Hamilton crossed the border into
Northern England and linked up with Langdale’s 4,000 beleaguered rebels at Carlisle. With the
tables turned by the presence of this new enemy, Lambert obeyed Cromwell’s orders to
withdraw to the safety of Barnard Castle after suffering some minor losses. This
would allow for the preservation of the parliamentary army while reinforcements made
their way north to deal with the problem6. Unfortunately for the royalists, Hamilton was
forced to call a stop to his offensive for two weeks while supplies and reinforcements arrived
from Scotland and Ireland. This gave Cromwell time to reach the area, and allowed the two
parliamentary generals to meet at Wetherby on August 12th, forming a veteran army which
totalled about 9,000 men. Unwilling to allow the invaders any opportunity to move further into the
country, Cromwell sped westwards into Lancashire and down the Ribble Valley to intercept their
southbound advance along England’s west coast. To increase his army’s marching pace, Cromwell
chose to leave the the parliamentarian artillery behind. Having decided on an advance deeper into
Lancashire to link up with potential allies in Wales, the bulk of Hamilton’s Scots came to a halt
atop Preston Moor at nightfall on August 16th. They set up for the night and prepared to cross
the Ribble River in the morning, while most of the Scottish cavalry was sent ahead towards Wigan
on a foraging mission. Langdale’s force of around 3,000 foot and 600 horse, functioning as a cavalry
screen east of the main, coalesced about four miles northeast of Preston at Longridge. Due to
inadequate reconnaissance, the king’s supporters completely unaware that Cromwell’s 9,000 were only
a few miles away, encamped at Stonyhurst Park. As the sun came above the horizon on August 17th,
Hamilton ordered Baillie to begin marching the Scottish foot across the river7. Shortly after
this, a small probing vanguard from Cromwell’s army started skirmishing with Langdale’s
surprised men on the road from Clitheroe. Believing that the entire parliamentary force
was in the area, the royalist general rode to Hamilton personally and informed him of the
situation, but the latter was convinced to continue the river crossing by his officers.
With minimal reinforcements to assist him, Langdale rode back to his embattled
contingent. After hours of light skirmishing, he was finally attacked by the entirety
of Cromwell’s army in mid-afternoon. The battlefield was a disconnected mosaic of small
fields, intersected by irrigation ditches, narrow lanes and high hedges in which the crack New Model
infantry units had a distinct advantage over the freshly mustered greenhorns in the royalist
force. Nevertheless, Langdale’s musketeers gave a good account of themselves and, at first,
managed to keep Cromwell’s army at bay and avoid being outflanked. However, when fighting south
of the Clitheroe Road was at its height, Lambert threw his Lancashire regiment at the sector and
sent the royalist screen routing towards Preston. Accounts differ as to what happened next, but
all agree that the situation broke apart swiftly after Langdale’s defeat. Hamilton was trapped in
Preston trying to rally the last arrivals among his cavalry coming from the north, while the small
earthwork defence around the Ribble bridge was quickly taken after some New Model Army marksmen
captured an area of high ground overlooking it. Many Scots were killed before they could cross the
bridge, but Hamilton managed to cross the river on horseback and joined the majority of his forces
on the south bank. With Cromwell now blocking the road back to Scotland, the exhausted royalists
could only continue on south, where reinforcements would hopefully reach them. Over the three
days following the battle, the Scots, forced to leave behind their ammunition, were harassed
constantly by Cromwell’s Ironsides until they reached Winwick. There, the Scottish infantry was
engaged and decimated by the veteran parliamentary footmen. Although the cavalry and leadership
managed to escape, what remained of Hamilton’s infantry surrendered on August 20th. At the
other end of the country, an infuriated Fairfax brought the rebels in famine and disease-stricken
Colchester to the negotiating table on the 27th. He was not in a merciful mood, and had Sir George
Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas, defiant royalists until the very end, executed for bringing such
unnecessary suffering onto the realm’s innocents. Charles I was still imprisoned at Carisbrooke,
but to the religious parliamentary soldiers their former king had unjustly brought strife back to
the land of England even after God's will had resulted in his defeat during the first war.
Therefore, Charles was guilty of disregarding the lord’s will and deserved no mercy. For this
crime against his own people, Charles was dubbed the ‘Man of Blood’ and many radicals began to
clamor for harsh punishment. A famous passage drawn from Numbers 35:33 in the King James
Bible started being echoed as an example. ‘So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye
are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed
therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. Although the suffering of Charles’ realms was far
from over, the king himself had run out of time. Our series on the English Civil Wars
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