Battle of Worcester

The Battle of Worcester was the final battle of the English Civil War. Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians defeated the Royalist, predominantly Scottish, forces of King Charles II on September 3, 1651 at Worcester, England. The 16,000 Royalist forces were overwhelmed by the 28,000 strong "New Model Army" of Cromwell.

Invasion of England

The king was aided by Scottish allies and was attempting to regain the throne that had been lost when his father Charles I was executed. The commander of the Scots, Sir David Leslie, supported the plan of fighting in Scotland, where royal support was strongest. Charles, however, insisted on making war in England. He calculated that Cromwell's campaign north of the River Forth would allow the main Scottish Royalist army which was south of the Forth to steal the march on the Roundhead New Model Army in a race to London. He hoped, to rally not merely the old faithful Royalists, but also the overwhelming numerical strength of the English Presbyterians to his standard. He calculated that his alliance with the Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters and his signing of the Solemn League and Covenant would encourage English Presbyterians to support him against the English Independent faction which had grown in power over the last few years. The Royalist army was kept well in hand, no excesses were allowed, and in a week the Royalists covered 150 miles in marked contrast to the duke of Hamilton's ill-fated expedition of 1648. On August 8, the troops were given a well-earned rest between Penrith and Kendal.

But the Royalists were mistaken in supposing that the enemy was taken aback by their new move. Everything had been foreseen both by Cromwell and by the Council of State in Westminster. The latter had called out the greater part of the militia on August 7. Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood began to draw together the midland contingents at Banbury, the London trained bands turned out for field service no fewer than 14,000 strong. Every suspected Royalist was closely watched, and the magazines of arms in the country-houses of the gentry were for the most part removed into the strong places. On his part Cromwell had quietly made his preparations. Perth passed into his hands on August 2, and he brought back his army to Leith by August 5. Thence he despatched Lieutenant-General John Lambert with a cavalry corps to harass the invaders. Major-General Thomas Harrison was already at Newcastle picking the best of the county mounted-troops to add to his own regulars. On August 9, Charles was at Kendal, Lambert hovering in his rear, and Harrison marching swiftly to bar his way at the Mersey. Thomas Fairfax emerged for a moment from his retirement to organize the Yorkshire levies, and the best of these as well as of the Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire militias were directed upon Warrington, which Harrison reached on August 15, a few hours in front of Charles's advanced guard. Lambert too, slipping round the left flank of the enemy, joined Harrison, and the English fell back (August 16), slowly and without letting themselves be drawn into a fight, along the London road.

The Worcester campaign

Cromwell meanwhile, leaving George Monck with the least efficient regiments to carry on the war in Scotland, had reached the river Tyne in seven days, and thence, marching 20 miles a day in extreme heat with the country people carrying their arms and equipment the regulars entered Ferrybridge on the August 19, at which date Lambert, Harrison and the north-western militia were about Congleton. It seemed probable that a great battle would take place between Lichfield and Coventry on or just after August 25, and that Cromwell, Harrison, Lambert and Fleetwood would all take part in it. But the scene and the date of the denouement were changed by the enemy's movements. Shortly after leaving Warrington the young king had resolved to abandon the direct march on London and to make for the Severn valley, where his father had found the most constant and the most numerous adherents in the first war, and which had been the centre of gravity of the English Royalist movement of 1648. Sir Edward Massey, formerly the Parliamentary governor of Gloucester, was now with Charles, and it was hoped that he would induce his fellow Presbyterians to take arms. The military quality of the Welsh border Royalists was well proved, that of the Gloucestershire Presbyterians not less so, and, based on Gloucester and Worcester as his father had been based on Oxford, Charles II. hoped, not unnaturally, to deal with an Independent minority more effectually than Charles I. had done with a Parliamentary majority of the people of England. But even the pure Royalism which now ruled in the invading army could not alter the fact that it was a Scottish army, and it was not an Independent faction but all England that took arms against it.

Charles arrived at Worcester on August 22, and spent five days in resting the troops, preparing for further operations, and gathering and arming the few recruits who came in. It is unnecessary to argue that the delay was fatal; it was a necessity of the case foreseen and accepted when the march to Worcester had been decided upon, and had the other course, that of marching on London via Lichfield, been taken the battle would have been fought three days earlier with the same result.

Cromwell, the lord general, had during his march south thrown out successively two flying columns under Colonel Robert Lilburne to deal with the Lancashire Royalists under the Earl of Derby. Lilburne entirely routed an Lancashire detachment of enemy on their way to join the main Royalist army at the Battle of Wigan Lane on August 25 and as affairs turned out Cromwell merely shifted the area of his concentration two marches to the south-west, to Evesham. Early on the August 28, Lambert surprised the passage of the Severn at Upton, 6 miles below Worcester, and in the action which followed Massey was severely wounded. Fleetwood followed Lambert. The enemy was now only 16,000 strong and disheartened by the apathy with which they had been received in districts formerly all their own. Cromwell, for the first and last time in his military career, had a two-to-one numerical superiority.

The battle

Cromwell took his measures deliberately. Lilburne from Lancashire and Major Mercer with the Worcestershire horse were to secure Bewdley bridge on the enemy's line of retreat. Lambert and Fleetwood were to force their way across the Teme (a little river on which Prince Rupert of the Rhine had won his first victory in 1642) and attack St John's, the western suburb of Worcester.

Cromwell himself and the main army were to attack the town itself. On September 3, the anniversary of the Battle of Dunbar, the programme was carried out exactly. Fleetwood forced the passage of the Teme, and the bridging train (which had been carefully organized for the purpose) bridged both the Teme and the Severn. Then Cromwell on the left bank and Fleetwood on the right swept in a semicircle 4 miles long up to Worcester. Every hedgerow was contested by the stubborn Royalists, but Fleetwood's men would not be denied, and Cromwell's extreme right on the eastern side of the town repelled, after three hours of hard fighting, the last desperate attempt of the Royalists to break out.

The defences of the city were stormed from different directions as darkness came on, regulars and militia fighting with equal gallantry and the few thousands of the Royalists who escaped during the night were easily captured by Lilburne and Mercer, or by the militia which watched every road in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Even the country people brought in scores of prisoners, for officers and men alike, stunned by the suddenness of the disaster, offered no resistance.

Charles II escaped after many adventures, including one famous incident where he hid from a Parliamentarian patrol in an oak tree in the grounds of Boscobel House. Charles was one of the few men in his army who regained a place of safety, of those who were not killed most were captured. Eight thousand were deported to the West Indies to work on plantations as indentured labours.

After the battle, Cromwell returned to Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire; one of the parliamentarian strongholds and close to the seat of his late cousin; the civil war hero John Hampden. He stayed at the aptly named King's Head Inn, Aylesbury and it was here that he received the thanks of parliament for his final defeat of the royalists.

The Parliamentary militia were sent home within a week. Cromwell, who had ridiculed "such stuff" six months ago, knew them better now. "Your new raised forces," he wrote to the Rump Parliament, "did perform singular good service, for which they deserve a very high estimation and acknowledgment." Worcester was fought by a "nation in arms," by citizen soldiers who had their hearts in the struggle, and could be trusted not only to fight their hardest but to march their best. Only with such troops would a general dare to place a deep river between the two halves of his army or to send away detachments beforehand to reap the fruits of victory, in certain anticipation of winning the victory with the remainder. The sense of duty, which the raw militia possessed in so high a degree, ensured the arrival and the action of every column at the appointed time and place. The result was, in brief, one of those rare victories in which a pursuit is superfluous a "crowning mercy," as Cromwell called it.

Legacy

In early April 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited Fort Royal Hill at the battlefield at Worcester. David McCullough wrote in his definitive biography John Adams that Adams was "deeply moved" but disappointed at the locals' lack of knowledge of the battle, giving the townspeople an "impromptu lecture":

''The people in the neighborhood appeared so ignorant and careless at Worcester that I was provoked and asked 'And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for? Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill, once a year." ^*

References

based on the article GREAT REBELLION.

External links

Battle of Worcester - timeline
Battleground pictures
Worcestershire CC: Historic Environment and Archaeology Service: The Battle of Worcester
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/1651-worcester.htm
http://www.clangarra.com/battle%20-%20worcester.htm

History of Worcestershire | Worcester | Battles of the English Civil Wars

Bataille de Worcester | Slaget ved Worcester | Битва при Вустере