Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, had called them to the knoll on his return from the tattered enclosures around Long Marston village, where he had discovered the fate of his right wing at first hand. He kept a flask of whisky in his saddle and reached for it, his craving suddenly as potent as the liquid itself, but found it already drained, though he barely remembered putting it to his lips.

  Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, was staring hard at him, his face seeming to be more deeply lined than before. ‘What of my horse?’

  ‘Routed.’

  Fairfax swallowed, his bottom lip quivering a touch. ‘My sons?’

  ‘Dead, most likely,’ Leven answered, unable to find gentle words in a moment of such horror. He shook his head. ‘It is chaos. Carnage.’

  The Earl of Manchester had been staring at the cloud-smothered battle, eyes narrowed to slits as he discerned units in the roiling fog. ‘My horse hold the left. They reform even now.’

  ‘But Cromwell is wounded,’ Leven said. ‘His men will not perform as well without him.’

  ‘And the centre is c-crumbling as we speak,’ Lord Fairfax stammered. ‘The King’s horse wheel off the flank to threaten what remains of our foot.’ He snatched off his hat to run quivering fingers through lank, snowy hair. ‘Jesu, help us. We must flee. For God’s sake, my lords, we must flee!’

  Muttering voices carried to them like the sudden flutter of wings, and a gaggle of worried-looking aides reined in. They had been at the edge of the ridge, perched above the butchery, and now they alighted to add their voices

  Leven waved them away. ‘Begone, fellows! This discourse is not for your flapping ears!’

  The aides exchanged looks. One let his mount edge out a step. ‘But my lord, Leven—’

  ‘Speak quickly.’

  ‘The enemy.’ The aide pointed to the eastern fringe of the ridge, a few hundred yards distant. There were horsemen on that high ground, and they wore no white in their hats. Indeed, the few who donned scarves bore material of richest red.

  ‘Jesu,’ Lord Fairfax whispered. ‘My Jesu, they have reached the summit.’

  Leven searched for his bodyguard troop, finding them already spurring to intercept the invaders, and sucked hard at his sandy-grey moustache. ‘Goring’s horse. They who routed Ferdinando’s son.’ He glanced at Fairfax. ‘We must be away.’

  One of his Scottish squires nodded violently. ‘To Bradford, my lord, or Leeds.’

  ‘Do not be so craven, man,’ Manchester snarled angrily.

  Fairfax made a clicking sound with his tongue and his horse moved away. ‘I go to Cawood. Write to me there when the mist has cleared.’

  Leven sighed, utterly deflated. He looked back at the interloping Cavaliers. They were like a shiver of ravenous sharks tearing at the carcass of the greatest army assembled for a century. His troop had waylaid them, for the skirmish raged amongst the gorse thickets furring that section of the crest. ‘Let us depart this place before we are taken.’

  Manchester’s face tightened. ‘You cannot—’

  ‘Cromwell is dire hurt on the left,’ Leven cut him off tersely. ‘Sir Thomas is routed on the right. Goring’s horse bear down on our persons even now, his second line close upon our infantry, which looks likely to break at any moment.’ He wrenched at the reins, the beast whinnying as its head snapped round. ‘All is lost, sirs. We must ride from this place while we have breath in our lungs!’

  Manchester looked likely to demur, but then, as he regarded the enemy cavalry so close at hand, his rigid face began to sag. ‘My God,’ he whispered, ‘how have we arrived at this?’ He looked again at the battlefield, shrouded in smoke and littered with debris, and Leven saw moisture glisten in his eyes. He wiped them with his sleeve. ‘Very well, my lords, let us abandon Marston Moor. Let the Devil have it.’

  Sir Thomas Fairfax nodded to the Cavalier horsemen.

  He was riding through their massed ranks, leaving the wreckage of his shattered wing behind and passing between the bristling enemy troops that thronged the eastern side of the moor. His poor brother had been right. Sir Charles Lucas, George Goring’s second in command, had evidently not been employed during the destruction of the rebel horse, for his men were drawn up in organized lines and ready to enter the fray. Thus, Sir Thomas found himself in the midst of his enemies, his pistol-shot mount loping uneasily under enemy cornets while he sat as confidently as he could in the saddle. His heart raced, his jaw ached with the tension of the moment, but still he carried on. He had replaced his helmet for protection and to hide a face that, despite its grievous wound, may yet prove recognizable, but had removed his tawny scarf and the scrap of paper that marked him as Parliamentarian. That was all. A simple enough thing, but with the field sign gone, he was just another man among thousands.

  ‘God and the King!’ he called to a harquebusier who seemed to take more than a passing interest in his presence. ‘God and the King!’

  The inquisitive rider let his gaze linger for another second, then nodded, turning his snorting mare away, and Sir Thomas let out a breath. And then he was away, the expanse of the moor opening up to his left clouded in thick, scudding smoke and clogged with men and horses, flame and death. Phalanxes of pike met, joined, pushed and retired, leaving their friends behind, skewered and sobbing, while files of musketeers engaged in private duels, pouring hellfire into the packed rows of enemy units, each desperately trying to force a break in the opposite formation. To his right was Wilstrop Wood, the northern limit of the moor. He remembered seeing the Royalist cavalry reserve waiting there, but they were no longer there, and he wondered to what purpose. Did they destroy Cromwell’s flank even now?

  Behind, to the discordant song of trumpet shrieks and the colourful swirl of circling flags, the Royalist cavalry line, through which Sir Thomas had miraculously slipped, began to move. It swarmed south and west, the crumbling remains of the Allied infantry brigades its inevitable target. But Sir Thomas Fairfax did not care. Not yet. He went instead to find Oliver Cromwell, if the man still lived.

  The second line of the Royalist left-wing horse had been forced to wait. The men had watched their comrades – Goring’s favourite regiments under Frescheville, Langdale and Eyre – deliver a shattering charge, annihilating the Fairfax horse and opening up the entire flank, and they had felt jealous, impotent, denied the chance for glory on a day that slid inexorably into the Crown’s vengeful lap. Yet Goring had led his horde south, over the ditch, over the road and up on to the ridge, the temptation to plunder the rebel baggage train a siren song impossible to ignore, and that had left the field open for their covetous comrades.

  Now, as sunlight finally faded from the butchery, they injected their own thunder into the day as they crossed the ditch. In front lay the wide expanse of the moor. On the extreme right of the Allied front line, a brigade of two blue-bonneted regiments held their position. They had retired in good order to the south of the ditch, a feat impressive in itself, and now deployed in broad lines to present a wide front of fire in the face of their advancing Royalist counterparts. They were out on a limb, the adjacent brigades disintegrating around them, and devoid of cavalry support. Easy prey.

  Sir Charles Lucas, thirty-year-old hero of Powick Bridge and Padbury, was encased in armour that was enamelled in black, riveted in gold, and scarved in scarlet. He knew that his attire made him conspicuous, and, though it rendered him a target, it would guarantee him fame when the victory was secured. None could mistake who led the decisive charge.

  And so he grinned as he raised his sword – an exquisite Milanese artwork with engraved fuller and patterned shell guard – and he laughed when he looked along the line to observe the knee-to-knee formation that would take his fresh division into battle, and he crowed like a demon when he kicked into the gallop.

  Lucas knew how to lead a charge, and knew that, above all, success was a matter of form and discipline. To hack pell-mell at a body of foot meant to collide with them in disorder, where gaps meant weakness. Weakness was
a disease, insidious and undermining. A good leader of cavalry took his troopers across the battlefield at a canter, loosing the first volley – be it pistol or carbine – when the target was close at hand, and then spurring into the gallop at the very last moment. That way the line would be preserved, the gaps kept firmly shut, and the infantry, facing a solid wall of steel and horse, could do nothing but run. At this point the real killing would begin, for broken infantry were easy pickings, their spines and skulls exposed to swords, and to second pistol shots kept back for just such a moment. Yet now speed was paramount, because he knew that the blue and white banners of the king’s northern dominion would soon sway to the beat of a fresh drum. A beat that would call them together, moving them out of line and into a pike-fringed ring, a hedgehog, that would be fiendishly difficult for cavalry to break. The musketeers – hitherto so fatally exposed – would hide behind those great spines, firing from within, and Lucas’s riders would be forced to swerve away, all the while cresting a wave of lead that threatened to drown them in their own blood.

  That was why Sir Charles Lucas clawed his spurs deep, and screamed. He filled his lungs with bitter air and shouted at the moody skies, and his men added their voices as they seared over terrain scattered with dented steel and ruined flesh.

  They slammed home. A shiver went through the Scots brigade, like a ripple in a pond, and the entire body shunted back a step. The horsemen were amongst them, hacking and slashing, the front hooves of so many powerful warhorses rearing and stamping, teeth huge and white as they snapped at the faces of the outermost musketeers. A groan swept through the ranks, one of fear, pure and unconcealed, and the exposed soldiers shied away, pushing in on the pikemen arrayed at the centre of their human diamond, protection their only concern.

  The pikes did their duty. They should not have done, for the great clattering stand of ash staves was surrounded by muskets, the brigade’s hard centre covered by a soft shell, and yet Lucas could already see them pushing their way out to the fringes. His horsemen had penetrated the formation, as he had expected, but they had not punched deeply enough. The Scots had not broken, they had failed to run, and the pikemen were coming, filtering out through the press of desperate musketeers to thrust their spiked shafts into the faces of horse and rider alike. Lucas was at the corner of the diamond. He screamed for his men to stay steady, to cleave a way through so that the enemy would finally shatter, but from up in his saddle he could see well enough the inertia that had stricken his charge. They were stuck, clogged amongst the dense Scottish block, unable to tunnel deeper into the files of musketeers for fear of the pikes that had somehow been brought to bear above the heads of the vulnerable outer ranks.

  He called the retreat. They were not beaten, but nor could they achieve the rout he desired, at least not at this first attempt, and so they would regroup, catch breath and load pistols, and then they would charge again. Once more, and the Scots would crumble, then the rest of the Allied centre would dissolve, and the day would be won. Just once more.

  The Earl of Crawford-Lindsay was quite aware that the darkening evening would turn upon him. There had been four Covenanter regiments in the front line, brigaded in pairs and commanded by Lieutenant-General Baillie. But one brigade had gone, and Baillie had been swept up in that disaster, leaving only the Fifeshire and Midlothian regiments to stop the rot. Crawford-Lindsay led the isolated brigade, and he had cowered with the rest as the Cavalier charge had collided with his right flank, but now they were gone, wheeling back to reform, and it was time to show them what the Army of the Covenant could do. His officers moved, in saddle and on foot, amongst the clusters of blue bonnets, their blades exposed, glassy with rain, screaming the order Lindsay did not have to utter. It was the only order they could possibly give.

  The brigade charged for horse. It was an astonishing thing to witness, for the shifting of almost fifteen hundred men, blinded by smoke and dusk, into any kind of coherent formation was difficult in the extreme. And all the while they were harassed by enemy fire from the far side of the ditch. Yet the manoeuvre, lumbering and chaotic though it was, came to pass in the time it took for Lucas’s cavalry to draw themselves back into a solid line some hundred paces to the east. Lindsay watched in awe as his pikemen – the biggest and strongest members of a regiment – continued their outward momentum, forming up in a wide ring two ranks deep while the rest went to the centre. The outlying pikes were angled up, butt ends wedged into the instep of the bearer’s rear foot, while the second rank interlocked behind, plugging the gaps between the men in front to form a solid wall of Hodden grey and plaid, charging their great spears horizontally. The result was a spiny ring, the hedgehog, and he placed himself at the creature’s heart, where the banners of two regiments clustered like blue and yellow trees. The earl was a strict Presbyterian, and he did not believe in saints. Yet there were more flags flying the saltire of Saint Andrew than any other, and those proud crosses pricked the haze, their white slashes lurid in the oppressive vapour. He had never felt so proud.

  The Royalists surged into a new charge. They must have known, as Lindsay knew, that if they could break the stubborn brigade, the rest of the Allied infantry would be fatally exposed, and so they came at the gallop, slashing madly at their steeds, their war-cries shrill and piercing.

  But the Scots were good. The muskets gathered within the hedgehog were deployed behind the pikes, forming a third rank, their weapons trained between the heads of the men in front. The men on the north face, opposite the ditch, fired upon the infantry looking to cross, while those on the eastern side looked to halt the charge. At this distance they aimed low, targeting the horses, which were easier to hit than the men bobbing above, and they poured their rage into the Cavalier line, causing fractures to open as the first enemy riders fell. The musketeers retired to reload, replaced, man for man, by their waiting comrades, but this time they changed their tactic. The Scots knew that a heavy destrier killed at close range would keep going, would stumble and tumble and then slide in the mud, and the sheer momentum of the huge form would take it straight through the outer ranks of the pike ring, holing it as sure as any cannon ball. So the blue-capped musketeers lifted their muzzles as the Royalist horsemen drew closer, picking at the bodies and faces of the riders themselves in the hope that, without the commands, a horse would veer away from the pike points.

  The second volley ripped through Lucas’s harquebusiers, tearing their line to pieces, but still they came on, just yards from the braced ring. The musketeers revolved again, more coming up to the kill, but this third volley was not commanded to wait. They let loose, firing at will as the Royalist horsemen reached the steel hedge. Faces of men and horses leered through the powder smoke, glowering apparitions looming above the pike points, and the outermost pikemen cringed under the expected impact. But none came. The horses veered away at the last moment, frightened by the crackling shots and unwilling to leap so lethal a fence. The enemy swirled around the flame-lit circle, in and out of the skeining mist, slapping at the pikes with swords and shooting down into the thickly arrayed bodies with their pistols. But the men of Fife and Midlothian did not give way. They took the punishment with challenges of their own, the saltires swept high and defiant in the stinking fog, and the Royalists could find no chink in their armour. Somehow, miraculously, the Allied front line, teetering on the brink of oblivion, managed to cling on.

  Oliver Cromwell read his soldiers’ pocket Bible as the chirurgeon tied off the dressing. The bandage was thick, winding thrice round his neck, but the pain had ebbed and the bleeding was staunched. The lieutenant-general’s survival was nothing short of the will of God.

  ‘You will not be able to fasten your collar,’ the chirurgeon said, standing back to admire his work, ‘nor hang a gorget at your throat.’

  ‘No matter.’ Cromwell closed the pamphlet and kissed the cover, putting it into its pocket beside his heart. He stood and gathered up the rest of his clothes. ‘If King Jesus had wanted me dead, it wo
uld be so. I am to live, it is ordained.’

  The crows-feet at the chirurgeon’s eyes deepened. ‘You must rest now, sir.’ He wiped crimson palms on the crusty apron that stretched tight across his belly. ‘The blade cut is deep.’

  ‘Did you not hear me, sirrah?’ Cromwell snapped. He looked around the room. They were in Tockwith, in the home of an evicted Royalist. It was a substantial building, with a great parlour in which the floor space had been draped with sheets, and it was on those sheets that the wounded from the fight below Bilton Bream were tended. The lieutenant-general stepped over a prone body and made for the door. He stepped by a large hearth, noticing the kettle and skillet had been thrust aside, their places in the lambent flames taken by a sawbones’ tools. He stifled a shudder, thanking God for His deliverance from such torture. ‘Where is my horse? My armour?’

  ‘General,’ the chirurgeon bleated as he pushed open the door, ‘you will reopen that wound if you take no care of it. I must protest.’

  The air stank of sulphur. It was not yet dark, but the dusk was gathering apace. He turned back. ‘No, fellow, you must not. God preserves my life for His purpose.’ He stalked from the house, spotting the huge black destrier waiting across the street. ‘Ah, Blackjack, my old friend,’ he said, crossing quickly and taking the reins from a trooper. He leaned into the beast’s ear. ‘We are to fight again this evening. Praise God for your loyalty, old boy, for it is cherished.’

  ‘General Cromwell, sir,’ a trooper greeted him. The man had been invalided from the fight by a smashed ankle.

  Cromwell nodded. ‘My plate, my weapons.’

  The trooper pointed at a bulging sack. ‘Clean and ready for you, sir.’

  ‘You have my thanks. In what manner will I discover my men?’

  ‘They hold the left flank, sir.’

  Cromwell frowned. ‘Hold? They have not attacked Byron again?’