Battle of Worcester

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Battle of Worcester
Battle of Worcester (published by Machell Stace, Westminster, 1810)
Battle of Worcester
(published by Machell Stace, Westminster, 1810)
date September 3, 1651
place Worcester , England
output Victory of the parliamentary troops
Parties to the conflict
EnglandEngland England
CommonwealthCommonwealth
Commander

Charles II of England

Oliver Cromwell

Troop strength
16,000 soldiers 28,000 soldiers
losses

3,000

a few hundreds

Battles and sieges of the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651) in Scotland

The Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651 in Worcester , England , was the final battle in the English Civil War .

The royalist armed forces of King Charles II (England) , who were loyal to the king and consisted mainly of Scots, were only about 16,000 men strong and were supported by around 28,000 soldiers in the newly formed army (" New Model Army ") of the English Parliament and his deputy and general Oliver Cromwell defeated.

Invasion of England

With the support of the Scots, the king tried to regain the throne he had lost when his father Charles I was executed in 1649. The Scottish commander, Sir David Leslie , favored the plan to fight in Scotland , where support for the royalists was strongest. However, Charles II insisted on waging the war in England . He reckoned that the Cromwell campaign north of the River Forth would enable essential parts of the royalist army south of it to race to London first. He hoped not only that the old, loyal royalists would join him on this march, but also the outnumbered English Presbyterians . He assumed that his alliance with the Scottish Presbyterians, the so-called Covenanters , and the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant Declaration would encourage the English Presbyterians to support him in the fight against the English Independents that have been taking part in recent years Had gained power. The royalist army was well established and organized. No encroachments and excesses were allowed, and within a week the royalists covered 150 miles, in contrast to the failed campaign of 1648. On August 8, the Army took a well-deserved break between Penrith and Kendal .

But the royalists mistakenly assumed that the enemy would be surprised by their new field movement. Cromwell and the State Council saw through the plan, however. The latter called up large sections of the militia. Lieutenant General Charles Fleetwood pulled the Midland contingents together at Banbury . The battle-hardened militia from London was at least 14,000 strong. Every suspected royalist was closely guarded, and the weapons stores in the country houses of the landed gentry were turned into fortified places. Cromwell had made preparations for his part. Perth fell into his hands on August 2nd, and he led his army back to Leith on August 5th . He sent Lieutenant General John Lambert with a cavalry force to engage the invading royalists in battle. Major General Thomas Harrison was already standing by in Newcastle and had the best-equipped land troops added to his regular armed forces. On August 9, Charles II reached Kendal . Lambert was hot on his heels, and Harrison hurried to Merseyside to block his path. Thomas Fairfax was reactivated from retirement to lead the troops raised in Yorkshire and the best of them, such as the Lancashire , Cheshire and Staffordshire militias , marched on Warrington , which Harrison on August 15 still a few hours before the vanguard of Charles II. reached. Lambert swung into the enemy's left flank and joined Harrison. The English troops withdrew slowly along the London Straits on August 16 without engaging in fighting.

The Worcester Campaign

Oliver Cromwell

Meanwhile, Cromwell left George Monck with the regiments to carry the war to Scotland, reached the River Tyne in seven days, then marched 20 miles a day in extreme heat, with the local rural population having to carry their weapons and equipment. He reached Ferrybridge on August 19th, the same day Lambert, Harrison, and the Northwest Militia were across Congleton . It seems likely that the great battle between Lichfield and Coventry took place immediately after August 25th, and that Cromwell, Harrison, Lambert and Fleetwood would have participated if the time and place had not been changed by enemy movements. Shortly after Warrington had left him, the young king decided to give up the direct march on London and set out for the Severn Valley, where his father had found most and most enduring supporters in the First War and which was the center of the English royalist movement of 1648. Sir Edward Massey , former parliamentary governor of Gloucester , was now on Charles II's side and was expected to have his subordinate Presbyterians called to arms. The military fortifications of the Welsh border were scrutinized by royalists as much as the equipment of the Presbyterians in Gloucestershire, and just as his father relied on Oxford , Charles II relied on Gloucester and Worcester and hoped, not entirely unrealistically, to be more effective with the minority of the Independents to come to an agreement as Charles I did with the people of England with a parliamentary majority in his back. But even pure royalism prevailing in the invading army could not hide the fact that it was a Scottish army, and not a splinter group of Independents , against which all of England took up arms.

Karl arrived in Worcester on August 22nd and spent five days letting his troops recover, prepare for the upcoming fighting, and gather and arm some recruits. Needless to say, the interruption was fatal; it was a necessity, given by the circumstances, and accepted when the march to Worcester was decided. In a march on London via Lichfield the battle would have been only three days earlier, but would have taken a similar course.

Cromwell, the Lord General, had successfully sent two columns ahead on his march south under Colonel Robert Lilburne to negotiate with the royalists in Lancashire under James Stanley , 7th Earl of Derby. Lilburne managed to take command of the Lancashire forces that were on their way to ally with the main Royalist army at the Battle of Wigan Lane on August 25th. When the successful coup came out, Cromwell relocated his troop concentrations two days' march southwest to Evesham . Early on the morning of August 28th, Lambert at Upton surprised the Royalists at the Severn River, ten kilometers below Worcester, and Massey was seriously injured in the action that followed. Fleetwood also followed Lambert. The enemy now had only an army of 16,000 men, discouraged by apathy. Cromwell had a numerical 2: 1 superiority for the first and last time in his military career.

On August 30, Cromwell delayed the start of the battle, wanting to wait for the completion of two pontoon bridges over the Severn and Teme rivers near their confluence. The delay allowed Cromwell to reschedule his attack on September 3rd, exactly one year to the day after his victory at the Battle of Dunbar.

The battle

Cromwell took his measures carefully. Lilburne of Lancashire and Major Mercer with the Worcestershire horses secured the bridge at Bewdley and the enemy line of retreat. Fleetwood was to fight its way across the Teme River and attack St. John - a western suburb of Worcester. While Lambert led the eastern flank of the army, which should approach and enclose the eastern walls of Worcester, Cromwell would lead the attack at the southern ramparts of the city.

The attack was scheduled for the morning of September 3, and the initiative should lie with the parliamentarians right from the start. Fleetwood forced a passage over the Teme by means of pontoon bridges and under constant attacks from the royalists under the leadership of General Montgomery. Colonel Richard Dean initially attempted to cross the Powick Bridge, where Prince Ruprecht of the Palatinate won his first victory in the Battle of the Powick Bridge in 1642, but failed due to stubborn resistance from the Royalists, many of whom were die-hard Scottish Highlanders who were led by Colonel Keith. By armed force and numerical superiority, the royalist army was pushed back to the east bank of the Severn by the New Model Army under Cromwell. Fleetwood to the west hurried in a semicircle up to four miles toward Worcester.

The royalists defended every hedge on Powick Meadow, and this stubborn resistance on the western bank of the Servers and north of the Teme became a serious problem for the parliamentary forces, so Cromwell sent reinforcements from the eastern side of the city over the Severn pontoon bridges to order To help Fleetwood. Charles II, from his vantage point on the tower of Worcester Cathedral, took an opportunity to attack the bared and weakened eastern flank of the parliamentary army. When the defenders on the west side of the city drew back into the city in an orderly fashion (although during that maneuver Keith was captured and Montgomery was badly wounded), Charles II ordered two sorties to attack the parliamentary forces to the east of the city. The northeastern dropout through St. Martin's Gate was led by William Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Hamilton , and attacked the parliamentary lines at Perry Wood. The southeastern strike through Sidbury Tor was personally directed by Charles II and attacked Red Hill. The royalist cavalry, under the command of David Leslie, assembled on Pitchcroft Meadow on the north side of town, was not ordered to support the sabotages and Leslie did not choose that option when it was left to his initiative. Cromwell saw the difficulty that his east flank was sinking, and hurried three brigades back over Severn pontoon bridges to reinforce the flank.

Charles II of England
painting by Peter Lely

Though pushed back, Lambert's MPs were too numerous and too experienced to be defeated by such a maneuver, and after an hour of initially pulling back under the pressure of the unexpected attack, they caught Cromwell's reinforcements now to push the royalists back into the city.

The retreat of the royalists soon turned into a mixed bag of fighting, in which parliamentarians and royalists were difficult to distinguish from one another and which pushed into and into the city. The position of the royalists became all the more untenable when the Essex militia rushed in and captured Fort Royal - a fort on a hill southeast of Worcester from which one could watch Sidbury Gate - and the royalist cannons were turned and on Worcester fired.

The city's defenses were stormed from three different directions as darkness fell, regular and militia forces fought with equal skill and the few thousands of royalists who escaped during the night were quickly captured by Lilburne and Mercer or the militia monitoring every street in Yorkshire and Lancashire . The rural population was stunned by the number of prisoners and the sudden disaster and did not offer any resistance.

Aftermath

One of Charles II's hiding places - Moseley Old Hall

Charles II managed to escape in several adventures. For example, he is said to have hidden from a parliamentary patrol on a Royal Oak that was on the property of the Boscobel House. Charles was one of the few people in his army who managed to get to a safe place. Over 3,000 soldiers died in the battle and another 10,000 were captured in Worcester. Most of them were captured shortly after they escaped. The Earl of Derby was executed while the other English prisoners were conscripted into the New Model Army and sent to Ireland. Over 8,000 Scots were deported to New England , Bermuda and the West Indies to work as slave labor for landowners. The parliamentary losses amounted to a few hundred.

After the battle, Cromwell returned to Aylesbury , Buckinghamshire ; one of the parliamentary strongholds and near the seat of his recently deceased cousin: the civil war hero John Hampden . He stayed at an inn appropriately named The King's Head in Aylesbury, and it was there that he received the thanks of Parliament for the final victory over the royalists.

Within a week the parliamentary militia were sent home. Cromwell, who had mocked such rabble six months ago , had got to know her better now. “Your newly raised armed forces” , he wrote to the rump parliament, “did an excellent job for which they deserve a very high level of respect and recognition” . Worcester was beaten to arms by a nation , by bourgeois soldiers, who put their hearts into battle that could be relied on not only in the heaviest of battles but also in long marches. It was only thanks to such troops that a general could afford to have half of his army fighting on either side of a river or to send parts of his troops away before the fruits of victory were harvested, all with the certainty that with the the remainder to carry away the victory. The sense of duty which the bourgeois militia possessed to such a high degree guaranteed the formation and execution of every column at the appointed time and place. The result, in summary, was one of the rare victories in which pursuit was as unnecessary as "the grace of the crown," as Cromwell put it.

legacy

In early April 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited Fort Royal Hill on the former Worcester battlefield. David McCullough wrote in his authoritative biography John Adams that Adams was deeply moved , but disappointed by the lack of knowledge of this battle among the local residents, as it set a cautionary example to the people of that city :

“The people in the neighborhood seemed so ignorant and careless about Worcester that I felt provoked and asked, 'Are the English so quickly forgetting the ground on which freedom was fought? Tell your neighbors and children that this is holy ground, holier than what your churches stand on. All of England should make a pilgrimage to this hill once a year. "

- President John Adams on Oliver Cromwell

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Trevor Royal References, page 600
  2. Jump up ↑ Battle of Worcester - surprise attack BBC website
  3. ↑ Battle of Worcester - Cromwell's Interventions (1)
  4. ^ A b Battle of Worcester - Charles Interventions BBC website
  5. ^ A b Battle of Worcester - Cromwell's Interventions (2) BBC website
  6. ↑ Fort Royal Hill, where freedom was fought
  7. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: Great Rebellion
  8. ↑ Trever Royal References, page 602.

literature

Web links

Commons : Battle of Worcester  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files