by parts of Prince Maurice’s and Hopton’s armies—the Cornish levies had as usual scattered as soon as the war receded from their borders. Manchester slowly advanced to Reading, Essex gradually reorganized his broken army at Portsmouth, while Waller, far out to the west at Shaftesbury, endeavored to gain the necessary time and space for a general concentration in Wiltshire, where Charles would be far from Oxford and Basing and, in addition, outnumbered by two to one. But the work of rearming Essex’s troops proceeded slowly for want of money, and Manchester peevishly refused to be hurried either by his more vigorous subordinates or by the Committee of Both Kingdoms, saying that the army of the Eastern Association was for the guard of its own employers and not for general service. He pleaded the renewed activity of the Newark Royalists as his excuse, forgetting that Newark would have been in his hands ere this had he chosen to move thither instead of lying idle for two months. As to the higher command, things had come to such a pass that, when the three armies at last united, a council of war, consisting of three army commanders, several senior officers, and two civilian delegates from the Committee, was constituted. When the vote of the majority had determined what was to be done, Essex, as lord general of the Parliament’s first army, was to issue the necessary orders for the whole. Under such conditions it was not likely that Waller’s hopes of a great battle at Shaftesbury would be realized. On the 8th of October he fell back, the royal army following him step by step and finally reaching Whitchurch on the 20th of October. Manchester arrived at Basingstoke on the 17th, Waller on the 19th, and Essex on the 21st. Charles had found that he could not relieve Basing (a mile or two from Basingstoke) without risking a battle with the enemy between himself and Oxford;[1] he therefore took the Newbury road and relieved Donnington Castle near Newbury on the 22nd. Three days later Banbury too was relieved by a force which could now be spared from the Oxford garrison. But for once the council of war on the other side was for fighting a battle, and the Parliamentary armies, their spirits revived by the prospect of action and by the news of the fall of Newcastle and the defeat of a sally from Newark, marched briskly. On the 26th they appeared north of Newbury on the Oxford road. Like Essex in 1643, Charles found himself headed off from the shelter of friendly fortresses, but beyond this fact there is little similarity between the two battles of Newbury, for the Royalists in the first case merely drew a barrier across Essex’s path. On the present occasion the eager Parliamentarians made no attempt to force the king to attack them; they were well content to attack him in his chosen position themselves, especially as he was better off for supplies and quarters than they.
21. Second Newbury.—The second battle of Newbury is remarkable as being the first great manœuvre-battle (as distinct from “pitched” battle) of the Civil War. A preliminary reconnaissance by the Parliamentary leaders (Essex was not present, owing to illness) established the fact that the king’s infantry held a strong line of defence behind the Lambourn brook from Shaw (inclusive) to Donnington (exclusive), Shaw House and adjacent buildings being held as an advanced post. In rear of the centre, in open ground just north of Newbury, lay the bulk of the royal cavalry. In the left rear of the main line, and separated from it by more than a thousand yards, lay Prince Maurice’s corps at Speen, advanced troops on the high ground west of that village, but Donnington Castle, under its energetic governor Sir John Boys, formed a strong post covering this gap with artillery fire. The Parliamentary leaders had no intention of flinging their men away in a frontal attack on the line of the Lambourn, and a flank attack from the east side could hardly succeed owing to the obstacle presented by the confluence of the Lambourn and the Kennet, hence they decided on a wide turning movement via Chieveley, Winterbourne and Wickham Heath, against Prince Maurice’s position—a decision which, daring and energetic as it was, led only to a modified success, for reasons which will appear. The flank march, out of range of the castle, was conducted with punctuality and precision. The troops composing it were drawn from all three armies and led by the best fighting generals, Waller, Cromwell, and Essex’s subordinates Balfour and Skippon. Manchester at Clay Hill was to stand fast until the turning movement had developed, and to make a vigorous holding attack on Shaw House as soon as Waller’s guns were heard at Speen. But there was no commander-in-chief to co-ordinate the movements of the two widely separated corps, and consequently no co-operation. Waller’s attack was not unexpected, and Prince Maurice had made ready to meet him. Yet the first rush of the rebels carried the entrenchments of Speen Hill, and Speen itself, though stoutly defended, fell into their hands within an hour, Essex’s infantry recapturing here some of the guns they had had to surrender at Lostwithiel. But meantime Manchester, in spite of the entreaties of his staff, had not stirred from Clay Hill. He had made one false attack already early in the morning, and been severely handled, and he was aware of his own deficiencies as a general. A year before this he would have asked for and acted upon the advice of a capable soldier, such as Cromwell or Crawford, but now his mind was warped by a desire for peace on any terms, and he sought only to avoid defeat pending a happy solution of the quarrel. Those who sought to gain peace through victory were meanwhile driving Maurice back from hedge to hedge towards the open ground at Newbury, but every attempt to emerge from the lanes and fields was repulsed by the royal cavalry, and indeed by every available man and horse, for Charles’s officers had gauged Manchester’s intentions, and almost stripped the front of its defenders to stop Waller’s advance. Nightfall put an end to the struggle around Newbury, and then—too late—Manchester ordered the attack on Shaw House. It failed completely in spite of the gallantry of his men, and darkness being then complete it was not renewed. In its general course the battle closely resembled that of Freiburg (q.v.), fought the same year on the Rhine. But, if Waller’s part in the battle corresponded in a measure to Turenne’s, Manchester was unequal to playing the part of Condé, and consequently the results, in the case of the French won by three days’ hard fighting, and even then comparatively small, were in the case of the English practically nil. During the night the royal army quietly marched away through the gap between Waller’s and Manchester’s troops. The heavy artillery and stores were left in Donnington Castle, Charles himself with a small escort rode off to the north-west to meet Rupert, and the main body gained Wallingford unmolested. An attempt at pursuit was made by Waller and Cromwell with all the cavalry they could lay hands on, but it was unsupported, for the council of war had decided to content itself with besieging Donnington Castle. A little later, after a brief and half-hearted attempt to move towards Oxford, it referred to the Committee for further instructions. Within the month Charles, having joined Rupert at Oxford and made him general of the Royalist forces vice Brentford, reappeared in the neighbourhood of Newbury. Donnington Castle was again relieved (November 9) under the eyes of the Parliamentary army, which was in such a miserable condition that even Cromwell was against fighting, and some manœuvres followed, in the course of which Charles relieved Basing House and the Parliamentary armies fell back, not in the best order, to Reading. The season for field warfare was now far spent, and the royal army retired to enjoy good quarters and plentiful supplies around Oxford.
22. The Self-denying Ordinance.—On the other side, the dissensions between the generals had become flagrant and public, and it was no longer possible for the Houses of Parliament to ignore the fact that the army must be radically reformed. Cromwell and Waller from their places in parliament attacked Manchester’s conduct, and their attack ultimately became, so far as Cromwell was concerned, an attack on the Lords, most of whom held the same views as Manchester, and on the Scots, who attempted to bring Cromwell to trial as an “incendiary.” At the crisis of their bitter controversy Cromwell suddenly
- ↑ Charles’s policy was still, as before Marston Moor, to “spin out time” until Rupert came back from the north.
