warfare with him to prevent Argyll from overtaking his agile enemy, and ultimately after a “hide-and-seek” in the districts of Rothiemurchus, Blair Athol, Banchory and Strathbogie, Montrose stood to fight at Fyvie Castle, repulsed Argyll’s attack on that place and slipped away again to Rothiemurchus. There he was joined by Camerons and Macdonalds from all quarters for a grand raid on the Campbell country; he himself wished to march into the Lowlands, well knowing that he could not achieve the decision in the Grampians, but he had to bow, not for the first time nor the last, to local importunity. The raid was duly executed, and the Campbells’ boast, “It’s a far cry to Loch Awe,” availed them little. In December and January the Campbell lands were thoroughly and mercilessly devastated, and Montrose then retired slowly to Loch Ness, where the bulk of his army as usual dispersed to store away its plunder. Argyll, with such Highland and Lowland forces as he could collect after the disaster, followed Montrose towards Lochaber, while the Seaforths and other northern clans marched to Loch Ness. Caught between them, Montrose attacked the nearest. The Royalists crossed the hills into Glen Roy, worked thence along the northern face of Ben Nevis, and descended like an avalanche upon Argyll’s forces at Inverlochy (February 2, 1645). As usual, the Lowland regiments gave way at once—Montrose had managed in all this to keep with him a few cavalry—and it was then the turn of the Campbells. Argyll escaped in a boat, but his clan, as a fighting force, was practically annihilated, and Montrose, having won four victories in these six winter months, rested his men and exultingly promised Charles that he would come to his assistance with a brave army before the end of the summer.
27. Organization of the New Model Army.—To return to the New Model. Its first necessity was regular pay; its first duty to serve wherever it might be sent. Of the three armies that had fought at Newbury only one, Essex’s, was in a true sense a general service force, and only one, Manchester’s, was paid with any regularity. Waller’s army was no better paid than Essex’s and no more free from local ties than Manchester’s. It was therefore broken up early in April, and only 600 of its infantry passed into the New Model. Essex’s men, on the other hand, wanted but regular pay and strict officers to make them excellent soldiers, and their own major-general, Skippon, managed by tact and his personal popularity to persuade the bulk of the men to rejoin. Manchester’s army, in which Cromwell had been the guiding influence from first to last, was naturally the backbone of the New Model. Early in April Essex, Manchester, and Waller resigned their commissions, and such of their forces as were not embodied in the new army were sent to do local duties, for minor armies were still maintained, General Poyntz’s in the north midlands, General Massey’s in the Severn valley, a large force in the Eastern Association, General Browne’s in Buckinghamshire, &c., besides the Scots in the north.
The New Model originally consisted of 14,400 foot and 7700 horse and dragoons. Of the infantry only 6000 came from the combined armies, the rest being new recruits furnished by the press. [1] Thus there was considerable trouble during the first months of Fairfax’s command, and discipline had to be enforced with unusual sternness. As for the enemy, Oxford was openly contemptuous of “the rebels’ new brutish general” and his men, who seemed hardly likely to succeed where Essex and Waller had failed. But the effect of the Parliament’s having “an army all its own” was soon to be apparent.
28. First Operations of 1645.—On the Royalist side the campaign of 1645 opened in the west, whither the young prince of Wales (Charles II.) was sent with Hyde (later earl of Clarendon), Hopton and others as his advisers. General (Lord) Goring, however, now in command of the Royalist field forces in this quarter, was truculent, insubordinate and dissolute, though on the rare occasions when he did his duty he displayed a certain degree of skill and leadership, and the influence of the prince’s counsellors was but small. As usual, operations began with the sieges necessary to conciliate local feeling. Plymouth and Lyme were blocked up, and Taunton again invested. The reinforcement thrown into the last place by Waller and Cromwell was dismissed by Blake (then a colonel in command of the fortress and afterwards the great admiral of the Commonwealth), and after many adventures rejoined Waller and Cromwell. The latter generals, who had not yet laid down their commissions, then engaged Goring for some weeks, but neither side having infantry or artillery, and both finding subsistence difficult in February and March and in country that had been fought over for two years past, no results were to be expected. Taunton still remained unrelieved, and Goring’s horse still rode all over Dorsetshire when the New Model at last took the field.
29. Rupert’s Northern March.—In the midlands and Lancashire the Royalist horse, as ill-behaved even as Goring’s men, were directly responsible for the ignominious failure with which the king’s main army began its year’s work. Prince Maurice was joined at Ludlow by Rupert and part of his Oxford army early in March, and the brothers drove off Brereton from the siege of Beeston Castle and relieved the pressure on Lord Byron in Cheshire. So great was the danger of Rupert’s again invading Lancashire and Yorkshire that all available forces in the north, English and Scots, were ordered to march against him. But at this moment the prince was called back to clear his line of retreat on Oxford. The Herefordshire and Worcestershire peasantry, weary of military exactions, were in arms, and though they would not join the Parliament, and for the most part dispersed after stating their grievances, the main enterprise was wrecked. This was but one of many ill-armed crowds—“Clubmen” as they were called—that assembled to enforce peace on both parties. A few regular soldiers were sufficient to disperse them in all cases, but their attempt to establish a third party in England was morally as significant as it was materially futile. The Royalists were now fighting with the courage of despair, those who still fought against Charles did so with the full determination to ensure the triumph of their cause, and with the conviction that the only possible way was the annihilation of the enemy’s armed forces, but the majority were so weary of the war that the earl of Manchester’s Presbyterian royalism—which had contributed so materially to the prolongation of the struggle—would probably have been accepted by four-fifths of all England as the basis of a peace. It was, in fact, in the face of almost universal opposition that Fairfax and Cromwell and their friends at Westminster guided the cause of their weaker comrades to complete victory.
30. Cromwell’s Raid.—Having without difficulty rid himself of the Clubmen, Rupert was eager to resume his march into the north. It is unlikely that he wished to join Montrose, though Charles himself favoured that plan, but he certainly intended to fight the Scottish army, more especially as after Inverlochy it had been called upon to detach a large force to deal with Montrose. But this time there was no Royalist army in the north to provide infantry and guns for a pitched battle, and Rupert had perforce to wait near Hereford till the main body, and in particular the artillery train, could come from Oxford and join him. It was on the march of the artillery train to Hereford that the first operations of the New Model centred. The infantry was not yet ready to move, in spite of all Fairfax’s and Skippon’s efforts, and it became necessary to send the cavalry by itself to prevent Rupert from gaining a start. Cromwell, then under Waller’s command, had come to Windsor to resign his commission as required by the Self-denying Ordinance. Instead, he was placed at the head of a brigade of his own old soldiers, with orders to stop the march of the artillery train. On the 23rd of April he started from Watlington north-westward. At dawn on the 24th he routed a detachment of Royalist horse at Islip. On the same day, though he had no guns and only a few firearms in the whole force, he terrified the governor of Bletchingdon House into surrender. Riding thence to Witney, Cromwell won another cavalry fight at Bampton-in-the-Bush on the 27th, and attacked Faringdon House, though without success, on the
- ↑ The Puritans had by now disappeared almost entirely from the ranks of the infantry. Per contra the officers and sergeants and the troopers of the horse were the sternest Puritans of all, the survivors of three years of a disheartening war.
