national spirit of England in the great final campaign of the war. Meanwhile the motto frappez fort, frappez vite was carried out at once by the regular forces. On the 19th of July 1650 Cromwell made the final arrangements at Berwick-on-Tweed. Major-General Harrison, a gallant soldier and an extreme Independent, was to command the regular and auxiliary forces left in England, and to secure the Commonwealth against Royalists and Presbyterians. Cromwell took with him Fleetwood as lieutenant-general and Lambert as major-general, and his forces numbered about 10,000 foot and 5000 horse. His opponent David Leslie (his comrade of Marston Moor) had a much larger force, but its degree of training was inferior, it was more than tainted by the political dissensions of the people at large, and it was, in great part at any rate, raised by forced enlistment. On the 22nd of July Cromwell crossed the Tweed. He marched on Edinburgh by the sea coast, through Dunbar, Haddington and Musselburgh, living almost entirely on supplies landed by the fleet which accompanied him—for the country itself was incapable of supporting even a small army—and on the 29th he found Leslie’s army drawn up and entrenched in a position extending from Leith to Edinburgh.
52. Operations around Edinburgh.—The same day a sharp but indecisive fight took place on the lower slopes of Arthur’s Seat, after which Cromwell, having felt the strength of Leslie’s line, drew back to Musselburgh. Leslie’s horse followed him up sharply, and another action was fought, after which the Scots assaulted Musselburgh without success. Militarily Leslie had the best of it in these affairs, but it was precisely this moment that the kirk party chose to institute a searching three days’ examination of the political and religious sentiments of his army. The result was that the army was “purged” of 80 officers and 3000 soldiers as it lay within musket shot of the enemy. Cromwell was more concerned, however, with the supply question than with the distracted army of the Scots. On the 6th of August he had to fall back as far as Dunbar to enable the fleet to land supplies in safety, the port of Musselburgh being unsafe in the violent and stormy weather which prevailed. He soon returned to Musselburgh and prepared to force Leslie to battle. In preparation for an extended manœuvre three days’ rations were served out. Tents were also issued, perhaps for the first time in the civil wars, for it was a regular professional army, which had to be cared for, made comfortable and economized, that was now carrying on the work of the volunteers of the first war. Even after Cromwell started on his manœuvre, the Scottish army was still in the midst of its political troubles, and, certain though he was that nothing but victory in the field would give an assured peace, he was obliged to intervene in the confused negotiations of the various Scottish parties. At last, however, Charles II. made a show of agreeing to the demands of his strange supporters, and Leslie was free to move. Cromwell had now entered the hill country, with a view to occupying Queensferry and thus blocking up Edinburgh. Leslie had the shorter road and barred the way at Corstorphine Hill (August 21). Cromwell, though now far from his base, manœuvred again to his right, Leslie meeting him once more at Gogar (August 27). The Scottish lines at that point were strong enough to dismay even Cromwell, and the manœuvre on Queensferry was at last given up. It had cost the English army severe losses in sick, and much suffering in the autumn nights on the bleak hillsides.
53. Dunbar.—On the 28th Cromwell fell back on Musselburgh, and on the 31st, after embarking his non-effective men, to Dunbar. Leslie followed him up, and wished to fight a battle at Dunbar on Sunday, the 1st of September. But again the kirk intervened, this time to forbid Leslie to break the Sabbath, and the unfortunate Scottish commander could only establish himself on Doon Hill (see Dunbar) and send a force to Cockburnspath to bar the Berwick road. He had now 23,000 men to Cromwell’s 11,000, and proposed, faute de mieux, to starve Cromwell into surrender. But the English army was composed of “ragged soldiers with bright muskets,” and had a great captain of undisputed authority at their head. Leslie’s, on the other hand, had lost such discipline as it had ever possessed, and was now, under outside influences, thoroughly disintegrated. Cromwell wrote home, indeed, that he was “upon an engagement very difficult,” but, desperate as his position seemed, he felt the pulse of his opponent and steadily refused to take his army away by sea. He had not to wait long. It was now the turn of Leslie’s men on the hillside to endure patiently privation and exposure, and after one night’s bivouac, Leslie, too readily inferring that the enemy was about to escape by sea, came down to fight. The battle of Dunbar (q.v.) opened in the early morning of the 3rd of September. It was the most brilliant of all Oliver’s victories. Before the sun was high in the heavens the Scottish army had ceased to exist.
54. Royalism in Scotland.—After Dunbar it was easy for the victorious army to overrun southern Scotland, more especially as the dissensions of the enemy were embittered by the defeat of which they had been the prime cause. The kirk indeed put Dunbar to the account of its own remissness in not purging their army more thoroughly, but, as Cromwell wrote on the 4th of September, the kirk had “done its do.” “I believe their king will set up on his own score,” he continued, and indeed, now that the army of the kirk was destroyed and they themselves were secure behind the Forth and based on the friendly Highlands, Charles and the Cavaliers were in a position not only to defy Cromwell, but also to force the Scottish national spirit of resistance to the invader into a purely Royalist channel. Cromwell had only received a few drafts and reinforcements from England, and for the present he could but block up Edinburgh Castle (which surrendered on Christmas eve), and try to bring up adequate forces and material for the siege of Stirling—an attempt which was frustrated by the badness of the roads and the violence of the weather. The rest of the early winter of 1650 was thus occupied in semi-military, semi-political operations between detachments of the English army and certain armed forces of the kirk party which still maintained a precarious existence in the western Lowlands, and in police work against the moss-troopers of the Border counties. Early in February 1651, still in the midst of terrible weather, Cromwell made another resolute but futile attempt to reach Stirling. This time he himself fell sick, and his losses had to be made good by drafts of recruits from England, many of whom came most unwillingly to serve in the cold wet bivouacs that the newspapers had graphically reported.[1]
55. The English Militia.—About this time there occurred in England two events which had a most important bearing on the campaign. The first was the detection of a widespread Royalist-Presbyterian conspiracy—how widespread no one knew, for those of its promoters who were captured and executed certainly formed but a small fraction of the whole number. Harrison was ordered to Lancashire in April to watch the north Welsh, Isle of Man and Border Royalists, and military precautions were taken in various parts of England. The second was the revival of the militia. Since 1644 there had been no general employment of local forces, the quarrel having fallen into the hands of the regular armies by force of circumstances. The New Model, though a national army, resembled Wellington’s Peninsular army more than the soldiers of the French Revolution and the American Civil War. It was now engaged in prosecuting a war of aggression against the hereditary foe over the Border—strictly the task of a professional army with a national basis. The militia was indeed raw and untrained. Some of the Essex men “fell flat on their faces on the sound of a cannon.” In the north of England Harrison complained to Cromwell of the “badness” of his men, and the lord general sympathized, having “had much such stuff” sent him to make good the losses in trained men. Even he for a moment lost touch with the spirit of the people. His recruits were unwilling drafts for foreign service, but in England the new levies were trusted to defend
- ↑ The tents were evidently issued for regular marches, not for cross-country manœuvres against the enemy. These manœuvres, as we have seen, often took several days. The bon général ordinaire of the 17th and 18th centuries framed his manœuvres on a smaller scale so as not to expose his expensive and highly trained soldiers to discomfort and the consequent temptation to desert.
