horse counted by some at four thousand, of whom nearly one-third were Scots. On the left wing Cromwell had between two thousand and twenty-five hundred of the regular cavalry of the Eastern Association, supported by a reserve of about eight hundred ill-horsed Scots in the rear. Of this force of cavalry, on which as it happened the fortune of the day was to depend, David Leslie commanded the Scottish contingent under Cromwell. The whole line extended about a mile and a half from right to left, and the royalist line was rather longer. On the king's side, Rupert faced Oliver. Newcastle and his main adviser Eythin faced Leven and Baillie, and Goring faced the two Fairfaxes. The hostile lines were so near to one another that, as Cromwell's scoutmaster says, "their foot was close to our noses."

So for some five hours (July 2) the two hosts, with colours flying and match burning, looked each other in the face. It was a showery summer afternoon. The parliamentarians in the standing corn, hungry and wet, beguiled the time in singing hymns. "You cannot imagine," says an eye-witness," the courage, spirit, and resolution that was taken up on both sides; for we looked, and no doubt they also, upon this fight as the losing or gaining the garland. And now, sir, consider the height of difference of spirits : in their army the cream of all the papists in England, and in ours a collection out of all the corners of England and Scotland, of such as had the greatest antipathy to popery and tyranny; these equally thinking the extirpation of each other. And now the sword must determine that which a hundred years' policy and dispute could not do." Five o'clock came, and a strange stillness fell upon them all. Rupert said to Newcastle that there would be no fight that day, and Newcastle rode to his great coach standing not far off, called for a pipe of tobacco, and composed himself for the evening. He was soon disturbed. At seven o'clock the flame of battle

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leaped forth, the low hum of the two armed hosts in an instant changed into fierce uproar, and before many minutes the moor and the slope of the hill were covered with bloodshed and disorder. Who gave the sign for the general engagement we do not know, and it is even likely that no sign as the result of deliberate and concerted plan was ever given at all.

Horse and foot moved down the hill, "like so many thick clouds." Cromwell, on the parliamentary left, charged Rupert with the greatest resolution that ever was seen. It was the first time that these two great leaders of horse had ever met in direct shock, and it was here that Rupert gave to Oliver the brave nickname of Ironside. As it happened, this was also one of the rare occasions when Oliver's cavalry suffered a check. David Leslie with his Scotch troopers was luckily at hand, and charging forward together they fell upon Rupert's right flank. This diversion enabled Oliver, who had been wounded in the neck, to order his retreating men to face about. Such a manoeuvre, say the soldiers, is one of the nicest in the whole range of tactics, and bears witness to the discipline and flexibility of Cromwell's force, like a delicate-mouthed charger with a consummate rider. With Leslie's aid they put Rupert and his cavalry to rout. "Cromwell's own division," says the scout-master, "had a hard pull of it, for they were charged by Rupert's bravest men both in front and flank. They stood at the sword's point a pretty while, hacking one another; but at last he broke through them, scattering them like a little dust." This done, the foot of their own wing charging by their side, they scattered the royalists as fast as they charged them, slashing them down as they went. The horse carried the whole field on the left before them, thinking that the victory was theirs, and that "nothing was to be done but to kill and take prisoners." It was admitted by

Cromwell's keenest partisan that Leslie's chase of the broken forces of Rupert, making a rally impossible, was what left Cromwell free to hold his men compact and ready for another charge. The key to most of his victories was his care that his horse, when they had broken the enemy, should not scatter in pursuit; the secret, a masterful coolness and the flash of military perception in the leader, along with iron discipline in the men.

Unfortunately all had gone wrong elsewhere. On the parliamentary right the operation as conducted by Cromwell on the left had been reversed. Sir Thomas Fairfax charged Goring, as Cromwell and Leslie charged Rupert, and he made a desperate fight for it. He cut his way through, chasing a body of Goring's force before him on the road south to York. When he turned back from his chase, after being unhorsed, severely wounded, and with difficulty rescued from the enemy, he found that Goring by a charge of savage vigour had completely broken the main body of the parliamentary horse on the right, had driven them in upon their own foot, and had even thrown the main body of the Scotch foot into disorder. This dangerous moment has been described by a royalist eye-witness. The runaways on both sides were so many, so breathless, so speechless, so full of fears, that he would hardly have known them for men. Both armies were mixed up together, both horse and foot, no side keeping their own posts. Here he met a shoal of Scots, loud in lamentation as if the day of doom had overtaken them. Elsewhere he saw a ragged troop reduced to four and a cornet, then an officer of foot, hatless, breathless, and with only so much tongue as to ask the way to the next garrison.

In the centre meanwhile the parliamentary force was completely broken, though the Scotch infantry on the right continued stubbornly to hold their ground. This was the crisis of the fight, and the

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parliamentary battle seemed to be irretrievably lost. It was saved in a second act, by the manful stoutness of a remnant of the Scots in the centre, and still more by the genius and energy of Cromwell and the endurance of his troopers. Many both of the Scottish and English foot had taken to flight. Their braver comrades whom they left behind held firm against assault after assault from Newcastle and the royalists. Cromwell, having disposed of Rupert on the left, now swept round in the royalist rear to the point on their left where Goring had been stationed before the battle began. "Here," says the scout-master, "the business of the day, nay, of the kingdom, came to be determined." Goring's men, seeing Cromwell's manoeuvre, dropped their pursuit and plunder, marched down the hill, just as Fairfax had marched down it an hour before, and speedily came to the same disaster.

Cromwell, keeping his whole force in hand, and concentrating it upon the immediate object of beating Goring, no sooner succeeded than he turned to the next object, and exerted his full strength upon that. This next object was now the relief of the harassed foot in the centre. Attacking in front and flank, he threw his whole force upon the royalist infantry of Newcastle, still hard at work on what had been the centre of the line, supported by a remnant of Goring's horse. This was the grand movement which military critics think worthy of comparison with that decisive charge of Seidlitz and his five thousand horse, which gained for Frederick the Great the renowned victory at Zorndorf. "Major - General David Leslie, seeing us thus pluck a victory out of the enemy's hands, could not too much commend us, and professed Europe had no better soldiers ! " Before ten o'clock all was over, and the royalists beaten from the field were in full retreat. In what is sometimes too lightly called the vulgar courage of the soldier, neither side

was wanting. Cromwell's was the only manœuvre of the day that showed the talent of the soldier's eye or the power of swift initiative.

More than four thousand brave men lay gory and stark upon the field under the summer moon. More than three thousand of them a few hours before had gone into the fight shouting, "For God and the king!" met by the hoarse counter-shout from the parliamentarians, "God with us!" So confident were each that divine favour was on their side. At the famed battle of Rocroi the year before, which transferred the laurels of military superiority from Spain to France, eight thousand Spaniards were destroyed and two thousand French, out of a total force on both sides of some forty-five thousand.

A story is told of Marston, for which there is as good evidence as for many things that men believe. A Lancashire squire of ancient line was killed fighting for the king. His wife came upon the field the next morning to search for him. They were stripping and burying the slain. A general officer asked her what she was about, and she told him her melancholy tale. He listened to her with great tenderness, and earnestly besought her to leave the horrid scene. She complied, and calling for a trooper, he set her upon the horse. On her way she inquired the name of the officer, and learned that he was LieutenantGeneral Cromwell.

Cromwell's own references to his first great battle are comprised in three or four well-known sentences: "It had all the evidences of an absolute victory, obtained by the Lord's blessing on the godly party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the prince's horse, and God made them stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. I believe of twenty thousand the