the rivers and strong places of England. Modern soldiers have noticed as one of the most curious features of the civil war how ignorant each side usually was of the doings, position, and designs of its opponents. Essex stumbled upon the king, Hopton stumbled upon Waller, the king stumbled upon Sir Thomas Fairfax. The two sides drew up in front of one another, foot in the centre, horse on the wings; and then they fell to and hammered one another as hard as they could, and they who hammered hardest and stood to it longest won the day. This was the story of the early engagements. Armour was fallen into disuse, partly owing to the introduction of firearms, partly perhaps for the reason that pleased King James I.,-because besides protecting the wearer, it also hindered him from hurting other people. The archer had only just disappeared, and arrows were shot by the English so late as at the Isle of Ré in 1627. Indeed at the outbreak of the war Essex issued a precept for raising a company of archers, and in Montrose's campaign in Scotland bowmen are often mentioned. It is curious to modern ears to learn that some of the strongest laws enjoining practice with bow and arrow should have been passed after the invention of gunpowder, and for long there were many who persisted in liking the bow better than the musket, for the whiz of the arrow over their heads kept the horses in terror, and a few horses wounded by arrows sticking in them were made unruly enough to disorder a whole squadron. A flight of arrows, again, apart from those whom they killed or wounded, demoralised the rest as they watched them hurtling through the air. Extreme conservatives made a judicious mixture between the old time and the new by firing arrows out of muskets. The gunpowder of those days was so weak that one homely piece of advice to the pistoleer was that he should not discharge his weapon until he could press the barrel CHAP. I ARMS AND TACTICS 105 close upon the body of his enemy, under the cuirass if possible; then he would be sure not to waste his charge. The old-fashioned musket-rest disappeared during the course of the war. The shotmen, the musketeers and harquebusiers, seem from 1644 to have been to pikemen in the proportion of two to one. It was to the pike and the sword that the hardest work fell. The steel head of the pike was well fastened upon a strong, straight, yet nimble stock of ash, the whole not less than seventeen or eighteen feet long. It was not until the end of the century that, alike in England and France, the pike was laid aside and the bayonet used in its place. The snaphance or flintlock was little used, at least in the early stages of the war, and the provision of the slow match was one of the difficulties of the armament. Clarendon mentions that in one of the leaguers the besieged were driven to use all the cord of all the beds of the town, steep it in saltpetre, and serve it to the soldiers for match. Cartridges though not unknown were not used in the civil war, and the musketeer went into action with his match slowly burning and a couple of bullets in his mouth. Artillery, partly from the weakness of the powder, partly from the primitive construction of the mortars and cannon, was a comparatively ineffective arm upon the field, though it was causing a gradual change in fortifications from walls to earthworks. At Naseby the king had only two demicannon, as many demi-culverins, and eight sakers. The first weighed something over four thousand pounds, and shot twenty-four pounds. The demiculverin was a twelve- or nine-pounder. The saker was a brass gun weighing fifteen hundred pounds, with a shot of six or seven pounds. It was not, however, upon guns any more than upon muskets that the English commander of that age relied in battle for bearing the brunt, whether of attack or of defence. He depended upon his horsemen, either cuirassiers or the newly introduced species, the dragoons, whom it puzzled the military writer of that century whether to describe as horsefootmen or foot-horsemen. Gustavus Adolphus had discovered or created the value of cavalry, and in the English civil war the campaigns were few in which the shock of horse was not the deciding element. Cromwell with his quick sagacity perceived this in anticipation of the lessons of experience. He got a Dutch officer to teach him drill, and his first military proceeding was to raise a troop of horse in his own countryside and diligently fit them for action. As if to illustrate the eternal lesson that there is nothing new under the sun, some have drawn a parallel between the cavalry of the small republics of Greece in the fourth century before Christ and the same arm at Edgehill; and they find the same distinction between the Attic cavalry and the days of Alexander, as may be traced between the primitive tactics of Oliver or Rupert and those of Frederick the Great or Napoleon. We are then to imagine Oliver teaching his men straight turns to left and right, closing and opening their files, going through all the four-and-twenty postures for charging, ramming, and firing their pistols, petronels, and dragons, and learning the various sounds and commands of the trumpet. “Infinite great," says an enthusiastic horseman of that time, are the considerations which dependeth on a man to teach and govern a troop of horse. To bring ignorant men and more ignorant horse, wild man and mad horse, to those rules of obedience which may crown every motion and action with comely, orderly, and profitable proceedings—hic labor, hoc opus est." 66 Cromwell's troop was gradually to grow into a regiment of a thousand men, and in every other direction he was conspicuous for briskness and activity. He advanced considerable sums from his CHAP. I EDGEHILL 107 modest private means for the public service. He sent down arms into Cambridgeshire for its defence. He boldly seized the magazine in Cambridge Castle and with armed hand stayed the university from sending twenty thousand pounds' worth of its gold and silver plate for the royal use. He was present at the head of his troop in the first serious trial of strength between the parliamentary forces under the Earl of Essex and the forces of the king. The battle of Edgehill (October 23, 1642) is one of the most confused transactions in the history of the war, and its result was indecisive. The royalists were fourteen thousand against ten thousand for the parliament, and, confiding even less in superior numbers than in their birth and quality, they had little doubt of making short work of the rebellious and canting clowns at the foot of the hill. There was no great display of tactics on either side. Neither side appeared to know when it was gaining and when it was losing. Foes were mistaken for friends, and friends were killed for foes. In some parts of the field the parliament men ran away, while in other parts the king's men were more zealous for plundering than for fight. When night fell, the conflict by tacit agreement came to an end, the royalists suspecting that they had lost the day, and Essex not sure that he had won it. What is certain is that Essex's regiment of horse was unbroken. "These persons underwritten," says one eye-witness, never stirred from their troops, but they and their troops fought till the last minute,' and among the names of the valiant and tenacious persons so underwritten is that of Cromwell. 66 Whether before or after Edgehill, it was about this time that Cromwell had that famous conversation with Hampden which stands to this day among 1 It is hardly possible to take more pains than Mr. Sanford took (Studies and Illustrations, pp. 521-28) to extract a correct and coherent story out of irreconcilable authorities. the noble and classic commonplaces of Englishspeaking democracy all over the globe. "I was a person, he told his second parliament the year before he died," that from my first employment was suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater, from my first being a captain of a troop of horse, and I did labour as well as I could to discharge my trust, and God blessed me as it pleased him. And I did truly and plainly, and then in a way of foolish simplicity as it was judged by very great and wise men and good men too, desire to make my instruments help me in that work. . . . I had a very worthy friend then, and he was a very noble person, and I know his memory is very grateful to all-Mr. John Hampden. At my first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were beaten at every hand, and desired him that he would make some additions to my Lord Essex's army, of some new regiments. And I told him I would be serviceable to him in bringing such men in as I thought had a spirit that would do something in the work. "Your troops,' said I,' are most of them old decayed serving men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows: and,' said I, 'their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and resolution in them? . . . You must get men of a spirit, and ... of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else, I am sure, you will be beaten still.' . . . He was a wise and worthy person, and he did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable one. Truly I told him I could do somewhat in it. I did so, and truly I must needs say that to you, impute it to what you please I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they did, and from that day forward, I must say |
