Believe or Die Page 9

  As gently as he could, Wil retrieved the deceased canine and sat looking at it for a moment or two.

  “We must flee this place my Lord. The rebels will be looking for you. Should I bury your dog?”

  Instantly Rupert’s blade was at his throat.

  “He goes with us! No pauper’s grave for him!” snarled the Prince.

  “As you wish my Lord,” sighed Pitkin.

  So, with his arms supporting a Prince, and a dead dog slung over his shoulder, Wil Pitkin departed the field of Marston Moor.

  The Whitecoat’s last stand marked the end of Royalist battlefield activities that day. Rupert, aided by Wil Pitkin, eventually made it back to York. The allies were too exhausted to muster any valid pursuit. Arriving in the city, however, Rupert found it in a flurry of panic-stricken activity. Lord Newcastle was abandoning the King’s cause and fleeing to the Continent. The next day, the disgusted but uncharacteristically subdued Rupert marched out with as many of his surviving Horse and Foot as he could find horses for - Pitkin amongst them - and skilfully evading his enemies, made good his escape. The rest of the Royalist forces were left to their fate.

  On the ramparts of York Major William Legge watched Rupert’s departing rearguard then knelt and prayed a while. He had fortified the city as best he could and until but lately had been prepared to hold it until the last in the King’s name. But now, Lord Newcastle had fled without a thought for the city’s populace or his King’s cause, and Rupert had simply deserted them as a lost cause. Legge’s nominal commander in York, Sir Thomas Glemham, was so dismayed by the events of the last days that he was barely coherent. So with a heavy heart, Legge began drafting letters and waited for the inevitable.

  The forces of Parliament and the Covenant were in no hurry to assault York and initially began planning for a lengthy siege. Drummers and cornets, acting as heralds, passed to and fro in the hope of avoiding, or at least reducing the consequences of a bloody battle without compromising any notions of honour. The worthy Legge finally managed to convince his comrades and his commander that they had done all that honour demanded in the King’s cause and York surrendered on the 16th of July. Now, apart from isolated garrisons, the whole of the north of England belonged firmly to Parliament and its allies.

  Back on the Moor, locals were hired to bury the dead already striped naked and devoid of any possessions by those same good country folk. Four thousand one hundred and fifty bodies were interred under that mournful ground. The Angel of Death considered the totals and was satisfied.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The victorious forces of Parliament and the Scots could now turn the full weight of their power on the King and put an end to the issue once and for all. They could have! Instead they chose to shoot themselves in the foot!

  The King had originally intended to wait in Oxford for Rupert’s return from the relief of York, but impatient with the apparent lack of activity, he decided to lead a force to Worcester to try and draw Parliament away from Oxford. Two Parliamentarian armies, those of Essex and the ill-starred Waller, duly set off in pursuit. But those two Generals, never on cordial terms, could now not tolerate each other to any degree whatsoever. Soon convinced the Royalist movements were mere bluff, Essex stopped, turned about, and set off to relieve besieged garrisons elsewhere. Waller was ordered to keep an eye on the King. Charles had no knowledge of this and, convinced he still had two armies coming against him, sent that confusing letter to Rupert. Intelligence came to Waller that the King’s cavalry was at Bridgenorth suggesting that his next move would probably be towards the important Royalist recruiting area of Shrewsbury. Waller, without advising Essex, deployed his forces to block such a move. In fact, the King’s advisors had finally persuaded Charles that his position was too exposed and the infantry were ferried downriver to Worcester where they were reunited with their cavalry. Thus in very short order, all the King’s men were back in Oxford, foot and hoof sore, but intact. At last it dawned on Waller that he had been duped and out-manoeuvred. Off he set in pursuit only to receive a brisk rebuff at Banbury. The Royalists then marched north; Waller followed attacking the King’s column at Cropredy Bridge. Again he suffered a bloody rebuff. Seething with frustration he took up a well-sited defensive position and sent messengers for reinforcements. He also sent a troop of Horse, Ketch’s Horse, northwards to advise the Parliamentarian forces in that direction of the King’s approach. The Royalist Generals pondered Waller’s dispositions hoping to draw him out and onto a field of their choosing, but they soon saw this was not to be. Very well then, they would lead him a merry dance and retain the initiative until such time as they could bring him to battle on their terms. The King marched on to Evesham arriving on the evening of the 3rd of July. Bonfires were blazing and there was much joyous celebration afoot. Had His Majesty not heard? There had been a great victory near York. Information was garbled but surely it could only mean Rupert had triumphed. The joviality was short lived. Another messenger arrived, this time bearing a detailed report. It was not the forces of Parliament that had been destroyed but those of Rupert and Newcastle. The shock of this information rendered Charles unable to function or even communicate for a whole day. When he finally recovered, he resolved to march into the West Country to regroup and salvage what he could of the situation. It seemed His Majesty now needed little short of a miracle to save his crown. And, courtesy of Parliament, that is what he got.

  Waller had also been advised of the outcome at Marston Moor and was elated. Now he would strike! His reinforcements had arrived and he was confident that this time he would succeed. His army however had other ideas. The command was riven with mutiny. It had been festering unnoticed for weeks and now, now of all times, it erupted. The infantry of the London Trained Bands were exhausted, decimated with sickness, and far from home. They had spent months marching hither and thither in pursuit of the enemy and now they had had enough. One Regiment, whose Colonel had recently died of food poisoning, simply up and set off for home. Others followed, desertion became epidemic, and Waller’s army disintegrated around him. Despair and a fatal resignation descended on Waller and by the end of July he was back in London. The King was off the hook.

  Essex was in the West Country when he received tidings that the King was heading his way. Waller had failed to give him any notice whatsoever and now he was going to be outnumbered and trapped. A plan formed in his head. He would march into Cornwall, join up with the Parliamentarian fleet based at Lostwithiel and evacuate his infantry to London. Regrettably, his cavalry would have to fight their own way clear. In theory it was a viable scheme but it took no account of the weather which was clearly on the side of the King. Rain fell constantly like grey lead destroying roads and ruining health. The days drew on, sickness spread, and still the storms raged. Now Essex really was trapped. The Royalists could take their time and force him into an ever-shrinking perimeter. And so it began. Essex himself managed to escape in a fishing boat and his cavalry succeeded in fighting their way through to Plymouth. The infantry surrendered. They were allowed to march away as the King’s men had insufficient men to guard them, but they marched without food or shelter, some even without clothing. Of the six thousand who left Lostwithiel on the 2nd of September, five thousand died of starvation, disease and exposure.

  A month later the King and Rupert were reunited. The air was distinctly frosty between them. Rupert felt he was being unjustly blamed for the defeat at Marston Moor. Charles, now with a vastly inflated opinion of his own tactical abilities, considered Rupert to have let him down.

  Parliament now feared an all-out attack on London. After the surrender of York, the Scots Covanteers besieged and took Newcastle upon Tyne but then, with growing domestic problems of their own, they were obliged to march quickly north and cross the border back into their homeland. Parliament’s Generals spent most of their time blaming each other for the now parlous situation. In an attempt to block the King’s somewhat leisurely progress towards London, Parliament attacked him
at Newbury. The attack, made too late in the day and with virtually no coordination whatsoever, failed miserably. Having successfully repelled the attack, the Royalists then calmly marched away through a huge gap that had opened between the Parliamentarian formations. As they made their escape, they left their casualties and artillery at Donnington Castle thinking that these would impede progress. However, having realised that Parliament’s forces didn’t appear to have a clue what was going on, the King’s Army regrouped and returned. All the artillery was collected and the Royalists reformed for battle once more. Parliament’s feuding commanders however declined and the King marched away to winter quarters as master of the field.

  The place that became the village of Radcot had been fought over many times over the centuries. Romans and Celts, Saxon’s and Danes, Stephen and Matilda in the days of the medieval ‘Anarchy’, had all battled over a single road leading to a ford across the river and thence into the Thames Valley. In 1644 Parliamentarian forces laid a brief siege to Radcot Hall and its owners did all that honour required of them in a brief but bloody conflict. Entrenchments and bastions were dug and artillery placed, and then the cannonade began. The three field guns deployed had but little effect on the stoutly built Hall, but the mortars that arrived shortly afterwards did. The outlying defences were soon rendered untenable and the small Royalist garrison retreated inside the ancient stone walls. For a further week they held out as the masonry crumbled around them, then with the main doors of the Hall blown away by a huge petard, the assault wave of Roundheads stormed forward. Both sides had learned that in such confined fighting, it was dismounted cavalry that was most effective and so it was that the troopers had to reluctantly leave their mounts behind.

  Several volleys of matchlock fire raked the shattered windows and makeshift door barricade and Ketch’s Horse, armed to the teeth, rushed the entrance. Richard Mead had no less than five flintlock pistols about his person: two in his boot tops, two in his belt, and one in his left hand. In his right he had a battered but well-honed sword. The air was crisp and frosty, but he was sweating like a pig as he lumbered forward, partly through exertion, partly through fear. Behind him he could hear his Corporal of Horse, Bowman, bellowing at the men to keep moving. The man on Mead’s immediate right suddenly screamed and fell back with blood pouring through his visor. In the corner of his helmet-restricted vision he spotted two of his troop, Poulton and Hitch, scuttling crab-like through what was left of an ornamental Elizabethan garden. In their hands he could see smoking grenades. God grant that the men didn’t fall and drop the cursed things! But fall they did not, and the hissing bombs sailed through the air and blasted away the defenders of the breach. Then, kicking and cursing, Mead and his men were through the doorway and hacking and shooting their way into the Hall. The fight was over in but a matter of minutes, but in its dying moments, someone fired a pistol ball into Mead’s calf causing him to tumble over in the blood and gore that covered the floor.

  A little later, Mead was propped up in the broken remains of an ornate carver chair with his wounded leg tightly bound on a stool before him. Tightly bound it may have been, but it was still bleeding copiously and it hurt like the very Devil! Ketch appeared. He stepped meticulously over the wreckage of the Hall and tut-tutted at Mead’s incapacity.

  “This is damnably inconvenient Mead, damnably so! I am quite short enough of officers as it is without them being so careless as to become wounded!”

  Mead noted that although Ketch’s unsheathed sword was still dripping blood, his clothing was strangely clean. Indeed, he seemed more interested in the looted contents of the Hall as it was disappearing out the door than he was with the dead and wounded. A messenger arrived and handed Ketch a despatch, which he read testily whilst watching a particularly famous painting being hauled away. Finally though, he finished the missive.

  “We are ordered to march,” he advised. “I will take the prisoners of note with me. The rest will be used as labour on the march until such time as we can imprison them - after the usual cleansing of course.”

  “‘Cleansing Sir?” said Mead already knowing what the term had come to mean.

  “Of course. All Catholics and Gypsies to be shot. All non-repentant Royalists and whores to be hung.”

  Mead sighed and shifted his pain-racked leg.

  “And what of the wounded Sir?”

  “As to Royalists, they have a choice. They may turn their coat and serve the true cause or they will be shot. With regard to our own casualties, all that can be moved will go with the supply train. Those that cannot will stay here, as will you for the moment.”

  “My orders then Sir?”

  “Remain here with your troop and do what you can for the wounded. When you personally are up to it, I want you back with the Regiment without delay. Mark you well Master Mead, the very instant you are fit! Brook no delay; accept no impediment. God will understand if you are obliged to put a comrade out of his misery. The Cause is all.”

  “God will understand will he?” hissed Mead venomously.

  “May it please you Sir, some of the local women are tending our wounded even now out back in the stables. Staunch women of the Cause they be Sir,” interrupted Corporal Bowman shaking his head warningly at his Lieutenant. Mead frowned at him.

  Local women? He’d seen no local women; they’d all fled when the first shot was fired. And Staunch to the cause?

  “Well, so much the better!” declared Ketch. “Mark your orders well Lieutenant!” and with that he was gone.

  Poulton stood to attention in the shattered doorway until Ketch and his escort had cantered away, then he turned and grinned at the cornet who likewise grinned and swept back a shot-ridden drape to reveal a stout door missed in the looting. He heaved the door open and from within issued forth a dishevelled, dirt encrusted collection of women. One stomped angrily across the debris-covered floor and stood defiantly before Mead, hands on ample hips and glaring menacingly. Richard looked at her in bewilderment trying to see through the coating of powder smoke and dust, and then he laughed out loud.

  “Greeting Mistress Annie!” he chuckled.

  “Hah!” she sneered. “You girls follow yon cornet and do what you can for them torn up soldiers out the back,” she called over her shoulder then turned back to Mead and began ripping off his improvised bandage muttering the while.

  “A fine thing indeed! Here am I trying to make an honest shilling out of the King’s men then some cursed bunch of Bible-bashers starts lobbing cannonballs at me!”

  “Annie I … ”

  “Shut up and do as you are told mister high and mighty officer! Patching you up is like to becoming a full-time business! As if I didn’t have better things to be a-doing of! And don’t you go groping my tits while I’m a-trying to save that leg of yours!”

  Lieutenant Mead knew an order when he heard one.

  For three days Annie and her girls nursed the troop’s wounded. Some died, some lived. Without their attentions most of the injured would have fallen in the first category. Although Mead’s leg turned an interesting combination of hues, gangrene did not set in. This was mainly due to Annie putting maggots in the wound. Witchcraft! whispered some of the troopers. “Bollocks!” said Annie and soon enough a clear yellow pus appeared and the pain became merely agonising as opposed to totally unbearable. Not long after this, Mead and his men bade a reluctant farewell to the ‘Staunch Women’. The troopers had repaired a couple of wagons and ‘liberated’ a couple of beasts to haul them, so that Annie could resume her business endeavours. They were unaware that they were not the only ones who had been ‘liberating’ items. Annie and her girls had been hard at it even as the doors of the Hall had evaporated into splinters. It was a pair of very well laden wagons that headed off towards Oxford the following day.

  The farcical situation that Parliament now faced forced some hard decision-making. They had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It must never be so again. They had until spring when the war would begin
again in earnest. Things MUST be changed. Parliament passed the Self Denying Ordinance prohibiting members of the Commons and the Lords from holding military command purely by virtue of their political status. Competent, professional soldiers would now reorganise the Army and lead it in the field. Only one Member of Parliament was specifically exempted from this Ordinance: Oliver Cromwell, the hero of Marston Moor. Overall command of this New Model Army was given to Sir Thomas Fairfax. Cromwell had made an impassioned speech outlining Parliament’s military failings and both he and ‘Black Tom’ were in accord as to how to proceed. With his exemption from the Ordinance and the fact that he still held command, Cromwell had made a number of influential enemies as Westminster. Was he not concerned? He dismissed it, temporarily, as irrelevant to the course of his duty and the dictates of his conscience. But was he not aggrieved to be still subordinate to a number of other Generals?

  “I will gladly follow them all,” he proclaimed then added somewhat pointedly, “For so long as they do the Lord’s work.”

  The new year of 1645 thus began for Parliament with not only the formation of a new army, but also with a large measure of cleaning house. Court martials and trials followed swiftly and many were the executions. Included in this number was Archbishop Laud whose religious advice and support for the Book of Common Prayer had been the sparks that ignited the fire of war. And this war was no longer just an English affair, as if indeed, it had ever been. Not all Scots were Covanteers and those loyal to the King had taken full advantage of their countrymen’s absence south of the border at York. These loyalists, led by the Marquis of Montrose, had taken Perth and Aberdeen in Charles’ name. But this was more than King versus Covenant, this was clan war. Many of Montrose’s followers were McDonalds. A considerable number of Covanteers were Campbells. The blood feud between these two clans went back untold generations. When the Campbells recrossed the border in the winter of 1644, they were looking for retribution. But Montrose fought a skilful guerrilla campaign constantly outrunning his enemies until he turned and attacked the totally unprepared Covanteers at Inverlocky under the shadow of Ben Nevis. Sons of dogs come and we will give you flesh! was the Macdonald war cry as they fell upon the Campbells and utterly routed them. A second victory followed and Scotland was now secure for the King.