The Battle of Marston Moor
But providence doth often so dispose. - Oliver Cromwell
July 2nd, 1644.
Richard reckoned it had been about an hour since the battle started when the Bradford company were called to reinforce the left. The men had almost immediately begun to speculate on what that might mean for the course of the battle, though Richard found it difficult to make out any one voice over the howl of the wind and rain.
They paused their discussions for a moment when their Scottish lieutenant called for quiet and relayed their new orders, his practiced voice carrying relatively well over the cacophany of sounds that followed an army wherever it was: the rattling of weapons and armour, the clinking of bandoliers, the latent chatter. Richard still didn't hear full sentences from his position in the third rank, but he got the point quickly enough when the men around him had began to move. They were finally off to battle. Richard felt his heart start to beat faster.
They resumed chatter with their steps, though Richard could only hear the man on his immediate right.
"Cromwell's on the left. He's the best we have. If he's in trouble, then we are lost." His voice was pained, as if already resigned to defeat.
Richard turned to look at him and thought through what he'd learned about the man standing next to him all day. Samuel Gibbs. Haberdasher. Bradford born. Proud of his grammar school education. A proper Reformed man. Richard took a few quick steps out of rank to clap him on the shoulder.
"It is no mistake that we have met them on this day, Sam. God will not suffer his elect to die in vain, least of all against Papists and idolators. We will win this day, and with it the north for Parliament, and for God."
He was glad for Sam's easy nod to that, since it meant he'd judged the nature of the man's doubt rightly. It was just after sundown, and none of them had eaten a proper meal since breakfast. They'd been standing in ranks for nearly twelve hours, unable to see any of what was happening outside of the defile that hid them from their enemy throughout the day, and then unable to see anything much more than thirty feet in front of them for the last hour thanks to the dark and the rain, save for the occasional flash of lightning. Messages from the battle's progress were sparse and rarely made it to the common soldiery, and Richard had done his best to calm some of the younger men after they'd claimed that they saw men retreating back in flashes of lightning. It was a long day, a hard day. Hard on the body, hard on the mind, hard on the faith. A day that might break a man, but not Sam. Sam Gibbs was a good man to have on his side.
They marched the remainder of the way without much speaking, the men unprepared to strain their lungs further as the marches quickened pace winded them. After what must have been no more than a few minutes but which felt much longer, they arrived at their destination and formed up on a patch of muddy ground, clearly torn up from thousands of hooves. Richard had seen enough such ground to know it was terrible to fight on, but still orders were given, group by group. "Hold the ditch." People in front of him began to disappear in groups of five or so, the lieutenant speaking to each groupin turn and sending them on their way. He met Richard's eye for a moment before speaking, though his words were directed to a man next to him instead of Richard.
"You know the state of things, Andrews. We're expecting the Ironsides may retreat to regroup - your job is to give them space to do so. Take ten, keep your colours flying, and hold the ditch."
He didn't know ensign Andrews, since he'd had little enough cause to associate with the officers. But looking at him now, he cringed. The ensign was a boy, no more than sixteen. The son of someone important in Bradford, most likely. The colours he held were simple, a small cross of St George in the canton over a light blue field, atop an oak flagpole.
They spoke little as they moved forward to the ditch that they were to defend, though thanks were muttered after Richard helped a man stand from where he'd slipped in the mud, caking himself in it from head to toe. The ditch wasn't much to behold. Though a lull in the rain had increased their visibility somewhat, they still couldn't quite make anything on the other side in the dark of the moonless night. They paced up and down some ways, noting that the ditch was lined and filled in some few places with hedges and a handful of corpses, both of men and horses. It was impediment enough to kill a careless man riding at a gallop, and Richard silently prayed that the Cavaliers might do just that. More importantly for their purposes, they noticed a section where the hedges were sparse and the incline less steep, being generally the best terrain to climb out of the ditch for some distance. They set up just behind it, since the slope would help to funnel Cavaliers into their musket's limited effective range.
Richard noticed that the wind had also began to die down when he began to hear the sounds of drums beating and trumpets playing in the distance, a familiar and upbeat tune that he'd heard the men playing for most of the day. It was hard to be sure given his deaf left ear, but he thought that the battle music was coming from either side of them, further along the ditch.
He was so focused on the drums that he felt the hoofbeats before he heard them, a rumble felt in his feet and belly. He made a point of turning to face Andrews as if to receive a command, Andrews nodding and ordering the muskets loaded. Richard quickly leaned his musket on the ground so that the barrel came to his torso and reached for a vial of powder from his left shoulder. The hoofbeats in the distance became audible. He discarded the first such vial he picked out, finding that it hadn't been watertight, the powder too damp to use. Reaching for a second of his Twelve Apostles, he was relieved to find that this was dry, and so he poured the powder into his musket's muzzle, before gathering a spherical lead shot from a pouch on his bandolier and adding that too. Just as he was ramming powder and shot down, he raised his head to see a cavalrymen become visible in the ditch, more as a darker silhouette than an actual visible figure. He navigated the ditch slowly, his mount kept to a trot just faster than a walk.
"Ready your weapons, but hold your fire. These may be Ironsides." Andrews' voice was quiet and measured. Not terrible for a boy.
As the rider began his ascent, Richard called to him with a mind to checking his allegiance.
"For Parliament!"
"For England and Saint George!" the approaching cavalryman called back, his relief palpable to Richard's ear. It wasn't a royalist response, and so Andrews had the men lower their weapons and brandished his colours to meet with the man, but it seemed the rider had no intention of stopping - as soon as he crested the lip of the ditch, he kicked his mount into a trot and proceeded onto the mudplain behind them, quickly disappearing into the night. Richard wiped a kicked-up bit of mud off his face.
Two of the Bradford men then admitted that their matchchord was out and couldn't be lit, so they wouldn't be able to fire their muskets. One had let their matchchord get wet, and the other had let all his matches go out. Both mistakes Richard had made fighting on the Continent; easy to forgive. To fix the problem, he retrieved one man's dry matchchord and cut it in half before lighting both and handing them to each man.
The next encounter with a cavalryman was much the same as the first, a pattern that Richard found was repeated again and again, each man a Roundhead and each man more interested in fleeing than talking. They'd taken turns calling out to the approaching riders, and Richard had just completed his third call when the reply came back "For the king!", almost surprising them. The man kicked his horse into a gallop as he crested the ditch and made straight for them, but there were eight muskets pointed his way and the hedged terrain worthless for gaining speed. Andrews called for fire and the Cavalier died, his corpse falling from his horse which kept trotting until it was gone from view.
"Reload." Again, Richard added powder and then shot to his musket. Stealing a glance up, he noticed another rider in the ditch. He began to ram his shot down, once, twice, three times. The rider crested the ditch, this one for "King Charles!". They levied their muskets - or at least he and Sam and two others did, firing off their shots. The rider came crashing down, his mount shrieking with him as he fell. Richard passed his musket to one of the men he'd helped before and drew his sword from his hip, approaching the downed rider. The man was stunned and crawling but unhurt, his horse shot and flailing in pain. He ended the man for duty, and the beast for mercy.
Richard retrieved his musket and set to reloading again even as the next rider came up. There was no more expectation that any of the riders might be for Parliament, and so they didn't bother to call. Only Richard and Sam had finished reloading this time, but Richard's failed to fire, his powder too wet from the ongoing drizzle. Leaning out of his saddle as he made his pass at them, the Cavalier swung his sword, dealing one of their number a lethal blow. One of the other Bradford boys finished his own reload then and shot the man, but no sooner was he dead than two more riders were upon them.
None of them had loaded muskets this time. He felt a lump of fear rise in his throat. Perhaps God was not with them after all? Drawing his sword once more he stepped forward; Andrews was next to him, levying his flagpole at the approaching riders. It was no pike, but it was closer than Richard's sword. Close enough that one rider approached Andrews carefully at a pace, only to stop, draw a pistol, and shoot Andrews dead before charging ahead over his corpse. Richard heard an agonied cry and the wet thud of a sword contacting bone, but focused on keeping his eye on the other rider as he charged for Richard. The rider's form was good, but his weight shifted in his saddle as his mount slipped its footing on the muddy terrain, making his swing early. Keeping his own centre of mass low to limit slipping, Richard extended the tip of his blade to neck height as the man's mount carried him forward into it.
Withdrawing his sword from his victim's neck, he turned to face the rest of their company. The rider and mount were down, but had collapsed on top of one of the Bradford men who was screaming over his pinned leg, which was no doubt broken. One other man was dead, the source of the wed thud before, and two more were wounded, one from his musket's own misfire. "God almighty," he heard himself mutter, before offering a quick apology for blaspheming.
As Richard and Sam knelt down to free their injured comrade from under the Cavalier horse, the sound of massed hoofbeats grew louder again. A flash of lightning temporarily lit up the battlefield, and Richard could see that though the ditch was temporarily free of enemies, a large organized group of riders was gathering in the distance ahead. Richard understood then that the men that they'd dispatched had been undisciplined; gloryhounds eager to tell the story about how they'd swept Parliament's finest cavalry from the field. They were fools, and they'd died for it. The next men to come wouldn't come in ones or twos, but as an army.
Kneeling to gather the pistol that had killed Andrews, Richard took stock of their situation. Not ten minutes ago they'd numbered eleven, but now three were dead including Andrews, three more were wounded and, as Richard now discovered, three men had parted with their courage and with their company. That left just Sam and Richard left standing, against an unknown number. Against too many. Richard offered a quick prayer for Andrews as he retrieved the company colours from his body and turned to face the men, but found himself at a loss for what to say. He was surrounded by corpses, some belonging to the young men of his home town. Both wounded men and mounts cried out in agony, and shots sounded off in the distance in seemingly every direction as if to remind them that the battle wouldn't wait for them. Trumpets and drums repeated their tune for the someteenth time, and he couldn't see anything beyond the carnage around him and a ditch they would inevitably fail to defend. He couldn't see God in this, could not see how his impending death would serve the cause, could not hear His voice over the sound of hoofbeats - too close, too loud.
Too present. Two riders and two riderless mounts arrived behind their small group, slowing to a stop a few metres away, one quickly dismounting and approaching. Even in the dark, Richard could tell that their horses were small by their silhouettes. If the horses were nags, that meant that these men were dragoons. Mounted infantry. Was the plan to keep manning the ditch? That would be suicide, a waste of the elect. The thought itself stirred Richard to anger.
"You have succeeded here, men," the rider spoke, "You are to withdraw from here to meet for further orders. Follow us. If any of you are too wounded to walk, you can mount up. We have a few spare."
They did as the rider bid, and within a few minutes they came to meet with a group of infantry and dragoons. The infantry were in part other Bradford men - not nearly so many as there had been 20 minutes before, but more than Richard had hoped. Other groups gathered not far from them in rough battle lines, and they milled about for a few minutes, braggards filling the time talking about how they'd shot half a dozen Cavaliers or cut no less than three out of their saddles. All the while, their numbers swelled as mounted dragoons escorted more infantry into one group or another. Eventually the dragoons themselves formed into lines, and one rider set out in front of the gathered mass of perhaps a thousand men.
"You have done well to keep your colours, friends," the rider said, stopping before the Bradford group. Richard felt that perhaps the man was looking at him, though wasn't sure given the gloom.
"You have done England proud."
Richard was thrown off for a moment, unsure what to think. He certainly didn't feel like he'd done well, given that their detachment had been effectively spent as a fighting force, too dead, too wounded or too demoralized to fight on.
"You have all done well to keep your colours, and your trumpets too, and drums. You have done Bradford proud. And so too have all men here done your homes proud."
How did he know about Bradford? Who was this man? The rider paced along the line, calling out once in turn in front of each mass of infantry.
"You have done Selby proud."
He was clearly in charge of the dragoons. Richard lamented that he hadn't paid more attention to the officer staff.
"You have done Halifax proud."
The dragoon was in command. That was enough for Richard, for now. He let go of a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
"You have done Leeds proud."
The rider stilled his mount, as near to the middle of the grouping as was possible.
"You have done all of England proud. When this battle is over, England shall want to know how it went. I tell you truthfully that I believe the tale will be told of the brave men of Bradford, of Halifax and Leeds and Selby. Of the men who let their will be known first by Root and Branch, and second by force of arms. Of those who would not sit idly by whilst an overreaching king ran roughshod over their freeborn rights and consciences, who stood with the Commons, those true representatives and stewards of England's common weal. They will speak of how their banners never fell and their trumpets and drums never silenced, because they fought for something beyond themselves: they fought for a free England."
Sure enough, the trumpets and drums maintained their beat, even now. His regimental colours were still flying, aloft by his own hands. He'd never thought much of it, but the blue they'd used for the company flag's field was from indigo rather than woad. The expensive dye had been donated by a local gentry merchant, but it had only been on hand because they were a clothworking community. It was unique. He found that he liked holding it. It meant Bradford was still in the fight.
The dragoon continued. "You have done your duty here. Even now the Ironsides rally, given space to do so by the bravery you men have shown this night. But the battle is not yet over, for our right is imperilled. I for one will not put down my arms for so long as England lies in chains. I ask you now, men of Bradford. Of Halifax. Of Leeds. Of Selby. Will you join me?"
Richard raised his colours, shouting "For England and St George!"
The echo around Richard was thunderous. Richard swallowed his fear. God was louder some days than others.
___
The battle at Marston Moor was the largest yet in the British Civil War, and also the bloodiest. The combined armies of the Northern Association, Eastern Association and Scottish Covenanters numbered some 24,000 men. The Royalist force facing them under Prince Rupert and the Marquise of Newcastle had been somewhat smaller, approximately 17500 men.
The battle had begun just after sunset and alongside rain, ensuring that the bulk of the fighting was by hand rather than shot. Commanders on both sides lacked a clear picture of what was happening in the gloom, and so the fighting was often disorganised, with regiments or companies falling to their own commanders rather than any over-arching strategy.
As with most of the battles of the English Civil War, Marston Moor was decided predominantly by cavalry. In the early stages of the battle, the left of each side gained an upper hand, with Oliver Cromwell breaking Lord Byford's first line in the west and George Goring defeating Thomas Fairfax in the east. Though it seemed as if the Ironsides would punch through Byford's second line, Prince Rupert personally reinforced the Royalist right, and a sustained melee developed in which a stray musketball hit Oliver Cromwell in the neck, killing him. As word of Cromwell's death spread a panic grew among the Ironsides, eventually resulting in a rout.
Their rout was only temporary, however. Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, commanding a regiment of dragoons, organised for a forlorn hope to line the ditch on Parliament's left. The presence of the forlorn hope, which prevented a royalist pursuit, along with the mass of Lilburne's own mounted soldiers proved decisive in rallying and regrouping the Ironsides, who eventually charged once more and defeated the cavalry of the Royalist right.
The meantime was bloody, however. George Goring's cavalry had free reign on the east side of the battlefield, and although many of his troopers displayed poor discipline in looting the Parliamentary camps, enough retained their organisation to repeatedly hit the Allied right flank. Perceiving the battle as lost, Manchester and Lord Levan called for a retreat, but in the confusion of the stormy night many of the soldiers on the front lines never received the order. Whilst many of those who remained in the fight would eventually rout in disarray, the Scottish regiments under the Earl of Lindsay and Lord Maitland held firm, their spine stiffened at the last minute by the arrival of Lilburne's dragoons and those who had manned the decisive forlorn hope.
After winning the west of the battlefield, the Ironsides sought to take command of the east, too. Perceiving that his opportunity to achieve a decisive breakthrough was already spent, Goring lead a retreat of the remaining Royalist cavalry that quickly spread to the infantry, too, save for Newcastle's own regiment of infantry, the White Coated Lambs. Leading a staunch rearguard to buy their fellows time to retreat, they successfully held their ground for just over an hour before the fifth that yet survived surrendered. In this they were successful, as the bulk of the Royalist infantry made it make to York safely despite being harried by the Ironsides.
Assessing the losses of the battle, with some 2800 allied dead and 3400 Royalists dead or captured, it would be easy to mistake the battle for a draw. In practice, though, it was a Royalist strategic triumph. Firstly, they had successfully kept the northern theatre of the war open despite the Scottish entry to the war. Second, nearly two-thirds of Allied casualties were Scots. And thirdly, they had killed Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's most capable cavalry commander and among their most ardent supporters of war. Leveraged correctly, the Royalists had sewn the seeds of a split between the Covenanters and Parliament.
Welcome to For Want of a Musketball, a British Civil Wars timeline. The point of divergence here is that the wound Oliver Cromwell took to the neck at Marston Moor kills him. What follows is a deliberately optimistic take on the aftermath that will see men firmly ahead of their time in the driver's seat of a revolutionary Commonwealth of England.
In the short term, I'll be writing the events of the more properly British civil wars as Parliamentary and Scottish unity is threatened, King Charles negotiates in bad faith, the Welsh discover a useful technicality, and Freeborn John Lilburne leads the Levellers and unlikely allies to victory.
In the medium term, the plan is to follow the Leveller Commonwealth through the 1650s. Domestically, we'll take a look at what full male suffrage and a free press in the 1650s looks like, and we'll ride a wave of neo-Elizabethanism to both the high seas and, in women's case, to the pulpit. Diggers will be permitted to dig, and coffee houses will meet public libraries in a wave of literary culture. In the foreign sphere, we'll investigate what the Commonwealth thinks of Dutch "true freedom" and trade policy, The French Fronde, and the Reaper's War down in Catalonia. Eventually, the fires of revolution will burn out and the tide of royalism will come creeping back in as those formerly of wealth and privilege claw their lordships back.
But the light of liberty won't die, for long term, the plan is to follow the Republic of Jamaica as it fights to restore liberty to the motherland.
My intention at the moment is to make at least one post a week that's substantial enough to be worth reading post by post. Generally speaking, I'll look to write some character level content, and some geopolitical/state level content, since I really enjoyed the mixed format in An Age of Miracles.
Looking at the threads for other timelines, I find the speculation and questions that fill the comments are both entertaining as a reader, and I imagine very useful to the author. I've done a decent bit of research into the British civil wars, but about zero percent of the total library of research and writing about the period. It is incredibly easy to miss details and cool facts that would be worth including, so please always feel free to point out cool things you think I should know, or ask questions you'd like answered.
For now I'll sign off asking you a question: who is your favourite historical actor from the British civil wars period?
July 2nd, 1644.
Richard reckoned it had been about an hour since the battle started when the Bradford company were called to reinforce the left. The men had almost immediately begun to speculate on what that might mean for the course of the battle, though Richard found it difficult to make out any one voice over the howl of the wind and rain.
They paused their discussions for a moment when their Scottish lieutenant called for quiet and relayed their new orders, his practiced voice carrying relatively well over the cacophany of sounds that followed an army wherever it was: the rattling of weapons and armour, the clinking of bandoliers, the latent chatter. Richard still didn't hear full sentences from his position in the third rank, but he got the point quickly enough when the men around him had began to move. They were finally off to battle. Richard felt his heart start to beat faster.
They resumed chatter with their steps, though Richard could only hear the man on his immediate right.
"Cromwell's on the left. He's the best we have. If he's in trouble, then we are lost." His voice was pained, as if already resigned to defeat.
Richard turned to look at him and thought through what he'd learned about the man standing next to him all day. Samuel Gibbs. Haberdasher. Bradford born. Proud of his grammar school education. A proper Reformed man. Richard took a few quick steps out of rank to clap him on the shoulder.
"It is no mistake that we have met them on this day, Sam. God will not suffer his elect to die in vain, least of all against Papists and idolators. We will win this day, and with it the north for Parliament, and for God."
He was glad for Sam's easy nod to that, since it meant he'd judged the nature of the man's doubt rightly. It was just after sundown, and none of them had eaten a proper meal since breakfast. They'd been standing in ranks for nearly twelve hours, unable to see any of what was happening outside of the defile that hid them from their enemy throughout the day, and then unable to see anything much more than thirty feet in front of them for the last hour thanks to the dark and the rain, save for the occasional flash of lightning. Messages from the battle's progress were sparse and rarely made it to the common soldiery, and Richard had done his best to calm some of the younger men after they'd claimed that they saw men retreating back in flashes of lightning. It was a long day, a hard day. Hard on the body, hard on the mind, hard on the faith. A day that might break a man, but not Sam. Sam Gibbs was a good man to have on his side.
They marched the remainder of the way without much speaking, the men unprepared to strain their lungs further as the marches quickened pace winded them. After what must have been no more than a few minutes but which felt much longer, they arrived at their destination and formed up on a patch of muddy ground, clearly torn up from thousands of hooves. Richard had seen enough such ground to know it was terrible to fight on, but still orders were given, group by group. "Hold the ditch." People in front of him began to disappear in groups of five or so, the lieutenant speaking to each groupin turn and sending them on their way. He met Richard's eye for a moment before speaking, though his words were directed to a man next to him instead of Richard.
"You know the state of things, Andrews. We're expecting the Ironsides may retreat to regroup - your job is to give them space to do so. Take ten, keep your colours flying, and hold the ditch."
He didn't know ensign Andrews, since he'd had little enough cause to associate with the officers. But looking at him now, he cringed. The ensign was a boy, no more than sixteen. The son of someone important in Bradford, most likely. The colours he held were simple, a small cross of St George in the canton over a light blue field, atop an oak flagpole.
They spoke little as they moved forward to the ditch that they were to defend, though thanks were muttered after Richard helped a man stand from where he'd slipped in the mud, caking himself in it from head to toe. The ditch wasn't much to behold. Though a lull in the rain had increased their visibility somewhat, they still couldn't quite make anything on the other side in the dark of the moonless night. They paced up and down some ways, noting that the ditch was lined and filled in some few places with hedges and a handful of corpses, both of men and horses. It was impediment enough to kill a careless man riding at a gallop, and Richard silently prayed that the Cavaliers might do just that. More importantly for their purposes, they noticed a section where the hedges were sparse and the incline less steep, being generally the best terrain to climb out of the ditch for some distance. They set up just behind it, since the slope would help to funnel Cavaliers into their musket's limited effective range.
Richard noticed that the wind had also began to die down when he began to hear the sounds of drums beating and trumpets playing in the distance, a familiar and upbeat tune that he'd heard the men playing for most of the day. It was hard to be sure given his deaf left ear, but he thought that the battle music was coming from either side of them, further along the ditch.
He was so focused on the drums that he felt the hoofbeats before he heard them, a rumble felt in his feet and belly. He made a point of turning to face Andrews as if to receive a command, Andrews nodding and ordering the muskets loaded. Richard quickly leaned his musket on the ground so that the barrel came to his torso and reached for a vial of powder from his left shoulder. The hoofbeats in the distance became audible. He discarded the first such vial he picked out, finding that it hadn't been watertight, the powder too damp to use. Reaching for a second of his Twelve Apostles, he was relieved to find that this was dry, and so he poured the powder into his musket's muzzle, before gathering a spherical lead shot from a pouch on his bandolier and adding that too. Just as he was ramming powder and shot down, he raised his head to see a cavalrymen become visible in the ditch, more as a darker silhouette than an actual visible figure. He navigated the ditch slowly, his mount kept to a trot just faster than a walk.
"Ready your weapons, but hold your fire. These may be Ironsides." Andrews' voice was quiet and measured. Not terrible for a boy.
As the rider began his ascent, Richard called to him with a mind to checking his allegiance.
"For Parliament!"
"For England and Saint George!" the approaching cavalryman called back, his relief palpable to Richard's ear. It wasn't a royalist response, and so Andrews had the men lower their weapons and brandished his colours to meet with the man, but it seemed the rider had no intention of stopping - as soon as he crested the lip of the ditch, he kicked his mount into a trot and proceeded onto the mudplain behind them, quickly disappearing into the night. Richard wiped a kicked-up bit of mud off his face.
Two of the Bradford men then admitted that their matchchord was out and couldn't be lit, so they wouldn't be able to fire their muskets. One had let their matchchord get wet, and the other had let all his matches go out. Both mistakes Richard had made fighting on the Continent; easy to forgive. To fix the problem, he retrieved one man's dry matchchord and cut it in half before lighting both and handing them to each man.
The next encounter with a cavalryman was much the same as the first, a pattern that Richard found was repeated again and again, each man a Roundhead and each man more interested in fleeing than talking. They'd taken turns calling out to the approaching riders, and Richard had just completed his third call when the reply came back "For the king!", almost surprising them. The man kicked his horse into a gallop as he crested the ditch and made straight for them, but there were eight muskets pointed his way and the hedged terrain worthless for gaining speed. Andrews called for fire and the Cavalier died, his corpse falling from his horse which kept trotting until it was gone from view.
"Reload." Again, Richard added powder and then shot to his musket. Stealing a glance up, he noticed another rider in the ditch. He began to ram his shot down, once, twice, three times. The rider crested the ditch, this one for "King Charles!". They levied their muskets - or at least he and Sam and two others did, firing off their shots. The rider came crashing down, his mount shrieking with him as he fell. Richard passed his musket to one of the men he'd helped before and drew his sword from his hip, approaching the downed rider. The man was stunned and crawling but unhurt, his horse shot and flailing in pain. He ended the man for duty, and the beast for mercy.
Richard retrieved his musket and set to reloading again even as the next rider came up. There was no more expectation that any of the riders might be for Parliament, and so they didn't bother to call. Only Richard and Sam had finished reloading this time, but Richard's failed to fire, his powder too wet from the ongoing drizzle. Leaning out of his saddle as he made his pass at them, the Cavalier swung his sword, dealing one of their number a lethal blow. One of the other Bradford boys finished his own reload then and shot the man, but no sooner was he dead than two more riders were upon them.
None of them had loaded muskets this time. He felt a lump of fear rise in his throat. Perhaps God was not with them after all? Drawing his sword once more he stepped forward; Andrews was next to him, levying his flagpole at the approaching riders. It was no pike, but it was closer than Richard's sword. Close enough that one rider approached Andrews carefully at a pace, only to stop, draw a pistol, and shoot Andrews dead before charging ahead over his corpse. Richard heard an agonied cry and the wet thud of a sword contacting bone, but focused on keeping his eye on the other rider as he charged for Richard. The rider's form was good, but his weight shifted in his saddle as his mount slipped its footing on the muddy terrain, making his swing early. Keeping his own centre of mass low to limit slipping, Richard extended the tip of his blade to neck height as the man's mount carried him forward into it.
Withdrawing his sword from his victim's neck, he turned to face the rest of their company. The rider and mount were down, but had collapsed on top of one of the Bradford men who was screaming over his pinned leg, which was no doubt broken. One other man was dead, the source of the wed thud before, and two more were wounded, one from his musket's own misfire. "God almighty," he heard himself mutter, before offering a quick apology for blaspheming.
As Richard and Sam knelt down to free their injured comrade from under the Cavalier horse, the sound of massed hoofbeats grew louder again. A flash of lightning temporarily lit up the battlefield, and Richard could see that though the ditch was temporarily free of enemies, a large organized group of riders was gathering in the distance ahead. Richard understood then that the men that they'd dispatched had been undisciplined; gloryhounds eager to tell the story about how they'd swept Parliament's finest cavalry from the field. They were fools, and they'd died for it. The next men to come wouldn't come in ones or twos, but as an army.
Kneeling to gather the pistol that had killed Andrews, Richard took stock of their situation. Not ten minutes ago they'd numbered eleven, but now three were dead including Andrews, three more were wounded and, as Richard now discovered, three men had parted with their courage and with their company. That left just Sam and Richard left standing, against an unknown number. Against too many. Richard offered a quick prayer for Andrews as he retrieved the company colours from his body and turned to face the men, but found himself at a loss for what to say. He was surrounded by corpses, some belonging to the young men of his home town. Both wounded men and mounts cried out in agony, and shots sounded off in the distance in seemingly every direction as if to remind them that the battle wouldn't wait for them. Trumpets and drums repeated their tune for the someteenth time, and he couldn't see anything beyond the carnage around him and a ditch they would inevitably fail to defend. He couldn't see God in this, could not see how his impending death would serve the cause, could not hear His voice over the sound of hoofbeats - too close, too loud.
Too present. Two riders and two riderless mounts arrived behind their small group, slowing to a stop a few metres away, one quickly dismounting and approaching. Even in the dark, Richard could tell that their horses were small by their silhouettes. If the horses were nags, that meant that these men were dragoons. Mounted infantry. Was the plan to keep manning the ditch? That would be suicide, a waste of the elect. The thought itself stirred Richard to anger.
"You have succeeded here, men," the rider spoke, "You are to withdraw from here to meet for further orders. Follow us. If any of you are too wounded to walk, you can mount up. We have a few spare."
They did as the rider bid, and within a few minutes they came to meet with a group of infantry and dragoons. The infantry were in part other Bradford men - not nearly so many as there had been 20 minutes before, but more than Richard had hoped. Other groups gathered not far from them in rough battle lines, and they milled about for a few minutes, braggards filling the time talking about how they'd shot half a dozen Cavaliers or cut no less than three out of their saddles. All the while, their numbers swelled as mounted dragoons escorted more infantry into one group or another. Eventually the dragoons themselves formed into lines, and one rider set out in front of the gathered mass of perhaps a thousand men.
"You have done well to keep your colours, friends," the rider said, stopping before the Bradford group. Richard felt that perhaps the man was looking at him, though wasn't sure given the gloom.
"You have done England proud."
Richard was thrown off for a moment, unsure what to think. He certainly didn't feel like he'd done well, given that their detachment had been effectively spent as a fighting force, too dead, too wounded or too demoralized to fight on.
"You have all done well to keep your colours, and your trumpets too, and drums. You have done Bradford proud. And so too have all men here done your homes proud."
How did he know about Bradford? Who was this man? The rider paced along the line, calling out once in turn in front of each mass of infantry.
"You have done Selby proud."
He was clearly in charge of the dragoons. Richard lamented that he hadn't paid more attention to the officer staff.
"You have done Halifax proud."
The dragoon was in command. That was enough for Richard, for now. He let go of a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
"You have done Leeds proud."
The rider stilled his mount, as near to the middle of the grouping as was possible.
"You have done all of England proud. When this battle is over, England shall want to know how it went. I tell you truthfully that I believe the tale will be told of the brave men of Bradford, of Halifax and Leeds and Selby. Of the men who let their will be known first by Root and Branch, and second by force of arms. Of those who would not sit idly by whilst an overreaching king ran roughshod over their freeborn rights and consciences, who stood with the Commons, those true representatives and stewards of England's common weal. They will speak of how their banners never fell and their trumpets and drums never silenced, because they fought for something beyond themselves: they fought for a free England."
Sure enough, the trumpets and drums maintained their beat, even now. His regimental colours were still flying, aloft by his own hands. He'd never thought much of it, but the blue they'd used for the company flag's field was from indigo rather than woad. The expensive dye had been donated by a local gentry merchant, but it had only been on hand because they were a clothworking community. It was unique. He found that he liked holding it. It meant Bradford was still in the fight.
The dragoon continued. "You have done your duty here. Even now the Ironsides rally, given space to do so by the bravery you men have shown this night. But the battle is not yet over, for our right is imperilled. I for one will not put down my arms for so long as England lies in chains. I ask you now, men of Bradford. Of Halifax. Of Leeds. Of Selby. Will you join me?"
Richard raised his colours, shouting "For England and St George!"
The echo around Richard was thunderous. Richard swallowed his fear. God was louder some days than others.
___
The battle at Marston Moor was the largest yet in the British Civil War, and also the bloodiest. The combined armies of the Northern Association, Eastern Association and Scottish Covenanters numbered some 24,000 men. The Royalist force facing them under Prince Rupert and the Marquise of Newcastle had been somewhat smaller, approximately 17500 men.
The battle had begun just after sunset and alongside rain, ensuring that the bulk of the fighting was by hand rather than shot. Commanders on both sides lacked a clear picture of what was happening in the gloom, and so the fighting was often disorganised, with regiments or companies falling to their own commanders rather than any over-arching strategy.
As with most of the battles of the English Civil War, Marston Moor was decided predominantly by cavalry. In the early stages of the battle, the left of each side gained an upper hand, with Oliver Cromwell breaking Lord Byford's first line in the west and George Goring defeating Thomas Fairfax in the east. Though it seemed as if the Ironsides would punch through Byford's second line, Prince Rupert personally reinforced the Royalist right, and a sustained melee developed in which a stray musketball hit Oliver Cromwell in the neck, killing him. As word of Cromwell's death spread a panic grew among the Ironsides, eventually resulting in a rout.
Their rout was only temporary, however. Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, commanding a regiment of dragoons, organised for a forlorn hope to line the ditch on Parliament's left. The presence of the forlorn hope, which prevented a royalist pursuit, along with the mass of Lilburne's own mounted soldiers proved decisive in rallying and regrouping the Ironsides, who eventually charged once more and defeated the cavalry of the Royalist right.
The meantime was bloody, however. George Goring's cavalry had free reign on the east side of the battlefield, and although many of his troopers displayed poor discipline in looting the Parliamentary camps, enough retained their organisation to repeatedly hit the Allied right flank. Perceiving the battle as lost, Manchester and Lord Levan called for a retreat, but in the confusion of the stormy night many of the soldiers on the front lines never received the order. Whilst many of those who remained in the fight would eventually rout in disarray, the Scottish regiments under the Earl of Lindsay and Lord Maitland held firm, their spine stiffened at the last minute by the arrival of Lilburne's dragoons and those who had manned the decisive forlorn hope.
After winning the west of the battlefield, the Ironsides sought to take command of the east, too. Perceiving that his opportunity to achieve a decisive breakthrough was already spent, Goring lead a retreat of the remaining Royalist cavalry that quickly spread to the infantry, too, save for Newcastle's own regiment of infantry, the White Coated Lambs. Leading a staunch rearguard to buy their fellows time to retreat, they successfully held their ground for just over an hour before the fifth that yet survived surrendered. In this they were successful, as the bulk of the Royalist infantry made it make to York safely despite being harried by the Ironsides.
Assessing the losses of the battle, with some 2800 allied dead and 3400 Royalists dead or captured, it would be easy to mistake the battle for a draw. In practice, though, it was a Royalist strategic triumph. Firstly, they had successfully kept the northern theatre of the war open despite the Scottish entry to the war. Second, nearly two-thirds of Allied casualties were Scots. And thirdly, they had killed Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's most capable cavalry commander and among their most ardent supporters of war. Leveraged correctly, the Royalists had sewn the seeds of a split between the Covenanters and Parliament.
Welcome to For Want of a Musketball, a British Civil Wars timeline. The point of divergence here is that the wound Oliver Cromwell took to the neck at Marston Moor kills him. What follows is a deliberately optimistic take on the aftermath that will see men firmly ahead of their time in the driver's seat of a revolutionary Commonwealth of England.
In the short term, I'll be writing the events of the more properly British civil wars as Parliamentary and Scottish unity is threatened, King Charles negotiates in bad faith, the Welsh discover a useful technicality, and Freeborn John Lilburne leads the Levellers and unlikely allies to victory.
In the medium term, the plan is to follow the Leveller Commonwealth through the 1650s. Domestically, we'll take a look at what full male suffrage and a free press in the 1650s looks like, and we'll ride a wave of neo-Elizabethanism to both the high seas and, in women's case, to the pulpit. Diggers will be permitted to dig, and coffee houses will meet public libraries in a wave of literary culture. In the foreign sphere, we'll investigate what the Commonwealth thinks of Dutch "true freedom" and trade policy, The French Fronde, and the Reaper's War down in Catalonia. Eventually, the fires of revolution will burn out and the tide of royalism will come creeping back in as those formerly of wealth and privilege claw their lordships back.
But the light of liberty won't die, for long term, the plan is to follow the Republic of Jamaica as it fights to restore liberty to the motherland.
My intention at the moment is to make at least one post a week that's substantial enough to be worth reading post by post. Generally speaking, I'll look to write some character level content, and some geopolitical/state level content, since I really enjoyed the mixed format in An Age of Miracles.
Looking at the threads for other timelines, I find the speculation and questions that fill the comments are both entertaining as a reader, and I imagine very useful to the author. I've done a decent bit of research into the British civil wars, but about zero percent of the total library of research and writing about the period. It is incredibly easy to miss details and cool facts that would be worth including, so please always feel free to point out cool things you think I should know, or ask questions you'd like answered.
For now I'll sign off asking you a question: who is your favourite historical actor from the British civil wars period?
