1. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346, New Ed. (Boydell Press, 2007).
2. Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880-1918 (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008).
3. Mildred Campbell, The English Yeoman: Under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts, New ed. (London: Merlin, 1960).
4. Ian Gadd, John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past, illustrated edition. (British Library Publishing Division, 2004).
5. Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner, eds., Londinopolis : essays in the social and cultural history of early modern London (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000).
6. Julia F. Merritt, ed., Imagining early modern London: perceptions and portrayals of the city from Stow to Strype, 1598-1720 (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). 
   

Believe it or not, these are all somehow related to an essay about cavalry, horses and social status that I’m writing for an edited collection. Overambitious? Moi?

[Cross-posted at The horse in history and culture]

Over the summer I read two PhD theses which challenge a lot of preconceptions about cavalry in warfare, one on the Anglo-Saxon period and the other on the First World War.

1. Kerry Cathers, “An examination of the horse in Anglo-Saxon England” (PhD, Reading University, 2002).
2. David Kenyon, “British Cavalry on the Western Front 1916-1918” (PhD, Cranfield, 2008). 
   

(Both of these can be downloaded free from EthOS, although you’ll need to log in and search for them as there are no direct links. Kenyon’s can also be downloaded directly from Cranfield, which is much easier.)

Historians used to assume without question that horses played little part in Anglo-Saxon warfare and society. Kerry Cathers has challenged these assumptions, showing that they are based on very little evidence. The lack of evidence makes it difficult to be certain, but there is enough to suggest that horses were widely used and known by the Anglo-Saxons. Horses were conventionally associated with warriors in Anglo-Saxon culture (Cathers, 181, 306). Although their most well known battles were fought on foot, Anglo-Saxon armies used horses for raiding and for transporting soldiers to battlefields (Cathers, 288-9, 383). The Aberlemno stone probably represents a battle between the Northumbrians and the Picts, and shows both sides using cavalry (Cathers, 276-82). Cathers also discusses the development of the stirrup and its influence (or not) on medieval warfare. She sides with critics of Lynn White’s view that the stirrup was the fundamental basis of feudalism. Ann Hyland found that Roman cavalry saddles provided a secure seat even without stirrups, and Littauer argued that the stirrup was developed to support the feet and avoid cramp on long journeys (Cathers, 189-90, 267-9). R.H.C. Davis attributed the couched lance to the great horse more than the stirrup, but still ended up privileging cavalry over non-military uses of horses, and deriving feudalism from a fairly narrow technological development. Cathers shows that Anglo-Saxon horses were no smaller than horses in other parts of Europe but that this fact has tended to be covered up by historians’ linguistic biases: referring to Anglo-Saxon horses as “ponies” signifies the idea of a small animal. She was also an early advocate of the idea that there is no such thing as native breeds, and that the idea was invented much later: “Though, as noted, some horse enthusiasts like to push the date of certain breeds back into the furthest reaches of the past, the claim that breeds existed during this period is entirely false and without substantiation ” (Cathers, 160). The spurious idea that the Exmoor pony is an authentic native breed led some historians to assume that Anglo-Saxon horses were similar. I don’t think a big horse would have been necessary for shock charges with the couched lance, because even the mass of a small horse could put a lot of momentum behind the lance. One particularly weird result of historians’ prejudice against the idea of Anglo-Saxon horses is that one place name study assumed that places including the element “wig” must be named after earwigs, and failed to mention the possibility that they could be derived from “wicgela”, an Old English word for stallion! (Cathers, 67-8)

If cavalry played a role in English/British warfare earlier than most people thought, they also remained important long after most people think they became obsolete. It might appear that the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 is not a very promising area for studying cavalry, but David Kenyon confounds expectations in even more detail than Stephen Badsey has done. The key to the argument is that although new technology created problems for cavalry it also created opportunities. Barbed wire was as much an obstacle to infantry as it was to cavalry. Neither could attack effectively unless the wire was removed by artillery, tanks or engineers. Machine guns and breech loading magazine rifles increased the firepower of cavalry as well as infantry. Between the Second Anglo-Boer War and the First World War, British cavalry were retrained to fight primarily as mounted infantry, although they were still trained and equipped to charge into close combat when the opportunity arose. In the early years of the First World War, every cavalry regiment had a machine gun section armed with Vickers heavy machine guns, which were transported on pack horses. In 1916 these were replaced with Hotchkiss light machine guns, and the Vickers guns were reorganized into Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry) squadrons (Kenyon, 33). This mobile firepower allowed cavalry to engage enemy machine guns in firefights. For example, when the 7th Dragoon Guards came under fire from German machine guns near Longueval on 14th July 1916, their own machine gun section knocked out the German guns (Kenyon, 60).

Although cavalry regiments mostly depended on firepower, changes in technology and tactics made cavalry charges more viable in some circumstances. From the medieval period into the nineteenth century the best way for infantry to resist a cavalry charge was to stand still in a very tight formation, because the horses would usually stop or turn away from an apparently solid object as long as the infantry had the confidence to stand firm. The massive firepower on early twentieth century battlefields made such close formations suicidal. When infantry dispersed to protect themselves from artillery and machine guns, they also made themselves more vulnerable to cavalry charges. On 14 July 1916 some German infantry were dispersed in a field near High Wood, sheltering in shell craters. This was the best way to protect themselves from artillery, which was the most likely threat, but they were charged by a squadron of the 7th Dragoon Guards, which had pushed through a gap in the German front line. Of these German infantry, 16 were killed by lances, 32 captured and the rest ran away (Kenyon, 60).

Rapid firing artillery was a much bigger threat than the machine gun. The worst combat casualties for British cavalry horses happened when their riders had dismounted to defend positions which were then shelled by the Germans, as at Monchy-le-Preux in April 1917 (Kenyon, 136). The increasing quantity and quality of allied artillery forced the Germans to abandon linear trenches and switch to defence in depth by the spring of 1917. In this system the front line consisted of a network of outposts rather than continuous trenches, designed to break up attacks gradually and funnel them into killing zones where they could be counter-attacked by reserves. Because the defences were more dispersed there was more room for cavalry to manoeuvre. Cavalry and infantry were able to employ fire and movement tactics which involved one unit suppressing an enemy position with its fire while another unit moved around its flank. Kenyon points out that these tactics had been in the Cavalry Training manual since 1912 (Kenyon, 109-10). When the allies broke through the Hindenburg Line in the autumn of 1918 and began advancing more rapidly, cavalry played a vital role in maintaining contact with the retreating Germans (Kenyon, 269).

Opportunities to use cavalry effectively in set-piece attacks were often missed because of failures in command, control and communication. While Kenyon rehabilitates the cavalry, he is critical of Cavalry Corps and its commander, Kavanagh. Having the cavalry divisions in their own Corps under GHQ complicated the chain of command, delayed the transmission of orders and intelligence, and made it hard to co-ordinate cavalry attacks with infantry and artillery. Cavalry divisions worked better when they were integrated into infantry corps attack plans but with the divisional commander free to use his own initiative to reach his objectives. There was also a pressing need for more cavalry squadrons to be attached to infantry divisions and corps for reconnaissance. Kavanagh was perhaps not well suited to command of a corps. His aggressive tendencies served him well as a brigade commander, but were directed at his subordinates more than the enemy once he was a lieutenant-general. The chain of command through Cavalry Corps HQ gave him too many opportunities to interfere with plans and overrule his divisional commanders, who were better placed to know what was going on at the front. Cavalry Corps also lacked the logistical infrastructure and heavy artillery which were found in infantry corps.

Despite all the problems, when cavalry were used effectively they were able to double the depth of “bite and hold” operations. Unfortunately, cavalry tended to be wrongly perceived as obsolete by people who didn’t understand them. The prejudiced opinions of a few tank officers have had a disproportionate influence on historians of the First World War. Tanks played a useful role in some battles, but they were much slower than cavalry. Wheeled armoured cars could move faster than tanks on good going but often got stuck in the mud. These problems weren’t effectively solved until the 1930s, when the British Army rapidly mechanized because horses genuinely were becoming obsolete. Erik Lund continues the story over at Bench Grass, with a look at mounted warfare and the development of the armoured division…

After yet more digging for evidence of horse collisions I’ve found some new examples and more sources for some that I already knew about. Maybe in a perfect world I wouldn’t need to do this because everyone would just accept that shock charges are a stupid idea (as I’ve argued in lots of blog posts before, although I’ve changed my mind about some of the details), but maybe a world in which everyone accepted things without evidence wouldn’t really be all that perfect. I’m increasingly aware that old arguments against shock (eg John Keegan in The Face of Battle) are just as prone to woolly thinking, special pleading and vague appeals to “common sense” as the arguments for it. Instead of appealing to the authority of one historian’s common sense to disprove another historian’s common sense I need to appeal to the authority of science and real-world examples. Speculation about what “would” happen looks pretty worthless next to video footage of what did happen. In any case I find this research interesting and fun (despite the fact that it focuses on horrible things happening to horses and people!).

First, a new one that I haven’t mentioned before. Thursday 16 June 1994 (ladies’ day) at Royal Ascot. In the fifth race (the Ribblesdale Stakes), Papago ridden by Mick Kinane was trailing the field at the furlong post when a drunk spectator (James Florey) ran across course. The horse ran into him, knocked him down and rolled over, unseating the jockey. Although horse and jockey ended up on the floor they weren’t injured. Florey was taken to hospital. Initial reports said that his condition was serious, and he was later said to have suffered cuts and bruises, but apparently the only long-term result of the incident was that he was warned off British racecourses for five years by the Jockey Club.

YouTube has BBC footage of the accident in slow motion looking down the course, which gives a good view of what happened. It looks like the horse saw the spectator coming in from his right and tried to duck out to the left but this just kept him going towards the spectator who hadn’t seen the horse and carried on running straight across the track. The horse hit him and tripped over head first. There are also a couple of reports in The Independent from 17 June and 9 September.

A weird thing about this one is that I must have known about it at the time but I’d completely forgotten about it. I was really into racing at that time, watched it on TV whenever I could, and bought the Racing Post quite frequently. I even went to Ascot the day after the accident – I was there when Lochsong won the King’s Stand Stakes. And this was just after I’d started work on my undergraduate dissertation, which was all about cavalry, so it’s not like I wasn’t primed to look out for collisions. It just shows that memories are unreliable.

Churchill Downs, Kentucky, 26 April 2009. During an exercise period at the Kentucky Derby meeting, Doctor Rap unseated his rider and galloped into Raspberry Kiss, who was standing on the track. Raspberry Kiss was knocked over and was later put down because of a broken pelvis (or possibly died of shock just before she was due to be put down – reports are contradictory); Doctor Rap fell on top of her and suffered a bone bruise which will probably stop him from racing again. I tried to find out about this accident last year but things got confusing because many news reports got the names of one or both horses wrong! Thanks to the Thoroughbred Database, which gives pedigrees for thoroughbred horses, I’ve confirmed the correct names of the horses:

• Raspberry Kiss (USA) foaled 2007, by Champali (USA), out of Lucky Sheikh (USA)
• Doctor Rap (USA) foaled 2006, by Smarty Jones (USA), out of Carly’s Crown (USA)

Some sources gave the names as Dr Rap and Raspberry Miss, but there are no records of any thoroughbred racehorses with these names.

NBC Chicago has a video of the accident which gives a good view of what happened. Doctor Rap approached Raspberry Kiss from behind and hit her left side. She fell and rolled over, throwing her jockey off. Doctor Rap came down on top of her and neither horse could get up. They are still lying on the ground at the end of the video, over 30 seconds after the impact. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) and New York Daily News give reports of the accident which seem to have the facts straight.

Prescott Downs, Arizona, 26 August 2000. I’ve written about this one before but now I have some reports from the Prescott Daily Courier from 30 November 2000 and16 July 2003 giving reliable details. This is the one where Pacific Wind unseated his rider, galloped the wrong way around the track, and collided head on with Lot O Love, ridden by Stacey Burton. Both horses were knocked over and killed, and Burton was in coma for 23 days and suffered permanent brain damage. That’s what happens when you maximize the shock of impact.

Finally, I came across a YouTube video of an accident in Turkey. I haven’t been able to find any background information about this, and it’s not likely that I will because there isn’t much to go on. It seems to be some kind of display related to the history of the Ottomans. The grey horse gallops into the black horse which is standing still. The grey is knocked over and doesn’t get up. I’d guess it probably had to be put down. The video shows horse and rider lying on the ground for nearly two minutes after the collision, and at the end they don’t look like they’re going to get up and walk away. The black horse did walk away and doesn’t seem to be too badly hurt. Because the accident is a long way from the camera, and the quality of the video isn’t too good, it’s hard to see exactly what happened. It looks like the black horse probably regained its balance, but it’s very clear that its rider was knocked off very suddenly. I don’t think anyone could have sat on through that.

So, more proof that crashing horses into each other, or into people, is a bad idea. Don’t do it kids…

David Lawrence’s The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 is the most expensive book I’ve ever bought. At £118 it was more than twice the previous record holder, Barbara Donagan’s War In England, but I really need it and it’s not in any of the libraries I can borrow books from. It turned out to be worth reading because it’s really good and vindicates some of the things I’ve written about drill books and cavalry tactics.

Lawrence draws on a lot of recent work about print culture to show the links between military theory and practice. Although he doesn’t use the phrase “communication circuit”, he does pay a lot of attention to the people (well, men mostly, although Christine de Pizan does get a mention) who wrote, printed, sold, bought, owned, read, used and commented on military manuals. That there were so many military books suggests that there was enough demand to make printing them commercially viable.

The first two chapters set the scene by giving an overview of English military culture in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries. Lawrence builds on the work of people like Mark Fissel and David Trim which shows that England was not isolated, peaceful or militarily backward in this period. Many English professional soldiers served on the continent, especially in the Netherlands. Lawrence adds to this picture by showing that books were an important part of the military profession. The insult “paper soldiers” was applied selectively to those who either lacked practical experience or were disliked for some other reason. It took combat experience and book learning to make a complete soldier. One was not considered an adequate substitute for the other. Lawrence shows that books were an important part of the military circles which revolved around the Earl of Leicester, the Vere brothers, and Henry Prince of Wales. The multi-talented John Dee was heavily involved in this culture. He was interested in fortifications and sieges, had many military books in his library, and was a tutor to the Earl of Leicester.

In 1607 Jacob de Gheyn published the first ever drill book to include step by step engravings of the postures for pikemen and musketeers. Gervase Markham, not known for originality, became the first author to use copies de Gheyn’s engravings in an English drill book. Although professional soldiers considered books to be important, the English militia was slow to catch on. The first printed drill instructions were not issued until 1623. Infantry were the main users of drill books in the first half of the 17^th century. Lawrence has identified 94 military books published in England after 1603 and before the outbreak of civil war in 1642, of which 41 covered infantry combat. Many of these were written by experienced soldiers. They were based on practical experience, and in turn influenced the practice of those who used them. The Honourable Artillery Company in London was at the centre of English military culture. Company members were highly proficient in infantry drill and several of them wrote books on the subject. Nearly all of the infantry drill books published in England before the Civil Wars followed de Gheyn in describing Dutch drill. The newer Swedish drill developed by Gustavus Adolphus in the 1630s appears to have had very little influence in England before 1642. This backs up everyone who says that Prince Rupert was wrong to insist on Swedish infantry formations at Edgehill, and that the Earl of Lindsey was right to defend the Dutch drill which would have been more familiar to English soldiers.

Things could hardly have been more different for cavalry. Of the 94 early Stuart military books only one, Cruso’s Militarie instructions for the cavallrie, was solely about cavalry. A few more covered cavalry as well as infantry, but these were a tiny minority. None of them bore much relation to reality. Gervase Markham is well known as a prolific hack who would publish ill-informed opinions about anything if there was any money in it. Although he had some military experience, it apparently did not inform his drill books, which were mostly copied from other books. They included obsolete and useless formations taken from ancient history which were almost certainly not used by early-modern cavalry. Lawrence seems to have cleared up some of the confusion over Cruso’s biography. Although he served in the Norfolk militia, he almost certainly hadn’t served overseas and probably had no combat experience. His book was an academic work which mostly copied from and commented on other books. It devoted too much space to ancient history and other obsolete things, such as heavy lancers. Despite this, his book was quite popular and often recommended, perhaps because there was nothing else available. Robert Ward also lacked combat experience, copied from other authors, and included obsolete ancient formations. Lawrence does consider Ward to be better than Markham, and believes that his book was reasonably consistent. I think that a careful reading of Ward reveals some serious inconsistencies, probably as a result of carelessly copying bits from multiple sources, but this isn’t a major point as I think we both agree that Ward’s work was unrealistic.

John Vernon, who published a new cavalry drill book in 1644, was different in that his work was more practical and might have been based on personal experience. Lawrence repeats the story that Vernon was a parliamentarian cavalry officer but gives no reference. I’m a bit sceptical because I’ve never seen any definite evidence of an officer by this name. He certainly didn’t hold the rank of captain or above in Essex’s or Manchester’s army. The best John Tincey could show was that there might have been another Captain Vernon in addition to the better documented Captain Francis Vernon, treasurer of Essex’s army. Lawrence points out that some parts of Vernon’s book are derived from Cruso and others, but suggests that the original parts are probably fairly realistic. The biggest weakness of the cavalry chapter is that it doesn’t really compare theory with practice. There are no detailed quotes from eyewitness accounts of battles. Instead Lawrence relies on some lazy clichés, using the phrase “decayed serving men and tapsters” not once but twice. At least he doesn’t buy into the myth of shock. Although he sometimes uses the word “shock” he seems to mean sword fighting rather than “equine battering rams”.

The shortage of cavalry drill books leaves space for a look at a wider selection of horsemanship manuals. The increasing popularity of haute ecole/dressage/manege in the late 16^th century was regarded with suspicion by English soldiers and military theorists because they thought it would distract from more warlike pursuits such as jousting. Citing many modern and early-modern authorities, Lawrence concludes that manege would have had little military value. I’d say that it might have been marginally useful in the close combat between individuals and small groups which usually ensued if neither side ran away during a cavalry charge, but very few horses and men would have had the necessary training. Even the gentleman Sir Richard Bulstrode had to admit that he couldn’t control his horse at Powicke Bridge.

(There’s also a chapter on sieges which I haven’t read, but it’s probably good.)

One thing that slightly annoys me is that, like too many historians, Lawrence uses the word “evolution” to mean gradual change rather than random variation and natural selection. Maybe it’s just my scientific pedantry, or maybe it’s Darwin’s fault for borrowing an existing word instead of making up a new one, but I wish they wouldn’t do it. To me evolution versus revolution is a false dichotomy.

Overall this is a really good book. It’s much more sophisticated than Barbara Donagan’s work on drill books. Lawrence has not assumed that drill books either were or were not related to practice, but has worked hard to find evidence and considered different possibilities. His conclusion that infantry drill books were closely related to practice and that cavalry drill books were not blows away the false dichotomy of sceptics versus enthusiasts and shows that things were more complicated than anyone previously suggested. Because of the outrageous price I can’t really recommend that you rush out and buy it, but if you’re interested in early-modern military history or print culture it’s worth getting out of the library if they’ve got it.

The 350th anniversary of the death of Oliver Cromwell is coming up soon (even if you’re pedantic enough to commemorate it on 3rd September Old Style it’s not that far off!) so Ted Vallance is organizing a one-off Cromwell themed blog carnival. It’s probably no surprise that I’ve decided to look at Cromwell’s early career as a cavalry officer in the First Civil War. Cromwell is more famous for becoming commander of the New Model Army, and then Lord Protector. Although these things didn’t happen until much later they have seriously skewed perceptions of Cromwell’s military career from 1642-46. For a long time there was a strong Whiggish tendency to look for signs of future greatness in his earlier actions (much as I love C. H. Firth he was one of the major offenders here). This hasn’t been helped by Cromwell’s own self-mythologizing or parliamentarian/Independent propaganda in the Thomason Tracts. I’m going to try to disregard all that and compare Cromwell as a cavalry commander with one of his contemporaries, Sir William Balfour. By 1644 Cromwell and Balfour had similar rank and responsibilities, but Balfour didn’t go on to be Lord Protector and so has been largely forgotten.

[I wrote this off the top of my head and never got round to checking all the facts or putting in references. It doesn’t matter too much because it’s mostly just about my personal opinion, but be aware that some of it might be wrong. The best source for Balfour is Edward Furgol’s article in the DNB]

Perceptions of Cromwell’s early military career have been very heavily influenced by two famous but non-contemporary quotes.

First, this generalization from Clarendon:

And that difference was observed shortly from the beginning of the war, in the discipline of the king’s troops, and of those which marched under the command of Cromwell, (for it was only under him, and had never been notorious under Essex or Waller,) that, though the king’s troops prevailed in the charge, and routed those they charged, they never rallied themselves again in order, nor could be brought to make a second charge again the same day: which was the reason, that they had not an entire victory at Edge-hill: whereas Cromwell’s troops, if they prevailed, or though they were beaten, and routed, presently rallied again, and stood in good order, till they received new orders.

Too many people have taken this as objective truth even though Clarendon is notoriously unreliable. He only ever witnessed one battle (Edgehill) and never saw Cromwell in action. He was also very hostile to Prince Rupert. In fact the situation Clarendon describes only happened at Edgehill and Naseby. Royalist cavalry did re-form for a second charge at Hopton Heath, Roundway Down, and Marston Moor. Furthermore Malcolm Wanklyn points out that the cavalry charge which Cromwell directed against the royalist foot at Naseby was carried out mainly by reserves which had not been engaged with the enemy horse. Sir Charles Lucas did the same thing at Marston Moor, and Sir William Balfour did it Edgehill.

Second, this from Cromwell himself (from Carlyle’s letters and speeches):

At my first going out into this engagement, I saw their men were beaten at every hand; I did indeed, 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. This is very true that I tell you, God knows I lie not. 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, younger sons, and persons of quality : do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be enabled to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage, and resolution in them?

We should be suspicious of this because it actually comes from a speech made in 1657. The main purpose of the speech was to explain why he didn’t want to be king, but there’s a strong element of self-justification. Malcolm Wanklyn recently showed that Cromwell told self-justifying lies about the Second Newbury campaign after the event (see this post). I think this speech falls into the same category. It certainly isn’t true that Essex’s cavalry were “beaten at every hand” even early in the war. There isn’t much surviving evidence of the social status of cavalry troopers on either side. Essex’s troops certainly did contain some servants, but they also contained some gentlemen. Cromwell’s apparent admiration for the qualities of gentlemen and their sons here is directly at odds with another famous quote from a letter he wrote in 1643:

I had rather have a plain russet-coated Captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call “a Gentleman” and is nothing else.

This isn’t intended to be lazy iconoclastic revisionism. I think Cromwell was good at his job, but other men had similar jobs and were also good at them. Sir William Balfour, an experienced professional soldier, was appointed Lieutenant-General of Horse in the Earl of Essex’s army in 1642. He was also colonel of a horse regiment and captain of a troop of heavily armoured cuirassiers (if the folk etymology that I discussed here carried any weight then Balfour’s men would have had more right to be called Ironsides than Cromwell’s). Balfour was officially subordinate to the General of Horse, the Earl of Bedford, but it’s generally reckoned that Bedford was more of a figurehead and that Balfour did the real work. In any case, Bedford deserted to the King in 1643, and although he changed his mind and returned to parliament he wasn’t trusted with a military command again. Eventually Balfour succeeded him as General of Horse. (see this document for dates of Balfour’s commissions). Cromwell had no military experience at the outbreak of the First Civil War, but like many other MPs, peers and their sons, he was made captain of a horse troop in Essex’s army.

Balfour commanded the cavalry reserve at Edgehill and used it to good effect. Both of Essex’s cavalry wings ran away when they were attacked by the royalists, but all of the royalist horse, including the reserves, chased them off the field and failed to return. Meanwhile, Balfour and Sir Philip Stapleton (commander of Essex’s lifeguard – a troop composed entirely of gentlemen) turned the battle around by charging the royalist foot. What was nearly a disaster for parliament turned into a draw, thanks to Sir William Balfour and his “decayed serving men and tapsters” who were “beaten at every hand”. Cromwell played little part in this battle because he arrived late, through no fault of his own. Cavalry often had to be quartered over a wide area so that they could feed their horses, and by the time Cromwell had received his orders and arrived on the field there was not much that he could do. He acted competently by keeping his men in order and observing the situation, but there was no opportunity to do anything spectacular.

Cromwell started to gain the attention of the press in 1643. By this time he had been promoted to colonel of a regiment in the army of the Eastern Association. However, the victories which his legend was founded on were not very big or important. He successfully beat up enemy quarters at Grantham, but this was a fairly routine operation for cavalry and not something which signified a military genius at work. Although Cromwell won a tactical success at Gainsborough it had no operational value: he was forced to withdraw immediately afterwards because of the arrival of Newcastle’s whole army. In the face of overwhelming numbers he was right to retreat, and his gradual withdrawal using part of his force to cover the retreating parts shows that he knew what he was doing, but again this is something that any competent cavalry officer would have been able to do. Winceby was a bigger tactical victory, and at the operational level helped with the Eastern Association’s reconquest of Lincolnshire, but was not really in the same league as Roundway Down, Marston Moor, or Naseby.

Balfour played little part in the campaigns of 1643 as he was away, but the performance of Essex’s cavalry was by no means completely inadequate. The army was seriously short of money and horses, which limited Essex’s options. The skirmish at Chalgrove in June 1643 is often seen as a disaster for the parliamentarians, but that’s just because John Hampden was mortally wounded there. If he hadn’t been present the engagement would be much less well known. Essex’s cavalry were beaten but it was nowhere near as disastrous as Roundway Down or even Lostwithiel. The pressure from Rupert’s cavalry and the weakness of his own army, particularly the cavalry, persuaded Essex to retreat to Great Brickhill. However, Rupert didn’t have things all his own way. Earlier, on 26th March, Arthur Goodwin, a colonel of horse in Essex’s army, took out a force of cavalry to raid the countryside around Oxford. He drove away many horses and other livestock and returned to Aylesbury unopposed. This was how cavalry raids were supposed to work. Beating up quarters was a hit and run operation designed to do the maximum damage with the minimum risk. Rupert probably didn’t intend to fight a pitched battle when he set out to raid Chinnor on the night of 17th June. Although they ultimately lost, Essex’s cavalry managed to catch him and make him fight before he could get away. In August, Essex’s army was reinforced and sent to relieve Gloucester. On the way back they had to fight their way through the royalist army at First Newbury. The cavalry had mixed success in this battle. They successfully repulsed the first two royalist cavalry charges but were driven off by the third, leaving the infantry to face the enemy horse unsupported.

1644 was the year when Cromwell became really important as a soldier. Promoted to Lieutenant-General in the Eastern Association army, he was second in command to the Earl of Manchester and in charge of the army’s cavalry. Meanwhile Balfour was back and had been promoted to General of Horse under Essex, but his and Cromwell’s responsibilities would have been similar because Manchester didn’t have a General of Horse. In March 1644 Essex sent Balfour with a large force of cavalry to reinforce Waller’s army (Essex and Waller did manage to co-operate sometimes), helping to defeat Hopton’s army at Cheriton. This battle doesn’t tend to get as much attention as Cromwell’s victories, but it was another occasion when parliamentarian cavalry beat royalist cavalry.

Next we come to Marston Moor. This was one of Cromwell’s finest hours. The Eastern Association horse went head to head with Prince Rupert’s cavaliers and won. Unfortunately the ensuing rivalry between English and Scots, and Presbyterians and Independents, led to Cromwell’s contribution being overrated by his friends and underrated by his enemies. But even if he had left the field to get a wound dressed, and even if it was Leslie bringing in the reserves of Scots horse who tipped the balance, Cromwell had still done a good job. Wanklyn points out that being able to reform the cavalry for a second charge might have been a consequence of the fact that they were already at a standstill after a long hand to hand fight. It should also be remembered that Goring also re-formed his men for a second charge – otherwise Cromwell would have had no more cavalry to fight against! And Lucas kept the reserves out of the chase and directed them against the allied foot, just like Balfour had done at Edgehill and Cromwell would do at Naseby. Nevertheless, Cromwell did what a Lieutenant-General should have done and played a major role in the victory (whereas the generals of the three armies had left the field and played little part in turning things around).

The triumph of Marston Moor makes an obvious contrast with the disaster of Lostwithiel. While getting his army cut off on the Fowey peninsular didn’t do Essex’s reputation any good, it did give Balfour an opportunity to enhance his. Essex slipped away on a boat, the infantry and artillery surrendered, but the cavalry escaped. Balfour led them through the royalist lines and all the way back to Hampshire. Of course wars aren’t won by retreats, but this was an impressive achievement which deserves more recognition.

In the autumn of 1644 the armies of Essex, Manchester, and Waller concentrated at Newbury, probably hoping to destroy the king’s army once and for all. This was the first time that Cromwell and Balfour had operated together since Edgehill, but now they were roughly equals. Both were assigned to Waller’s force which was to march around the royalist position and attack from the rear. Second Newbury turned out to be a disappointment, and the ensuing recriminations have given an even more distorted view than the rivalry over Marston Moor. Therefore it’s very hard to say what went wrong or whose fault (if anyone) it was. What seems reasonably certain is that Cromwell’s cavalry didn’t achieve much on the day, while Balfour had better success on the other wing. But ultimately the attack failed to achieve enough before darkness fell, and the royalists escaped. Wanklyn hints that Cromwell and his cavalry were in a position to detect the escape but failed to do anything. I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt as it might not have been obvious that the whole royalist army was escaping, or that letting them go would have been a bad thing. After a hard and indecisive fight, it might have seemed attractive to give the enemy a golden bridge. Whatever really happened, it now seems fairly clear that Cromwell lied about many things afterwards and that these lies have distorted historians’ interpretations of the events.

The outcome of the dispute was the Self Denying Ordinance and the creation of the New Model Army. When it came to selecting a cavalry leader for the new army, parliament had a problem. Everyone who had held the rank of Lieutenant-General or General of Horse was either barred from serving or declined to serve. Fairfax was to be General of the army. Cromwell, Sir Arthur Haselrig, and Sir Philip Stapleton were MPs. Balfour and John Middleton were Scots. Sir Richard Grenville had deserted to the king. The Earl of Bedford was a peer, and had deserted to the king, and was possibly never any good in the first place. Of the experienced foreign mercenaries who had been Commissary General or Quartermaster General, only Vermuyden made it into the New Model, and he resigned before long.

The post of Lieutenant-General was left open until June 1645 – at Naseby Cromwell wasn’t even officially a member of the New Model at all. He was granted a temporary exemption from the Self Denying Ordinance and was sent by the Committee of Both Kingdoms to reinforce Fairfax with some cavalry raised in the Eastern Association. He arrived just before Naseby and was given command of the right wing. His attack routed the royalist Northern horse, and he still had enough reserves in hand to attack the royalist foot. Weight of numbers and the experience of the troopers must have given him an advantage, but his experience and leadership qualities probably counted for something. Ireton on the left also outnumbered Rupert, and his men were no less experienced than the veterans in Cromwell’s first line, but he had only been appointed Commissary General that day. He had never commanded a whole wing before, and until the formation of the New Model had probably never commanded a regiment in a battle.

Overall Cromwell and Balfour were both unusual. They achieved a rank and level of responsibility which few men held. They were both good at their jobs, but neither had a perfect record. Cromwell did well at Winceby, Marston Moor and Naseby, but less well at Second Newbury. Balfour did well at Edgehill, Cheriton, and Second Newbury, but was out of action in 1643. Cromwell deserves a reputation as a good soldier, but he was not unique, and his military record did not make it inevitable or obvious that he would become Lord Protector. Sir William Balfour had an equally good military record and deserves more attention.

Back in December 2006 I posted about cavalry charges. Inspired by John Keegan and Frank Tallett, I argued that the idea that cavalry horses crashed into each other in a “shock” charge was completely spurious because horses won’t willingly crash into a solid object, and if they could be made to the outcome would be disastrous because they would be killed or seriously injured by the impact. Physics and common sense are both on my side, but empirical evidence of horse collisions is very difficult to get. The best I could do back then was the footage of Anmer hitting Emily Davison in the 1913 Derby.

Now Peter at That’s Pretty Lame has found exactly what I needed: YouTube footage of two horses colliding head-on at a full gallop. According to the commentary this happened at Prescott Downs, Arizona on 26 August 2000. Both horses were killed and jockey Stacy Burton suffered severe brain injury. I shouldn’t be pleased about such a tragedy, but it’s the perfect empirical evidence to prove my point.

If only I’d thought of searching YouTube for horse collisions, but I assumed they were so rare that I wouldn’t find one. In fact that isn’t the only one. This is another – it looks like the collision is at a slower speed than the Prescott Downs accident but both horses are brought down. In this one the collision is at a very slow canter – looks like no-one was hurt but the riders only just stayed on. This is about as close as you can get to knocking the enemy out of the way with your momentum, but I think it supports my point that the effects of a collision are equally bad for both parties (just as Isaac Newton predicted – who’d have thought it?). So the bay barged past the grey and kept going, but if this was a cavalry charge I don’t think you could really say that the bay won. Both sides would be disordered and neither would have gained an advantage.

The word “Ironsides” is variously associated with Oliver Cromwell, his cavalry regiment, and even English Civil War cavalry in general. The consensus now seems to be that “Old Ironsides” was originally a nickname of Cromwell himself (I’m not sure why he was called that or when it started). It seems likely that “Ironsides” later spread to his regiment, then to all the cavalry under his command as Lieutenant-General of horse, then to parliamentarian cavalry in general, then to civil war cavalry in general. For example, “Ironsides” was used as the title of John Tincey’s book about civil war cavalry.

There was another folk etymology which suggested that Cromwell’s cavalry were known as “Ironsides” because they wore heavy armour. In the classic Cromwell’s Army, C. H. Firth took down T. S. Baldock for repeating the myth that Cromwell’s cavalry were heavily armoured cuirassiers in contrast to Prince Rupert’s supposedly unarmoured light cavalry. As Firth says, the vast majority of cavalry on both sides during the First Civil War were equipped as arquebusiers, and no new research in the last hundred years or so has changed that. I had assumed that the myth belonged to the 19th century but today I discovered that it was much older.

Mercurius Politicus posted about The Perfect Politician, a biography of Cromwell published in February 1660 (you can probably tell from the title that it isn’t exactly unbiased!). I downloaded it from EEBO to see what it had to say about Cromwell’s military career in the First Civil War. The first 40 years of his life are skimmed over in the first paragraph and the author soon cuts to the exciting bits (this is the kind of biography I like), starting with the Long Parliament. On page 3 we get to the start of the war:

No sooner had the Drum and Trumpet summoned the Nation to Arms, but Cromwel was alarmed, who (tam Marte quam Mercurio) neglecting the softness of a Sedentary, betook himself to a Martial employment, and immediately raised a Troop of Horse for Parliament among his neighbours, at his own charge.

I’m not sure whether it was raised entirely at his own charge, but Cromwell was captain of a troop of arquebusiers in Essex’s army in 1642. The following year he left to become a colonel of horse in the new Eastern Association army, taking his troop with him to form the nucleus of a new regiment. This is covered on page 5:

Being thus blest with a Troop, he augments his Strength, making it up a thousand Horse; whose Riders being stout and valiant, he took a course to preserve, by Arming them cap-a-pe, after the manner of the German Crabats: whence in those days he was commonly stiled Iron-sides.

Cromwell’s regiment was over 1,000 strong by 1644, but it didn’t achieve this strength from the start as some troops weren’t formed until later in the year. What’s really interesting here is the next bit. This is the very myth that Baldock repeated: that Cromwell’s men were heavy armoured cuirassiers (“cap-a-pe” means “from head to foot” and usually implied full, or at least three-quarter, plate armour). Even more interesting is the suggestion that it was because of this that Cromwell himself was nicknamed “Ironsides”.

I was initially surprised that this misunderstanding could have occurred so soon after the events, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. The more I think about it, the more I realise that it’s naive to think that the closer in time a source is to the events it describes the more accurate it must be. Just look the things lazy journalists write about computer games right now! The Perfect Politician was written 17 years after Cromwell’s regiment was formed, which is actually quite a long time. Long enough for memories to get vague and myths to grow up.

The author, known only as L. S., might have written other pamphlets in the early 1640s (there are a couple of other possibles on EEBO) but with such a pseudonym it’s difficult to tell if the author was actually the same person. Mercurius Politicus is interested in identifying the author of The Perfect Politician and came out with a couple of possibilities based on the custom of pseudonymous authors using the last letters of their names. I now think it’s unlikely to be Nathaniel Fiennes, just because I can’t imagine him making a mistake about the armour of Cromwell’s troopers. Fiennes was a captain of horse in Essex’s army at the same time as Cromwell, and would almost certainly have known the difference between arquebusiers and cuirassiers. The only regiment known to be fully composed of cuirassiers was Haselrigge’s lobsters, and they attracted a lot of comment, presumably because they were so unusual.

On the other hand, maybe Fiennes did believe that Cromwell’s men were cuirassiers. It could be a false memory, or perhaps he never actually saw Cromwell’s Eastern Association regiment. He was in Bristol at the time when Cromwell was raising his regiment, and following his surrender and court martial he retired from public life (the DNB speculates that he might have gone overseas some time between 1643 and 1645). The Perfect Politician suggests that Cromwell didn’t arm his men as cuirassiers until he raised a regiment, which implies 1643 at the earliest. Or maybe the author had some reason for using the myth without necessarily believing that it was true. Maybe it just makes a good story.

Now I want to know more about this myth. Can it be found earlier? Was it common in civil war tracts? When was Cromwell first called “Ironsides”, what was the real reason for it, and when did people start suggesting other reasons?There’s plenty of scope for more research here if only I had the time. They say that Myspace is addictive, but if you’re interested in 17th century England, EEBO is potentially more addictive!

1. Charles Harding Firth, Cromwell’s Army (Methuen: London, 1962).
2. Henry Fletcher and William Raybould, The perfect politician, or, A full view of the life and action (military and civil) of O. Cromwel whereunto is added his character, and a compleat catalogue of all the honours conferr’d by him on several persons. (London : Printed by J. Cottrel, for William Roybould … and Henry Fletcher …, 1660., 1660).
3. John Tincey, Ironsides (Osprey Publishing, March 2002).

I’d like to welcome The Wapenshaw to the military history blogosphere. Rich will be taking a critical look at late medieval and early modern warfare, and combining military history with his interest in philosophy. His first post debates some of the issues raised by my posts on cavalry charges and raises some more questions about the meaning of the word “shock”.

Previously in cavalry charges: I got as far as what happened when cavalry charged each other. In the English Civil War the two most common outcomes were: one side or the other ran away before they got near each other; or they stopped and fought hand to hand. Hand to hand combat usually resulted in one side giving up and running away sooner or later. This post is about what happened after one side had started running away.

In his history of the wars, the Earl of Clarendon made a very famous generalisation, which I was going to quote but I can’t find a copy of it because Google books has some volumes of his work on full view but not the one I need. His generalisation was that the royalist cavalry usually made successful charges which caused the enemy to run away, but after that they always failed to reform for a second charge, whereas parliamentarian cavalry were more disciplined and could always reform. Therefore royalist cavalry were a one shot weapon which couldn’t do much more than negate their opposite numbers, whereas Cromwell’s cavalry were able to help deal with enemy infantry once the cavalry were out of the way. Some, but by no means all, historians have taken Clarendon’s view too literally. As a summary of what happened at the battles of Edgehill (23 October 1642) and Naseby (14 June 1645), it’s reasonably accurate, and those two battles were arguably among the royalists’ most significant failures. However, most other battles were different.

There were several occasions when royalist cavalry did manage to reform and attack the enemy infantry. At Roundway Down (13 July 1643) the royalist cavalry played the leading role in wiping out Waller’s army. Although their initial charge had little effect, they got the better of the parliamentarian cavalry in the ensuing hand to hand fight. The royalists pursued but then came back to deal with the infantry. This resulted in a stand off because the cavalry couldn’t get through the infantry’s pikes, but the infantry couldn’t move without getting cut up by the cavalry. When the royalist infantry arrived from Devizes, the parliamentarian infantry surrendered.

The royalists suffered one of their most serious defeats at Marston Moor (2 July 1644) but their defeat had nothing to do with a failure of the cavalry to reform after a successful charge. The right wing under Byron put up a hard fight (again neither side was routed during the charge, and the issue was decided by close combat) but eventually ran. As might be expected, Cromwell kept his cavalry under control and they were able to make a second charge later. However, the circumstances of that charge do not support Clarendon’s generalisation at all. After Goring’s cavalry on the royalist left had routed Fairfax’s cavalry with their first charge, some of them pursued and some of them successfully charged the infantry in the parliamentarian centre. After this they reformed in the position initially occupied by Fairfax, to face the second charge from Cromwell, who had brought his cavalry into the position that Goring had started in. Goring’s men were defeated in this second charge, leaving the royalist infantry isolated like Waller’s foot at Roundway Down (although in this case, some of them fought to the death rather than surrender).

Hardly any of the major battles in the First Civil War fit Clarendon’s model of royalist cavalry throwing away their initial success by not reforming soon enough. In every other large engagement that I can think of the royalist cavalry either did reform after their initial success, or didn’t have any initial success to throw away. The Earl of Northampton’s cavalry pursued the defeated parliamentarian cavalry from Hopton Heath (19 March 1643) and then came back to attack the infantry. At Cheriton (29 March 1644), Hopton’s cavalry lost their fight against the parliamentarian cavalry (all drawn from Essex’s and Waller’s armies, so we can even account for it by the genius of Cromwell!). At First Newbury (20 September 1643) the royalist cavalry were on hand to attack Essex’s infantry several times, although without much success.

Edgehill fits Clarendon’s view perfectly, and it might not be a coincidence that this was the only battle he is known to have witnessed himself. The royalist cavalry on both wings routed Essex’s cavalry wings very easily. All of the royalist cavalry, including the reserves who were not intended to take part in the first charge, went off in pursuit of the defeated enemy. It’s likely that the inexperience of both men and horses made the wings difficult to keep under control. If the charge turned into a stampede it would have been difficult to pull up the horses. Men who hadn’t been in a major battle before would have been easily confused in the chaos (see Ludlow’s and Bulstrode’s accounts of Powicke Bridge in Cavalry Charges: Practice for some examples). There might also have been an element of material self interest as some of the royalists went to plunder the baggage train, killing some of the wagoners and setting fire to their wagons. While the royalist cavalry failed to exploit their initial success by reforming and turning on Essex’s infantry, there were up to two regiments of parliamentarian cavalry which had been kept in reserve and which were able to attack the royalist infantry in the rear. What could have been an instant win for the King turned into a draw, and led to a long war.

With this experience behind them, it’s surprising that Rupert and his cavalry apparently made the same mistake at Naseby. It’s even more surprising when you consider that this was the first time since Edgehill that it had happened. While the royalist left was eventually defeated after hand to hand combat with Cromwell’s wing, the right, led by Rupert in person, routed Ireton’s wing in the first charge, pursued them off the field, and then went to attack the New Model Army’s baggage. This doesn’t even look like a case of Rupert letting his men get out of control, as at least one account of the battle says that Rupert himself summoned the train to surrender. I often get impatient with historians whose analysis is based on an assumption that people in the past must have always acted rationally. People do stupid things. Prince Rupert made some decisions which look questionable with the benefit of hindsight. Maybe he shouldn’t have decided to fight at Marston Moor, for example. However, I find it difficult to believe that he would have been as stupid is sometimes implied. I suggested an alternative interpretation in my PhD thesis.

It could be that there was method in the apparent madness of leaving the infantry alone at both Edgehill and Naseby. Attacking the baggage train might not have been all about plunder for personal gain. If my PhD has any value, it emphasises just how vital horses were to the war efforts of both sides, and how difficult it could be to get enough of them. Taking away all the draught horses from the enemy camp and destroying their wagons would have been a crippling blow. Without sufficient transport it would be impossible to move artillery, ammunition, and other supplies. Horses brought away by soldiers would have been their prize goods, but it was usually possible for armies to buy prize horses at less than the market price, and sometimes they were used to replace lost before soldiers could claim them. It’s interesting to note that when Essex’s artillery surrendered at Lostwithiel (2 September 1644), the infantry were disarmed and allowed to march away, but the royalists kept the artillery, including all of its draught horses. When Rupert went for the baggage, he might have been thinking in terms of immobilising the New Model train and gaining more horses for the royalist train. If he was, hindsight suggests that he made the wrong decision. However, if he had brought his men back to the battlefield and reformed them for a second charge against Cromwell, as Goring had done at Marston Moor, he might just have been defeated, as Goring had been at Marston Moor.

In the previous posts I discussed the historiography and theory of cavalry charges in the English Civil War. Now I’m going to try to get at what really happened. What did cavalry try to do in practice? How successful was it? How did it work, or why didn’t it work?

(Warning: this one is even longer than yesterday’s.)

I can’t cover every battle in detail in one post, so I’ll be picking a few examples. Although I have thoroughly investigated the primary sources, that was over 10 years ago and I can’t remember everything. For now I’ve just picked out a few accounts which best illustrate the points I’m trying to make. Therefore you should be suspicious, because it’s possible that the sources could be interpreted in different ways or contradicted by other sources. I haven’t attempted a comprehensive account of how tactics developed over the course of the First Civil War or how they might have differed between armies. It has to be remembered that there was no fixed or well-defined tactical doctrine in this period, and so tactics could vary according to circumstances and individual officers. The empirical premise applies here: I’m assuming for the purposes of this discussion that the sources I’ve quoted can tell us something about the reality of the past. Most of the sources are available on EEBO or ECCO if you have access, but they are also frequently quoted in secondary works and/or available in printed editions.

I’m going to follow historiographical tradition by starting with the battle of Edgehill (23rd October 1642). This was the first major battle of the war, and is usually a central part of the narrative in which Swedish tactics easily defeat Dutch tactics, thereby proving the genius of both Prince Rupert and Gustavus Adolphus, and the stupidity of relying on firearms instead of shock. Sir Richard Bulstrode, who was in the Prince of Wales’s horse regiment on the royalist right wing, gives the impression of a stereotypically Swedish approach. After noting that the royalist cavalry were three deep, he describes Prince Rupert’s orders and how they were carried out (Sir Richard Bulstrode, Memoirs and reflections upon the reign and government of King Charles the Ist. and K. Charles the Iid, 1721, pp. 81-82):

Just before we began our March, Prince Rupert passed from one Wing to the other, giving positive Orders to the Horse, to march as close as possible, keeping their Ranks with Sword in Hand, to receive the Enemy’s Shot, without firing either Carbin or Pistoll, till we broke in amongst the Enemy, and then to make use of our Fire-Arms as need should require; which Order was punctually observed. The Enemy stayed to receive us, in the same Posture as was formerly declared; and when we came within Cannon Shot of the Enemy, they discharged at us three Pieces of Cannon from their left Wing, commanded by Sir James Ramsey; which Cannon mounted over our Troops, without doing any Hurt, except that their second Shot killed a Quarter-Master in the Rear of the Duke of York’s Troop. We soon after engaged each other, and our Dragoons on our Right beat the Enemy from the Briars, and Prince Rupert led on our right Wing so furiously, that, after a small Resistance, we forced their left Wing, and were Masters of their Cannon;

There are always question marks over memoirs and memories but I generally believe what Bulstrode says. His is the most detailed description of orders given to cavalry during the First Civil War. The fact that he remembered Prince Ruperts instructions and wrote them down in his memoirs could suggest that he found them particularly unusual (cognitive psychologists call this “schema-inconsistent”; see Mixing Memory for an explanation of schematic memory). However, it’s difficult to tell whether Bulstrode found Rupert’s orders novel because they were a break with established practice, or because Bulstrode himself had little military experience. It could be that other authors had less to say about cavalry charges because the found the details schema-irrelevant. Things are complicated because memoirs are written with the benefit of hindsight, but it could be that Bulstrode was using his former inexperience as a narrative device, constructing a plot in which he went from new recruit to veteran. And there’s always the possibility that he was adding spurious details to create a truth effect.

If we take the passage at face value, it roughly fits in with the shock myth, but on closer examination there are some significant gaps and differences. Notice that there is no mention of the cavalry being “knee to knee” or “cheek by jowl”. Rupert’s order was a more realistic “march as close as possible”. Breaking in amongst the enemy might imply a shock, but it might not. If you need to use your firearms when you get in among the enemy, that implies that they haven’t been swept away by an “equine battering ram” and are still a potential threat.

The thing I find most striking is that the pace of the charge is not explicitly mentioned. Was it at a trot, canter, or gallop? Bulstrode is not unusual in this respect, because hardly any accounts of civil war battles make any mention of the pace used by cavalry. This has not stopped later writers from making assumptions. When I was involved in wargaming, the orthodox view among wargamers was that royalists always galloped and parliamentarians always trotted. While C. H. Firth did not believe that “modern” (ie late 19th/early 20th century) shock tactics were in use during the civil wars, and cautioned against reading too much into imperfect records, he was convinced that charges were not “as rapid as a modern cavalry charge. At its fastest the pace seemed to have been a trot rather than a gallop” (Cromwell’s Army, p. 142 in the 1962 reprint). Wanklyn and Jones are equally convinced that the Swedish tactics called for a full gallop: “They would advance towards the enemy at a steadily quickening pace, and 50 yards from contact the flank squadrons would raise the pace to a full gallop and charge home” (p. 34). Curiously they cite Cruso as one of the sources for this, even though there is little evidence of any new Swedish ideas in his work.

It seems reasonably clear that by 1658 English cavalry were using the trot while the French were using the canter, and that contemporaries found this schema-inconsistent enough to remark on (see Firth, p. 142). That doesn’t necessarily tell us what happened in the 1640s. Furthermore, the ambiguity of the word “charge” (see previous post) can create problems, especially where historians are already convinced that they are going to find shock rather than firing. Cromwell once mentioned his men advancing at “a pretty round trot” (cited in Firth, p. 137) but starting at a trot doesn’t necessarily imply staying at the trot. From the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, when the concept of shock was at its strongest, cavalry were usually instructed to advance at the trot, speed up to a canter at a certain point, and only break into a full gallop towards the end of the charge. There is no proof that Cromwell was doing this in 1643, but there’s equally little proof that he wasn’t. The evidence is far too vague and ambiguous to draw any reliable conclusions. The evidence for the royalists is equally problematic. Richard Atkyns mentions charging at a gallop at Little Dean in 1643 (p. 20):

The Charge was seemingly as desperate as any I was ever in; it being to beat the Enemy from a Wall which was a Strong Breast Work, with a Gate in the middle; possest by above 200 Musqueteers, besides Horse: We were to charge down a Steep plain Hill, of above 12 score Yards in length; as good a Mark as they could wish: Our party consisting of between Two and Three Hundred Horse, not a man of them would follow us; So the Officers, about 10 or 12 of us, agreed to Gallop down in as good Order as we could, and make a desperate Charge upon them; the Enemy seeing our resolutions, never Fired at us at all, but run away;

This doesn’t look like a typical engagement for cavalry, and it could be that Atkyns remembered and wrote about galloping because it was equally schema-inconsistent. Also note the potential ambiguity the first time he uses the word “charge”. At Chewton, Atkyns was involved in a more usual fight against enemy cavalry: “when we came within 6 score of them, we mended our pace, and fell into their left Division” (p. 27). This might describe advancing at a slower pace then breaking into a gallop for the last 120 yards. Or it might not. In his account of Roundway Down, all Atkyns says about pace is: “we advanc’d a full Trot 3 deep, and kept in order” (p. 37). Really we’re clutching at straws here. That most sources say even less about the pace of the charge could suggest that it was so schema-irrelevant that nobody remembered it or considered it worth writing about.

Whatever pace Rupert’s cavalry used at Edgehill, we know that his charge was successful. It’s difficult to know what the parliamentarians were trying to do, because most of them ran away before they could do it. Sir James Ramsey, commanding the left wing, was court-martialled as a result of their failure, but found to have done nothing wrong. The report of these findings was published, and seems to be concerned with establishing Ramsey’s ideological credentials as much as his military competence, but there is not much reason to disbelieve the witnesses’ description of the action (Thomason Tracts: 669.f.6.88):

the said Sir James, having the command of the left Wing of our Horse, did so place and order the severall Squadrons of Horse of the Wing at best advantage for fight, and did place severall Rankes of Musqueteers betwixt the Squadrons of Horse, and interlarded them so well for offending of the enemy, and for defending of themselves, as could be desired, and did also lay upon the left hand of the Horse, in a hedge two or three hundred Musqueteers, for to Flanke the Front of our Horse, and give fire to the Enemies at their charging of our Horse, and all those three above named Gentlemen affirme that the said Sir James did before the Combatte exhort and entreate all the Troopes that stood thus imbattailed to stand firme yet notwithstanding all this, they affirme that at the approach of the Enemy our Troopes did discharge their long peeces afarre of, and without distance, and immediately thereafter wheeled all about, and ranne disorderly, leaving the Musqueteers to be cut in peeces by the Enemy, so did their Officers shew them the way

Interlining the cavalry with musketeers is usually associated with the Swedish school, but cavalry standing and firing is associated with the Dutch school. Ramsey himself apparently had some Swedish experience, but he said at his trial that he was following orders from his superiors:

After I had Orders from his Excellency the Lord Generall of our Army, and others my Superiours, for ordering and commanding the left Wing of the Cavallery, I did accordingly put them in Posture Defensive, and Offensive, interlining the Squadrons with a convenient number of Musqueteers, and likewise did place three hundred Musqueteers on a Hedge on the Left hand of the left Wing; which did Flanke the whole Front of the left Wing. . . . and after desiring, and heartily exhorting them to give the enemy a brave meeting, who were advancing to charge us, and commanding ours to receive them resolutely; (contrary to my expectation, and to my perpetuall regrate) ours discharged their Carbines at a long distance, and thereafter basely runne away, and that in mighty confusion

Note another use of charge meaning aiming or firing weapons. [Edit: somehow I'd seriously misquoted Ramsey, but I've fixed it now] It’s easy to take a teleological view that because of the outcome of the combat, the royalists must have chosen the right tactics and the parliamentarians the wrong ones. But at Marston Moor in 1644, things were very different. Rupert interlined his cavalry with musketeers and ordered them to wait for the enemy to advance to them, knowing that they would have to cross difficult ground. It didn’t work on the right wing, where Byron is usually blamed for advancing too soon. However, the tactic was a success on the left wing, where most of Fairfax’s cavalry, having been hampered by furze bushes and suffered casualties from the volley of musket shot, were routed by the royalist counter charge. By 1644, the royalists evidently had the experience to pull it off, but in 1642 tactical options might have been more limited. The tactics of both sides at Edgehill could be seen as attempts to work with men and horses who lacked training and experience.

Inexperience is very evident in Edmund Ludlow’s account of the skirmish at Powick Bridge in September 1642, the first time that the regular cavalry of the newly raised armies met in combat (Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, 1698, pp. 45-6 — ie the dodgy original version which was heavily altered by its editor, but I think this passage is reliable [Edit: it probably isn't because the surviving MS doesn't cover this period]):

The Body of our routed Party returned in great Disorder to Parshot, at which place our LifeGuard was appointed to quarter that Night; where, as we were marching into the Town, we discovered Horsemen riding very hard towards us with drawn Swords, and many of them without Hats, from whom we understood the Particulars of our Loss, not without Improvement, by reason of the Fear with which they were possessed, telling us, that the Enemy was hard by in pursuit of them: whereas it afterwards appeared, they came not within four Miles of that place. Our Life-Guard being for the most part Strangers to things of this nature, were much alarm’d with this Report; yet some of us unwilling to give credit to it till we were better informed, offered our selves to go out upon a further Discovery of the matter. But our Captain Sir Philip Stapylton not being then with us, his Lieutenant one Bainham, an old Souldier (a Generation of Men much cried up at that time) drawing us into a Field, where he pretended we might more advantageously charge if there should be occasion, commanded us to wheel about; but our Gentlemen not yet well understanding the difference between wheeling about, and shifting for themselves, their Backs being now towards the Enemy, whom they thought to be close in the Rear, retired to the Army in a very dishonourable manner, and the next Morning rallied at the Head-quarters, where we received but cold Welcome from the General, as we well deserved.

Ludlow was a member of the Earl of Essex’s Lifeguard. They were the best armed and best mounted unit in the army, but they apparently didn’t know what they were doing. Richard Bulstrode and his mount were similarly inexperienced at the same engagement (Bulstrode, Memoirs, p. 74):

This was the first Action I was ever in, and being upon an unruly Horse, he ran away with me amongst the Enemy, while we pursued them to the Bridge, in which Hurly I lost my Hat; but my Horse’s Courage being somewhat abated, I stopp’d him before we came to the Bridge, and so returned with our own Troops.

Standing still and firing, or quickly moving towards the enemy and fighting them at close range, were both reasonably simple concepts that inexperienced men could grasp. With the addition of dragoons and musketeers, and with obstacles in front of them (according to Lord Bernard Stuart the royalist cavalry had to cross several hedges and ditches, see Firth, p. 133), the parliamentarian tactics at Edgehill might have been expected to be more successful, but as it turned out, most of their cavalry fled.

You might have noticed that most of the examples I’ve cited so far involve one side or the other running away before the enemy gets near. That’s no accident, as like any historian I’ve selected evidence which fits with my point of view. It didn’t happen in every battle, but it was at least common enough that it can’t be ignored. Obviously if the two sides didn’t even meet, there couldn’t have been any equine battering going on, but on the other hand it could account for the growth of the shock myth. If the enemy turned and ran in the face of a charge, then cavalrymen might have believed that it was the result of a physical shock.

But if shock existed at all after the abandonment of the lance, it was purely a psychological phenomenon. Seeing a large number of horses (which weigh about half a ton each) coming towards you at any speed (a gallop might be 20 to 30 miles per hour, and even a trot could be over 10 miles per hour) would be quite intimidating. Even if they knew that a physical collision was impossible or unlikely, men might still have lost their nerve and decided to get out of the way. If drill books had any influence on practice (debatable, but let’s suppose they did) then the recurrence of Walhausen’s manoeuvre would only have increased the impression that getting out of the way was the best option. Equine psychology adds another twist, because horses are herd animals. Horses standing still and seeing another herd of horses running towards them might feel a strong urge to run in the same direction. The noise of battle might have scared some horses enough to make them bolt, causing them to gallop uncontrollably. Chris Scott and Alan Turton compared the charges at Edgehill to stampedes (Edgehill: The Battle Reinterpreted, 2004, ISBN: 1844151336). [Edit: no they didn't. I was looking for the quote I thought I remembered from this book and couldn't find it. Did someone else say it, or did I just imagine it?]

This is interesting because the things which are spuriously claimed to cause physical shock would be likely to have a big psychological impact. A solid line is more intimidating than one with gaps in it. A fast charge is more intimidating than a slow advance. Supposing you could get your cavalry galloping knee to knee it would be a very effective way of making the enemy lose their nerve. Of course I still don’t believe that it could be done, but trying to achieve it doesn’t look quite so stupid now. One of the reasons why the perfect shock charge is unattainable is the trade-off between speed and cohesion. The faster the horses go, the harder it is to keep them together and the more gaps appear in the formation. If you want to keep a closer formation you have to go slower. It’s often assumed that Prince Rupert preferred speed and Cromwell preferred cohesion, but as there’s so little evidence of how fast charges were I don’t think we can ever know for sure.

There were many times when neither side ran away. In these cases one of two things could happen, and neither of them was a head on collision between missiles or battering rams. If both sides kept going they would simply pass through each other. The difficulty of keeping a close formation, and the propensity of horses to avoid collisions with solid objects, would result in the horses steering through the gaps even if their riders wanted a shock. Sometimes the riders wanted to go through the gaps as well. After he was deserted by most of his wing at Marston Moor, Fairfax and the remainder of his men saved themselves by going straight through the royalist lines. John Keegan cites more examples of cavalry passing each other at Waterloo (Face of Battle, pp. 147-8) but it seems to have been relatively rare in the English Civil War.

The other, more common, outcome was that both sides would stop and engage in hand to hand combat. Again, Keegan finds this happening a lot at Waterloo, noting that “we are back with single combat again” (p. 149). If things got to this point, then the charge itself would have achieved nothing. Both sides had to decide to stop and fight, otherwise one side would pass through the other. “Consent — the vital precondition for single combat proper — is thus made to appear equally necessary if cavalry formations were to fight each other in any effective fashion. When they did so, of course, they did not fight as formations, but as individuals or small groups” (Keegan, p. 149). This is exactly what happened when Cromwell’s and Byron’s wings met at Marston Moor (as Firth points out — although he believed that shock existed in his own time he placed more emphasis on close combat in the seventeenth century). There was prolonged close combat before the royalists ran away. Similarly, at Roundway Down speed and formation had little influence as neither side lost its nerve before they met. There was a hard fight, in which Haselrigg’s cuirassiers seemed to be in their element, but eventually the parliamentarians fled.

In the light of this, Rupert’s instructions at Edgehill might not be all that shock obsessed. Breaking into the enemy could just mean moving into the gaps in their formation and engaging individuals in hand to hand combat. Reserving pistol fire until after the charge also makes sense because pistols would be much more effective in close combat than at range. If Rupert knew what he was doing then he might have hoped that the enemy would run before contact was made, but prepared to fight them if they didn’t.

This leaves us with the impression that cavalry combat was chaotic in both the ordinary and scientific sense. The outcome was wildly unpredictable. We shouldn’t ever assume that the results of battles were inevitable, or that they reflect on the competence of the men or their leaders. This is illustrated by the experience of the parliamentarian left wing at Naseby in 1645. Unlike the infantry, which had been reinforced with new conscripts, the cavalry of the New Model Army were mostly veterans. Those who had served under Manchester, with Cromwell as their Lieutenant General, had usually been successful, while many of those from Essex’s and Waller’s armies had got the better of the royalists at Cheriton. In spite of all this experience, and the confidence you might expect it to engender, and supporting fire from Okey’s dragoons, Ireton’s wing was routed by Rupert’s charge.

So, to sum up another absurdly long post, in nearly every engagement between cavalry, at least one side charged. There were three possible outcomes of a charge: one side or the other ran away before contact was made; both sides kept going and passed through each other; both sides stopped and fought hand to hand. In the first case, the charge can be considered a success for the side which didn’t run away, but in the other two cases it didn’t really do anything. There was certainly no physical shock. The idea falls down on empirical as well as rational grounds because there simply isn’t any evidence of it happening. There doesn’t seem to be much influence from pre-war drill books. A more detailed examination of battle accounts would turn up some things which agreed with some parts of the books, but there’s no sign of any coherent doctrines based on written theory. This is partly because none of the books has its own coherent doctrine, being more a synthesis of disparate ideas from other texts. I haven’t tried to work out how the result of hand to hand combat was determined, because there isn’t enough evidence, and there are too many potential complications. Next week I’ll be looking at what happened afterwards.

Bibliography

1. Anon, The vindication and clearing of Sir Iames Ramsey from those base aspersions cast upon him through mis-information, &c. Concerning his carriage in the fight at Kyneton, 23 October 1642. (1642).
2. Richard Atkyns, The Vindication of Richard Atkyns (London, 1669).
3. Richard Atkyns, ‘The Praying Captain’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 35 (1957).
4. Richard Bulstrode, Memoirs and reflections on the reign and government of King Charles Ist and king Charles IId (London, 1721).
5. Charles Harding Firth, Cromwell’s Army (Methuen: London, 1962).
6. John Keegan, The Face of Battle (Penguin Books Ltd, August 1978).
7. Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow Esq; lieutenant general of the horse, commander in chief of the forces in Ireland, one of the council of state, and a member of the Parliament which began on November 3, 1640 (1698).
8. Christopher L. Scott, Alan Turton, and Eric Gruber von Arni, Edgehill (Leo Cooper Ltd, 2004).
9. Maclolm D. G. Wanklyn and Frank Jones, A Military History of the English Civil War (Pearson: Harlow, 2005).