Take Courage (42 page)

I have often read accounts of battles, in books of history and in diurnals, and have wrestled to clothe the words with flesh and blood, trying to make clear to myself how the fighting really went and what men felt who took part in it. But for the most part I have wrestled in vain; this talk of troops and colours, of flanks and wings and rears and forlorns, of routs and stands and charges, is in truth a foreign tongue, only understandable by those who have the key, of military experience, to it. It was so with the battle of Marston Moor; after it was fought I read with the greatest eagerness—as surely all did who could read, in Yorkshire—all the accounts of it given in letters of intelligence and pamphlets, spending my precious pence without stint to learn more of this fight, so tremendous in its consequence to our whole country. But I could make little of it; nor have I ever been quite able to fit what I read into the pictures I have in my mind of the fighting. But those pictures are very clear and strong and I do not doubt them; for I have heard John and Captain Hodgson and Sir Thomas Fairfax from the one side, and Giles Ferrand from the other, tell of certain happenings on that bloody field so often, that I never can forget them.

The first thing that always comes into my mind when I think of Marston Moor is this—a very slight matter, but revealing. Whenever any man I know who was at Marston Moor speaks of that battle, his hand, as if remembering more quickly than his head, steals out to his drink, if any stand beside him. For in truth it was a very hot and thirsty business; it was summer, and warm weather; and the day before the battle, the soldiers drank all the wells in the village of Long Marston dry, and were then obliged to make use of ditch-water. Very few of them, too, I have heard Captain Hodgson say, ate above the quantity of a penny loaf, from the Monday to the Saturday morning. As for John, when I have turned to ask him how he and Sir Thomas fared, thinking they might have done better for themselves, Sir Thomas being a commander, John has always replied, that he does not remember eating anything.

Well, I have a picture in my mind of York, with high grey battlemented walls and the towering minster, and within it the Earl of Newcastle, very handsome and urbane and sarcastic, as when I saw him at Boiling Hall, playing the lute and reading Vergil. There was some troop or regiment of his which men called the Whitecoats or the Lambs; they were but recently recruited from the northern border lands, and the Earl, not being able to get enough red cloth for them—for indeed the West Riding had no red dye left, having used so much—had taken up undyed white cloth and clothed them in that till he could get it coloured. (Whenever, in later days, Isaac Baume and I heard this part of the story, we looked at each other and tried not to smile, and looked away; for we thought we had a guilty knowledge of where a few pieces of that white cloth might come from, though we never betrayed our secret to John.) These Lambs, in the swaggering way of soldiers, after a while grew to like their white coats, and begged to keep them, saying they themselves would dye them red in the blood of their enemies, and the Earl allowed this, the fancy of it doubtless pleasing him. So these Whitecoats, and others in scarlet, all very gay in feathered hats, were swinging up and down the streets, in their secret hearts very tired of the siege and hoping for relief. And outside York, I see John and Sir Thomas, and David cantering happily away to Cambridge, and various Earls, and strange-speaking Scots, and Colonel Cromwell, very grim.

Over in Lancashire, having come up from southern parts, was Prince Rupert, very arrogant and dissipated and careless of everything but his purpose, and under the strictest commands from the King to relieve York at any cost. In Bradford we trembled suddenly, and from sheer fright I was sorely tempted to go down to the Baumes and stay with them, when we heard the rumour that Prince Rupert was coming over into Yorkshire, for in Lancashire he had burned and slaughtered cruelly. But mercifully he did not come our way, but chose a more northerly road through Wharfedale. When our men heard of his approach, they left the siege of
York and marched out westward a few miles towards Long Marston, and faced north-west, ready to meet him. Prince Rupert, however, with much skill turned northwards, and by crossing three rivers very rapidly got right across to the far bank of the Ouse, and entered York from the east side. Our men were bitterly disappointed when they heard this, and they camped on Marston Moor that Monday night, in a sour mood.

Next morning all the commanders had a council, as to whether they should retreat away or turn back and fight, and the Scottish Earl was determined, it seems, to retreat and wait a better day. How Sir Thomas came out of this council cocking his hat and throwing his cloak under his arm, as he used when he was vexed, I have often heard John tell. So our men, very cross and hungry and thirsty, turned south and drew away, Sir Thomas and Colonel Cromwell having the position of danger and retiring last, while parties of Royalist horse came out, as they thought, and harassed them. How it was they suddenly discerned that these parties were not mere parties at all, but the whole army of the Royalists, I do not understand, though I have often enough asked John to explain it to me—it is one of those military mysteries hidden from women—but Sir Thomas saw it sharp enough, and sent a very hot alarum off to his father and the Earls, to recall them. They turned round quickly, and marched back to Marston Moor. But the Royalists were already spread all over the level Moor, so our men disposed themselves facing them in a rye field which sloped downwards somewhat from a ridge. I have a very clear picture of this sloping rye field, for what with the height of the corn, and the warmth of the day, and some showers which fell which made the ground slippery, it was a very uncomfortable position.

The greater part of the day, it seems, was taken up with all these marchings and counter-marchings, and it was five o'clock in the evening before the armies were drawn up face to face, only a ditch and a hedge separating them. It was in this drawing up of the troops that John had a first taste of
Colonel Cromwell's quality. Hitherto, he has said, though he had seen Cromwell in and out of Sir Thomas's quarters many times in the leaguer, he had taken no great fancy for him, because the Colonel wore a suit of very poor cloth. This went contrary to all John's feelings; very good cloth is made down Norwich way, he has often said to me, and the Colonel, though he might have had the shabbiest and oldest suit in the world for all John would care, ought to have had an eye for good workmanship, and not gone about in ill-wove stuff, which as it were pretended to be something it was not. This, and something abrupt in the Colonel's manner to Sir Thomas, had roused a slight disinclination to him in John's mind. But while the army was hastening back, somewhat in disorder, to Marston Moor, by the roadside in Long Marston John saw a troop of foot waiting—or rather, half a troop of foot, the other half not being yet come up—when Colonel Cromwell rode swiftly to them and bade them march. Their captain, not having half his men and perhaps resenting an order from one who was not in truth his commander, desired the Colonel to have a little patience; whereupon Cromwell said simply: “March!” It was not said impatiently, said John, or in anger, but with such a stern and powerful resolution as was quite irresistible; the troop marched at once without a word. From that time, John had a conviction that Oliver Cromwell—Noll as the soldiers called him—was a mighty man of valour and a powerful instrument in the hand of God. But I do not think he ever loved him as he loved Sir Thomas. Cromwell was a man, in those days at least, of true piety, of unswerving-zeal in the cause of God; and he had a good understanding of the common folk and cared much that such honest ordinary folk should have their rights and liberties respected and be able to serve God in peace according as their conscience taught them. In fighting he was unrivalled because of his unshakable resolution; there was indeed iron in the man. By nature he was just and honest, decent and sober, kind and homely. But he had not that high soul, that delicate nobility of spirit, nor that wide vision, which marked
Sir Thomas, and this difference showed in their looks—at least, if we can believe the prints, for I never myself saw Cromwell. It is odd how ordinary folk's lives are ordered for them by people whom they never see—King Charles, and Laud, and Cromwell, and Charles II—I never saw any of them in the flesh, never exchanged a word with them, yet they dealt me happiness and sorrow. I knew their faces from the prints sold of them, however, and their acts from the diurnals. Oliver was a stout plain sturdy man with plain strong features, a practical sensible-looking man who had no thought for poetry and beauty; Sir Thomas's dark dreamy face was the face of a philosopher and a poet, his eyes saw the inward significance of things. Oliver's gaze was always fixed on the matter in hand; he was never able to see what he was doing as part of the long turbulent stream of history, nor was he ever able, I think, to conceive that his enemies believed themselves to have right on their side. Well! He made history enough, certainly; and Marston Moor was one of the places where this history-making began.

I can see the armies facing each other in silence, each waiting for the other to accept the disadvantage of crossing the ditch, and then our men, led, I doubt not, by Cromwell's Ironsides, beginning to sing psalms. They stood there a couple of hours, while Prince Rupert's standard, five yards long, flapped in the breeze and our men sang; and then suddenly, and partly by accident as it seemed, the battle was joined.

What a battle looks like when joined I have no notion; I can only picture to myself pairs of men with arms uplifted and grimacing crimson faces, striking furiously at each other, and the red blood starting out at the blows. I have a picture of John in his shirt sleeves, very hot but very grim and steady, wheeling bullets in a wheelbarrow from the farmhouse on the ridge, where they were being cast, to the soldiers, the farmer's son with another wheelbarrow behind him. I have a picture of poor Mr. Ferrand, struck off his horse by a blow on the head, falling into one of the bushes of gorse which strewed the moor—he told me the gorse-spines,
during the long moment while he fell, appeared as large as spears. And then I have a terrible picture of confusion, fire and smoke and frightened faces and breathless running men, horses tossing their manes and galloping with stirrups jerking and flying, the Scots at first firing very expertly, then crying out in their strange high tongue and running as if furies pursued them, men colliding in their panic with a fearful jar and rushing on unheeding, men rolling in agony on the ground with horses charging down on them—fire and smoke and fear and blood.

For the truth is, both sides ran away that day; Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax on the left and right doing well with their horse, but the centre failing utterly, and then while Sir Thomas's horse was away pursuing the enemy, the rest of that wing thrown into complete confusion by the Royalist horse. Sir Thomas returning from his charge could do little with them, for they were “fresh-water” and frightened; they gave at the first onslaught and he could not rally them. Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers suddenly appeared through the smoke right at the top of the ridge, where the baggage and ordnance of the Parliament were placed, having ridden through the whole of our army, whereat the waggoners and carters fled away in spite of all John and the officer in charge could do, though John shouted and banged at them; he felt the most fearful humiliation at his failure, but it turned out the best that could have been done, for Prince Rupert and his men, thinking the battle over and won, fell to plundering the waggons. John caught a flying horse, his own being gone, and rode off down the hill to
try
to find Sir Thomas; by a chance he came upon him, galloping towards the left wing to get to Cromwell. There was a deep cut on his left cheek and he had taken out the white favour, which was the sign of the Parliament men, from his hat; he saw not John, but simply galloped his hardest in the opposite direction from safety. John went after him, but lost him in the smoke; and while he halted there, panting and looking at the various single combats about him and deciding where to join in, there rose a strange
thunderous noise ahead, and out of the smoke came charging Cromwell and his Ironsides and Sir Thomas, who had fetched them thus to where they were needed. John hastily drew to one side and the buff-coats thundered past him, seeming to sweep everything away in front of them, said John, as if they were reaping a field. “God made them as stubble to our swords,” said Colonel Cromwell after to Sir Thomas of this charge, and indeed, said John, it was so. The Royalists wheeled round and fell back on Prince Rupert's horse, so that now our men were on the moor and the Royalists in the rye field. But Prince Rupert's horse were in disorder, being busy with plunder, and so, suddenly the Royalists gave, and fled in all directions—all but those Whitecoats, who resisted so stoutly, declining quarter, that every one of them fell.

By this time it was nine o'clock at night and growing dusk, but there was a clear moon, at full or very near it, and the Parliament men pursued the Royalists to within a mile of York in the moonlight. I see the lanes, dark and white in patches, and hear the heavy hoofs and uneven breath of the tired horses. And then a worse thing began, for some of the Parliament men fell to stripping the dead bodies, and some even that were not dead, so that they lay white and naked in the moonlight, in spite of Sir Thomas, who galloped up and down, exhorting the soldiers to mercy. Four thousand fell on both sides, English and Scots, by the computation of the villagers, who had to bury them; an officer of the King's, asking permission next day to give the corpses of some of the noblest of those fallen more honourable burial, was heard by John, who was sent with the party to take a note of those chosen, repeatedly to exclaim in pity for the King. “Alas, for King Charles!” said he—for indeed in that battle the King lost upwards of two thousand of his noblest men.