The History of the British Army. J. W. Fortescue
themselves, to the trained bands or to the feudal service implied in the Commissions of Array; since both were equally enjoined by proclamation? The Council answered that the service in the trained bands must be personal, and the feudal obligation satisfied by deputy or by pecuniary composition; in other words, if the gentry halted between two services, they could not go wrong in performing both. A second question from the deputy-lieutenants was still more searching: how were the bands levied under the Commissions to be paid? The reply of the Council pointed out that the laws and customs of the realm required every man, in the event of invasion, to serve for the common defence at his own charge. Here Charles was strictly within his rights; and the plea of invasion was sound, since the Scots had actually passed the Tweed. Parliament, however, seized hold of the Commissions of Array, and after innumerable arguments as to their illegality, took final refuge under the Petition of Right. Stripped of all redundant phrases, the position of the two parties was this: Charles asked how he could raise an army for defence of the kingdom, if the powers enjoyed by his predecessors were stripped from him; and Parliament answered that it had no intention of allowing him any power whatever to raise such an army.[159]
August 28.
1641,
May.
The campaign in the north was speedily ended by the advance of the Scots and by the rout of the small English detachment that guarded the fords of the Tyne at Newburn. The Scots then occupied Newcastle, and England to all intent lay at their mercy. Nothing could have better suited the opponents of the king. A treaty was patched up at Ripon which amounted virtually to an agreement to subsidise the Scotch army in the interest of the Parliament. The Scots consented to stay where they were in consideration of eight hundred and fifty pounds a day, failing the payment of which it was open to them to continue their march southward and impose their own terms. Charles could not possibly raise such a sum without recourse to Parliament, and the assembly with which he had now to do was that which is known to history as the Long Parliament. Within seven months it had passed an Act to prevent its dissolution without its own consent, and having thus secured itself, it allowed the English army to be disbanded, while the Scots, having played their part, retired once more across the Tweed.
1641–2.
1642.
It would be tedious to follow the widening of the breach during the year 1641. Both parties saw that war was inevitable, and both struggled hard to keep the militia each in its own hands. The scramble was supremely ridiculous, since it was all for a prize not worth the snatching. Charles has been censured for throwing the whole military organisation out of gear because he wished to employ it for other objects than the safety of the kingdom, but it would be difficult, I think, for any one to explain what military organisation existed. By the showing of the Parliamentary lawyers themselves, there was no statute to regulate it except the Statute of Winchester; in strictness there was no legal requirement for men to equip themselves otherwise than as in the year 1285. It was to the party that first made an army, not to that which preferred the sounder claim to regulate the militia, that victory was to belong. Strafford had perceived this long before, but three years were yet to pass before Parliament should realise it. The few movements worth noting in the scramble may be very briefly summarised. The king reluctantly consented to transfer the power of impressment to the justices of the peace with approval of Parliament, and abandoned his right to compel men to service outside their counties. But he refused to concede to Parliament the nomination of lord-lieutenants or the custody of strong places, and Parliament therefore simply arrogated to itself these privileges without further question. In July the Commons resolved to levy an army of ten thousand men, in August the King unfurled the Royal Standard at Nottingham; and so the Civil War began.
The lists of the two opposing armies of 1642 are still extant: the King's, of fourteen regiments of foot and eighteen troops of horse, and the Parliament's, of eighteen regiments of foot, seventy-five troops of horse, and five troops of dragoons; but it would be unprofitable to linger over them, for except on paper they were not armies at all. Two names however must be noticed. The first is that of the commander of the royal horse, Prince Rupert, a son of the Winter-King. He had now been domiciled in England for seven years, in the course of which he had found time to serve the Dutch, as we have seen, at the siege of Breda in 1639, and the Swedes in the following year, commanding with the latter a regiment of horse in more than one dashing engagement. He was now three-and-twenty, not an unripe age for a General in those days, as Condé was presently to prove at Rocroi. The second name is that of the Captain of the Sixty-Seventh troop of the Parliamentary horse, Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman of Huntingdon, not inconspicuous as a member of Parliament but unknown to military fame. He was already forty-three years of age, and so far was little familiar with the profession of arms.[160]
On the 23rd of October these two men met at Edgehill, the first important action of the war, on which I shall not dwell further than to notice the part that they played therein. Rupert, knowing the deficiency of fire-arms in the royal cavalry, before the battle gave his horsemen orders to keep their ranks and to attack sword in hand, not attempting to use their pistols till they had actually broken into the enemy's squadrons. Here was an improvement on the Swedish system, a step nearer to shock-action, which was crowned by complete success. Oliver Cromwell having seen the havoc wrought by the Royalist cavalry, sought and found after the battle the cause of the inferiority of the Parliament's. "Your troops," he said to John Hampden, "are most of them old decayed serving-men and tapsters: their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. Do you think the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen who have courage, honour, and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or you will be beaten still." Hampden heard and shook his head; he was a wise and worthy person, but he had probably an idea that no men except such as those which had been swept into the ranks by the King and the King's father could possibly be induced to become soldiers. So he said that it was a good notion but impracticable. Captain Cromwell set to work to show that it was not impracticable, and began to raise men who, in his own words, made some conscience of what they did, and to teach them discipline.
December.
Meanwhile the helplessness of the Parliament in the early stages of the war was almost ludicrous; and though indeed few things are more remarkable than the rapid growth of administrative ability between the years 1642 and 1658, it must be admitted that at first the civil leaders of the people were little better than children. Nearly the whole nation, and with it the majority of legislators, had made up their minds that the first battle would decide the contest, and they were woefully disappointed when it did not do so. Failing at first to realise the elementary principle that money is the sinew of war the Houses trusted at first to irregular contributions for its support, nor was it until pressed to extremity that they determined to employ general taxation. Money was the first and eternal difficulty, which however pressed even harder on the King than on the Parliament. The next obstacle was the utter collapse of the existing military organisation. The county levies were ready enough to fight in defence of their own homes, but they were unwilling to move far from them; and when the enemy had left their own particular quarter they thanked God that they were rid of him and returned to their usual avocations. This again was a difficulty that beset both sides and was never overcome by the King. The Parliament tried to meet it by the establishment of associations of counties, which were virtually military districts, and did something, though not much, to widen the narrow sympathies of the militiamen. But these associations, though a step in the right direction, depended too much on the individual energy of the men at their head to attain uniform success; and one only, the Eastern, wherein Cromwell was the moving spirit, did for a time really efficient work.
A third and most formidable danger was the superiority of the Royalist cavalry. The long neglect of the mounted service left the supremacy to the ablest amateurs, and the majority of these, though there were hundreds of gentlemen on the Parliamentary side, were undoubtedly for the King. Nor was it only the courage, honour, and resolution of which Cromwell had spoken that favoured them; they had from the nature of the case better horses, a higher standard of horsemanship and equipment, a quicker natural intelligence and a higher natural training. The thousand lessons which the county gentlemen learned when riding with hawk and hound were of infinite advantage in the casual and irregular warfare of the first two or three years; and