Third English Civil War - Battle of Worcester

Battle of Worcester

Cromwell took his measures deliberately. Colonel Robert Lilburne from Lancashire and Major Mercer with the Worcestershire horse were to secure Bewdley Bridge on the enemy's line of retreat. Lambert and Fleetwood were to force their way across the Teme (a little river on which Prince Rupert had won his first victory in 1642) and attack St John's, the western suburb of Worcester.

Cromwell himself and the main army were to attack the town itself. On 3 September, the anniversary of Dunbar, the programme was carried out exactly. Fleetwood forced the passage of the Teme, and the bridging train (which had been carefully organized for the purpose) bridged both the Teme and the Severn. Then Cromwell on the left bank and Fleetwood on the right swept in a semicircle 4 miles long up to Worcester. Every hedgerow was contested by the stubborn Royalists, but Fleetwood's men would not be denied, and Cromwell's extreme right on the eastern side of the town repelled, after three hours of hard fighting, the last desperate attempt of the Royalists to break out.

The Battle of Worcester was indeed, as a German critic has pointed out, the prototype of Sedan. Everywhere the defences were stormed as darkness came on, regulars and militia fighting with equal gallantry, and most of the few thousands of the Royalists who escaped during the night were easily captured by Lilburne and Mercer, or by the military which watched every road in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Even the country people brought in scores of prisoners, for officers and men alike, stunned by the suddenness of the disaster, offered no resistance. Charles II escaped after many adventures, but he was one of the few men in his army who regained a place of safety. The Parliamentary militia were sent home within a week. Cromwell, who had ridiculed "such stuff" six months ago, knew them better now. "Your new raised forces," he wrote to the House, "did perform singular good service, for which they deserve a very high estimation and acknowledgment." Worcester resembled Sedan in much more than outward form. Both were fought by "nations in arms," by citizen soldiers who had their hearts in the struggle, and could be trusted not only to fight their hardest but to march their best. Only with such troops would a general dare to place a deep river between the two halves of his army or to send away detachments beforehand to reap the fruits of victory, in certain anticipation of winning the victory with the remainder. The sense of duty, which the raw militia possessed in so high a degree, ensured the arrival and the action of every column at the appointed time and place. The result was, in brief, one of those rare victories in which a pursuit is superfluous a "crowning mercy," as Cromwell called it.

There is little of note in the closing operations. General Monck had completed his task of mopping up remnants of Royalist resistance in Scotland and on 26 May 1652 the last Royalist stronghold anywhere on the eastern side of Scotland, Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven, surrendered after an eight month siege. So Scotland, which had twice attempted to impose its will on England, found itself reduced to the position of an English province under martial law. Under the terms of the "Tender of Union", the Scots were given 30 seats in a united Parliament in London, with Monck appointed as the military governor of Scotland. The leader of the Scottish Royalists, the Earl of Glencairn surrendered to Monck in September 1654 after the Battle of Dalnaspidal.