Third English Civil War - Dunbar

Dunbar

On 28 August, Cromwell fell back on Musselburgh, and on 31 August, after embarking his non-effective men, to Dunbar. Leslie followed him up, and wished to fight a battle at Dunbar on Sunday, 1 September. But again the kirk intervened, this time to forbid Leslie to break the Sabbath, and the unfortunate Scottish commander could only establish himself on Doon Hill, near Dunbar, and send a force to Cockburnspath to bar the Berwick road. He had now 23,000 men to Cromwell's 11,000, and proposed, faute de mieux, to starve Cromwell into surrender. But the English army was composed of "ragged soldiers with bright muskets," and had a great captain of undisputed authority at their head. Leslie's, on the other hand, had lost such discipline as it had ever possessed, and was now, under outside influences, thoroughly disintegrated. Cromwell wrote home, indeed, that he was "upon an engagement very difficult," but, desperate as his position seemed, he felt the pulse of his opponent and steadily refused to take his army away by sea. He had not to wait long. It was now the turn of Leslie's men on the hillside to endure patiently privation and exposure, and after one night's bivouac, Leslie, too readily inferring that the enemy was about to escape by sea, came down to fight. The Battle of Dunbar opened in the early morning of 3 September. It was the most brilliant of all Oliver's victories. Before the sun was high in the heavens the Scottish army had ceased to exist.