Battle of Worcester

Background

Charles I was executed in January 1649, and the Scots accepted his son as Charles II on condition that he took the Covenant, which he did in June 1650. Cromwell invaded Scotland and destroyed David Leslie's army at Dunbar on 3 September 1650, but could not finish the war: Leslie rebuilt his forces behind the defences of Stirling and refused battle through the spring and summer of 1651. By late July Cromwell had cut the Scots' communications from Stirling, and on 2 August he took Perth.

That left the road south open, and Charles took it, against Leslie's advice. The army crossed the border on 5 or 6 August, some 12,000 to 14,000 strong, and marched down the western route through Cumberland and Lancashire, covering some 300 miles in under three weeks. Charles expected English Royalists and Presbyterians to rise; few did. Lambert's cavalry harried the column and swept up stragglers, while Parliament called out the militia. On 25 August Robert Lilburne destroyed the Earl of Derby's Lancashire Royalists at Wigan Lane.

Instead of making for London, Charles turned into the Severn valley, once strongly Royalist, and reached Worcester on 22 August. His exhausted army rested there while he tried to raise recruits; a muster on Pitchcroft on 26 August drew almost no one. Cromwell, marching about 20 miles a day, concentrated with Fleetwood at Evesham by 27 August. On 28 August Lambert seized the broken bridge at Upton, ten miles downstream, and Edward Massey, the Royalists' most capable English general, was badly wounded there. Cromwell now held both banks of the Severn, and Charles was trapped.

The armies

Cromwell had about 28,000 men, perhaps 31,000 with all the militia: the only time in his career he fought with a two-to-one advantage. The core was the New Model Army that had won at Dunbar. Alongside it fought new county militia from Essex, Cheshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and elsewhere, and the Worcestershire horse under Major Mercer. They served well: the Essex militia took Fort Royal, and Cromwell praised the 'new-raised forces' for 'singular good service'.

Charles had 12,000 to 16,000 men, almost all Scots, many of them Highlanders, after a march that had worn them out. Morale was low and the high command divided. Leslie, said to be 'sad and melancholic', told the King that the army 'how well soever it looked, would not fight', and his quarrel with John Middleton helps explain why the Scottish horse did so little on the day.

The Royalists had worked hard on the defences. Parishes sent labour, and a local diarist, Nicholas Lechmere, wrote that the King 'in a few days fortified it beyond imagination'. The key work was Fort Royal, a bastioned earthwork with 200-foot sides on a hill about 300 yards outside Sidbury Gate, though it was overlooked by Red Hill and Perry Wood and perhaps not finished. Charles had brought artillery, but how many guns, and where they stood, is not known. The army was split between the city and a smaller force under Robert Montgomery holding the ground between the Severn and the Teme, with Leslie's horse on Pitchcroft.

The battle

The plan. Charles had broken the bridges at Upton, Bewdley, Powick and Bransford and abandoned the east bank of the Severn outside the city. Cromwell placed his guns and main body on Red Hill and Perry Wood, east of Worcester, and bombarded the city from 29 August; a Royalist night raid on the Perry Wood battery under Middleton and Keith was betrayed and failed. On 31 August a Parliamentarian council of war settled the plan: Fleetwood would advance up the west bank from Upton and turn the Royalist right, while two bridges of boats, one over the Severn just above its confluence with the Teme and one over the Teme close by, would let Cromwell move troops between the two halves of his army. Twenty large boats were hauled about eight miles upstream against the current. The attack was set for 3 September, the anniversary of Dunbar, with the same watchword, 'the Lord of Hosts'.

The west bank, about 1 to 4pm. Fleetwood's column, some 12,000 men, left Upton early and reached the Teme in the early afternoon; English Heritage dates the opening of the battle at Powick to between 1 and 2pm. A forlorn hope crossed the Severn by boat to cover the bridging, and the Scots could not stop the bridges being finished. On the left Deane fought for Powick churchyard and then attacked Powick Bridge, held by Keith's brigade, again and again without success. On the right, troops crossed the Teme by the bridge of boats into the hedged meadows, where Pitscottie's Highlanders, firing from behind the hedges, stopped them. Cromwell then led three brigades over the Severn bridge into the Highlanders' flank. Pitscottie's men gave ground; Keith's, now isolated at Powick, broke, and Keith was captured as Deane crossed. Montgomery was badly wounded, and Dalziel's reserve in Wick Field fell back. The retreat across Wick Field became a rout into the city.

The sally. Cromwell's move had thinned his line east of the Severn. Charles, watching from the cathedral tower, seized the chance. He led the foot and horse he could gather out of Sidbury Gate along the London road against Red Hill, while the Duke of Hamilton came out of St Martin's Gate against Perry Wood. The attack fell largely on militia and drove them back; a Royalist account has the King break a regiment of foot and force back a body of horse. Leslie's horse on Pitchcroft received no orders to join in and did not move.

Cromwell's return and Fort Royal. For about an hour the Parliamentarians gave ground. Then Cromwell brought his three brigades back across the bridge of boats, and the Royalists, outnumbered, were pushed back down the hill towards Sidbury Gate, fighting from hedge to hedge and at push of pike. Hamilton was mortally wounded. The Essex militia stormed Fort Royal and turned its guns on the city.

The fall of the city, evening. Charles got back inside the walls, took a fresh horse and tried to rally the cavalry, but they would not charge. Fleetwood's troops pushed through St John's into the city, Sidbury Gate was stormed, and the fighting went on in the streets and at the Castle Mound after dark. A charge by the Earl of Cleveland and Major Careless down Sidbury Street and High Street covered the King's escape through St Martin's Gate, the only way still open. The last resistance ended by about 10pm.

Aftermath

The Royalist army ceased to exist. About 3,000 were killed; Cromwell reported 6,000 or 7,000 prisoners the next day, and the total reached about 10,000 as the country, the militia and Lilburne's horse caught fugitives on the roads north. Hamilton died of his wounds; Leslie and Middleton were captured on the way to Scotland; Derby was executed. Cromwell thought he had lost under 200 men. The city was sacked, and a witness saw dead lying on the road from Powick Bridge and in almost every street.

The prisoners fared badly. The cathedral was used to hold them. English prisoners were mostly drafted into the army and sent to Ireland. Around 8,000 Scots were deported to New England, Bermuda and the West Indies as indentured labourers, or put to draining the Fens; of some 1,200 marched to London, many died at Tothill Fields.

Charles spent 45 days on the run, famously hiding in an oak at Boscobel, before sailing from Shoreham to France. Cromwell called the victory 'a crowning mercy'; it was his last battle in the field, and the last battle of the civil wars. The Stuart cause had no army left, and Britain was ruled in effect by Cromwell's army until the Restoration in 1660.

Much of the battlefield is now built over, but it is a registered battlefield. Fort Royal is a public park, the Commandery, the King's headquarters, is a museum, and Powick church still bears marks of musket fire.

Wargaming it

Worcester is two battles joined by a pontoon bridge, and that is what makes it worth playing. The front ran in a semicircle about four miles long, so brigade scale works best, with bases of a few hundred men; a large table, or two linked tables, one for the meadows south of the city and one for the ground between the walls and Perry Wood, carries the whole battle.

The terrain matters more than the numbers. On the west bank the Teme can be crossed only at Powick Bridge and the bridge of boats, and the hedged meadows give Scottish musketeers good cover. On the east bank Fort Royal and the walls give the defender a base, but Red Hill and Perry Wood overlook both. The bridges of boats should be a scarce, slow route that both players watch.

The Parliamentarian player has twice the men but must decide when to send brigades across the river and when to bring them back. The Royalist player has one real chance: a well-timed sally against the weakened east bank, while the militia waver. Leslie's horse should need a test or an order roll to move at all; whether they act is the battle's biggest 'what if'. Others: let Massey go unwounded, have the Scots contest the bridging properly, or let Charles march on London instead of stopping. Start Fleetwood's crossing around 1pm and give the game about ten turns of half an hour before darkness ends it.

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