The Making Of A Military Genius

In just two years, Oliver Cromwell made the journey from little-known MP with no experience of armed combat to brilliant, battle-winning leader. Martyn Bennett reveals how a military novice became one of British history’s greatest warriors.

- Martyn Bennett

In the early evening of 2 July 1644, two powerful armies faced each other across an expanse of wild meadow eight miles west of York. On one side was gathered a royalist force led by King’s Charles I’s German nephew, Prince Rupert, and the Marquis of Newcastle. On the other, occupying a ridge known as Bramham Hill, stood an allied army of parliamentarians and Scottish covenanters.

At about 7pm, with a storm approaching and light slowly beginning to fade, the royalists decided that there was no prospect of a battle that day, and started to stack arms, find food and unsaddle horses. Yet, just as they began to settle down for the night, their enemies struck.

On the western fringe of the battlefield, Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell led three lines of horse regiments down from the hill towards the royalists camped on the low ground in front of them. The front line advanced at a trot, then a canter, a gallop and a charge. Each man was pressed up against his colleagues with his sword drawn, ready to smash into the enemy. Caught unprepared on rough ground, those royalists who had managed to mount their horses in an attempt to launch a counterattack were driven back.

As Cromwell introduced more men into the fight, the royalist right flank broke and began to flee. But not all the royalists had such a bad experience. On the opposite flank, they caused such chaos that the three parliamentarian commanders – Lord Fairfax and the earls of Manchester and Leven – fled, thinking the day was lost. However, so devastating was Cromwell’s attack that these royalist advances were to no avail. Parliament had won a famous victory. “We never charged but we routed the enemy,” he later wrote. “God made them as stubble to our swords.”