Naseby, 14 June 1645

The battle, stage by stage

1. 14 June 1645, about 8 AM

   Two armies out of sight

   After storming Leicester on 31 May, King Charles I's army had turned south and then, on 13 June, north again toward Newark. Sir Thomas Fairfax's New Model Army, formed only that spring, caught up with it; that evening a Parliamentarian patrol surprised Royalist troopers in Naseby village. In a council of war at Market Harborough the King chose to turn and fight. Before dawn Fairfax marched north from Guilsborough and formed his regiments at Naseby windmill (where the 1823 obelisk now stands). By about 8 AM the Royalists had drawn up on the ridge between East Farndon and Little Oxendon, about 4 miles away. Neither army could see the other, and a Royalist scout reported no enemy in sight.

2. About 9-10 AM

   Facing each other across Broadmoor

   Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell rode forward and, reportedly on Cromwell's advice, shifted the army west onto the ridge south of Broadmoor, a shallow valley of open-field strips, furze and heath. Seeing them cross the skyline, Prince Rupert marched the Royalists south, west over Moot Hill and south again onto Dust Hill, while their guns and baggage went toward Clipston and along a lane toward Sibbertoft. Both armies formed in the usual way: foot in the center, horse on the wings. Rupert and his brother Maurice led the Royalist right, Lord Astley the foot, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the Northern Horse on the left, with the King and a small reserve behind. Facing them, Henry Ireton had the left wing, Philip Skippon the foot (with a forlorn hope of musketeers down the slope), and Cromwell the right. The New Model stood just behind the crest, partly out of sight. Cromwell sent Colonel John Okey's dragoons (676 by one count) north behind the Sulby parish hedge on the far left, the western edge of the open fields; the east flank was closed by a rabbit warren on Lodge Hill and boggy ground. Exact frontages are a reconstruction.

3. About 10 AM

   Rupert's charge

   Okey's dragoons opened fire from the hedge on the flank of the Royalist right wing, and by some accounts this pushed Rupert to advance early. The whole Royalist line came down Dust Hill and across Broadmoor, roughly 800 yards. Rupert's horse advanced at a steady trot and paused in the valley bottom; Ireton's first line rode down to meet them. On the right Langdale's men moved forward more slowly, while the Royalist foot climbed the slope toward Skippon's line. The forlorn hope fired and fell back on the main body.

4. About 10:05-10:35 AM

   The foot fight in the center

   When the Royalists committed their second line, much of Ireton's wing broke and fled, and Rupert's troopers swept on past the Parliamentarian left to the New Model baggage camp near Naseby, where its guard of firelocks drove them off. Ireton himself led his surviving horse against the flank of the Royalist foot; he was wounded in the thigh by a pike and in the face by a halberd and was briefly taken prisoner. In the center Astley's veterans, though heavily outnumbered, broke through Skippon's front line, which fell back behind the reserves; Skippon was badly wounded but stayed on the field. The King committed his foot reserves, including Rupert's Bluecoats. On the east Langdale's Northern Horse, hemmed in between the warren and the fighting foot, charged uphill into Cromwell's leading regiments, pushed them back, and failed to break them.

5. About 10:35 AM to noon

   Cromwell's charge

   Cromwell's greater numbers told. Part of his wing drove Langdale's horse from the field and kept it from rallying, while the rest wheeled left into the flank and rear of the Royalist foot. On the other flank Okey's dragoons mounted, left the hedge and charged the Royalist right with Ireton's rallied regiments. Fairfax brought the reserves forward and Skippon's men rallied. The Royalist foot, outnumbered and now attacked on three sides, was pressed back on the slope. Rupert's horse returned too late and, by one reading of the accounts, never re-entered the fight on Broadmoor.

6. About noon

   Collapse of the Royalist foot

   Surrounded, most of the Royalist foot laid down their arms; Okey alone claimed about 500 prisoners. Rupert's Bluecoats stood on the slope west of the Sibbertoft road until Fairfax's own regiment of foot, led by Captain Charles D'Oyley, broke them with heavy loss. The rest of the army fled north-east past the deserted village of Nobold. Shot found by metal detecting shows the fighting ran back along the Royalists' morning route; horse rallied by the King and Rupert made a stand between Moot Hill and Wadborough hill, where the Earl of Carnwath is said to have seized the King's bridle and turned him away from a last charge. When the Parliamentarians took Wadborough the stand broke. Near the Royalist baggage, Parliamentarian troopers killed at least a hundred of the women with the army and mutilated many more; London pamphlets claimed they were Irish, but many were Welsh. Where this happened is uncertain: a later account places it in the south part of Farndon Field, others near Clipston.

7. Afternoon of 14 June

   Pursuit toward Market Harborough

   Parliamentarian horse pursued the broken Royalist cavalry north through East Farndon toward Market Harborough, and some went on almost to Leicester. The King rode for Leicester and then west toward Hereford. Behind him he left his foot, his artillery, his baggage and his private papers, published by Parliament as 'The King's Cabinet Opened'. The next day 4,508 prisoners were marched to Northampton, and on 21 June about 3,000 of them were paraded through London with 55 captured colors. The King never again fielded an army of this size. Most historians see Naseby as the battle that decided the First Civil War.