Schematic plan · English Civil War

Battle of Edgehill

23 October 1642
England
Victory for Royalist

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

Royalist (Eng Roy Army, 14,300 men under Charles I) attacked Parliamentarian (Eng Parl Army, 14,870 men under Essex) in England. The CAA Database of Battles records 3 hours of fighting on a front of 3.2 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Royalist won. Losses: Royalist 2,500 (17%), Parliamentarian 2,500 (17%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

Royalist

Charles I

Unit	Arm	Men
Royalist left wing	Infantry	2,520
Royalist centre	Infantry	3,360
Royalist right wing	Infantry	2,520
Royalist reserve	Infantry	2,100
Royalist cavalry of the left	Cavalry	1,750
Royalist cavalry of the right	Cavalry	1,750
Royalist artillery (20 guns)	Artillery	300
Charles I	Commander	—
In this plan		14,300

Parliamentarian

Essex

Unit	Arm	Men
Parliamentarian left wing	Infantry	2,915
Parliamentarian centre	Infantry	3,886
Parliamentarian right wing	Infantry	2,915
Parliamentarian reserve	Infantry	2,429
Parliamentarian cavalry of the left	Cavalry	1,250
Parliamentarian cavalry of the right	Cavalry	1,250
Parliamentarian artillery (15 guns)	Artillery	225
Essex	Commander	—
In this plan		14,870

What the sources report

	Royalist	Parliamentarian
Strength, this plan	14,300	14,870
Losses, this plan	2,500	2,500

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 20, “Edgehill”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 3 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 3.2 km (attacker), 3.2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Royalistattacker	14,300	2,500	3,500	20	Frontal attack; Breakthrough
Parliamentariandefender	14,870	2,500	2,500	15	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages initiative +1

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 20 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Battle of Edgehill · CC-BY-SA-4.0

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.