The Battle of Inverkeithing was fought on 20 July 1651 between an English army under John Lambert and a Scottish army led by James Holborne as part of an English invasion of Scotland. The battle was fought near the isthmus of the Ferry Peninsula, to the south of Inverkeithing, after which it is named.
An English Parliamentary regime had tried, convicted, and executed Charles I, who was king of both Scotland and England in a personal union, in January 1649. The Scots recognised his son, also named Charles, as king of Britain and set about recruiting an army. An English army, under Oliver Cromwell, invaded Scotland in July 1650. The Scottish army, commanded by David Leslie, refused battle until 3 September when it was heavily defeated at the Battle of Dunbar. The English occupied Edinburgh and the Scots withdrew to the choke point of Stirling. For nearly a year all attempts to storm or bypass Stirling, or to draw the Scots out into another battle, failed. On 17 July 1651 1,600 English soldiers crossed the Firth of Forth at its narrowest point in specially constructed flat-bottomed boats and landed at North Queensferry on the Ferry Peninsula. The Scots sent forces to pen the English in and the English reinforced their landing. On 20 July the Scots moved against the English and in a short engagement were routed.
Lambert seized the deep-water port of Burntisland and Cromwell shipped over most of the English army. He then marched on and captured Perth, the temporary seat of the Scottish government. Charles and Leslie took the Scottish army south and invaded England. Cromwell pursued them, leaving 6,000 men to mop up the remaining resistance in Scotland. Charles and the Scots were decisively defeated on 3 September at the Battle of Worcester. On the same day the last major Scottish town holding out, Dundee, surrendered.
Background
In 1639 and again in 1640 Charles I who was king of both Scotland and England in a personal union, went to war with his Scottish subjects in the Bishops' Wars. These had arisen from the Scots' refusal to accept Charles's attempts to reform the Church of Scotland, known as the Kirk, to bring it into line with English religious practices. Charles was not successful and the ensuing settlement established the Covenanters' hold on Scottish government; they required all civil office-holders, parliamentarians and clerics to sign the National Covenant and granted the Scottish Parliament authority to approve all of the King's councillors in Scotland. After years of rising tensions, in part caused by Charles's defeat in the Bishops' Wars and his need to fund them, the relationship between Charles and his English Parliament also broke down in armed conflict, starting the First English Civil War in 1642.
In England, Charles's supporters, the Royalists, were opposed by the combined forces of the Parliamentarians and the Scots, who in 1643 had formed an alliance bound by the Solemn League and Covenant, in which the English Parliament agreed to reform the English church along similar lines to the Scottish Kirk in return for the Scots' military assistance. After four years of war the Royalists were defeated and Charles surrendered to the Scots. After several months of fruitless negotiations, the Scots handed Charles over to the English parliamentary forces in exchange for a financial settlement and left England on 3 February 1647. The English army council pressed Charles to accept the Heads of Proposals, a less demanding set of terms which did not require a Presbyterian reformation of the church. Instead he signed an offer known as the Engagement, which had been thrashed out with the Scottish delegation. Charles agreed to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by act of parliament in both kingdoms and to accept Presbyterianism in England, although only for a trial period of three years, in return for the Scots' assistance in regaining his throne in England.
After a protracted political struggle the supporters of the Engagement gained a majority in the Scottish Parliament, by which time war had again broken out in England between Royalists and Parliamentarians. The Scots sent an army under the command of the Duke of Hamilton into England to fight on behalf of the King in July, but it was heavily defeated at Preston by a force led by Oliver Cromwell. The rout of the Engager army led to further political upheaval in Scotland and the faction opposed to the Engagement was able to regain control of the government.
Exasperated by the prolonged bloodshed, the Parliamentarian army purged the English Parliament and established the Rump Parliament which had Charles tried for treason against the English people. He was executed on 30 January 1649, and the republican Commonwealth was created. The Scottish Parliament, which had not been consulted prior to the King's execution, declared his son, also Charles, king of Britain. Before they would permit him to return from exile in the Dutch Republic to take up his crown, they demanded he first sign both Covenants: recognising the authority of the Kirk in religious matters and that of parliament in civil affairs. Charles II was initially reluctant to accept these conditions, but after Cromwell's campaign in Ireland crushed his Royalist supporters there, he felt compelled to accept the Scottish terms and signed the Treaty of Breda on 1 May 1650. The Scottish Parliament set about rapidly recruiting an army to support the new king and Charles set sail for Scotland, landing on 23 June.
Opposing forces
Infantry
Infantry formations, equipment and tactics were similar in both armies. The regiment was the standard tactical unit, but their size was not standardised and varied greatly. An infantry regiment was composed of both musketeers and pikemen. The musketeers were armed with muskets possessing 4-foot-long (1.2 m) barrels and, mostly, matchlock firing mechanisms. These relied on the glowing end of a length of slow match, thin cord soaked in saltpetre, igniting the weapon's priming powder when the trigger was pulled. These were reliable and robust weapons. In 1650 musketeer tactics were in the middle of a transition from firing one rank at a time so as to maintain a steady fire, to the entire unit discharging a volley simultaneously for shock effect.
Pikemen were equipped with pikes: long wooden shafts tipped with steel points. Pikes as issued in both armies were 18-foot-long (5.5 m), but on the march they were commonly cut down to a more wieldy 15 ft (4.6 m) or so. The pikemen carried basic swords and typically wore a steel helmet but no other armour. Military manuals of the time suggested a ratio of two musketeers for each pikeman, but in practice commanders usually attempted to maximise the number of musketeers and a higher ratio was the rule.
Both armies organised their infantry regiments into brigades of three regiments each, which were typically deployed with two regiments abreast and the third behind as a reserve. The men in each unit would form up four or five ranks deep and in a relatively loose formation, with about 3 feet (0.9 m) of frontage per file; so an infantry regiment of 600 might form up 120 men wide and 5 deep, giving it a frontage of 360 feet (110 m) and a depth of 15 feet (4.6 m). The pikemen would be placed in the centre of a formation, in a "stand", with the musketeers divided on each side. The usual tactic against infantry was for the musketeers to fire on their opponents and once it was thought they had been sufficiently weakened or demoralised the stand of pikemen would advance, attempting to break through the enemy centre. This was known as a "push of the pike". The musketeers would also advance, engaging the enemy with their musket butts, which were steel plated for this purpose and attempting to envelop the opposing formation.
Against cavalry, doctrine called for infantry units to tighten the spacing between their files to approximately 18 inches (46 cm) per man and to advance steadily. To be effective against infantry, cavalry needed to break into their formation and if the men were packed together this was not possible. It was accepted that so long as the morale of the infantry held, cavalry could do little against the front of such a formation. However, the flanks and rear were increasingly vulnerable as the infantry packed more closely together, as this made manoeuvring or turning the unit more difficult.
Cavalry
Most of the English cavalry were mounted on large, for the time, horses. The cavalrymen wore metal lobster-tailed pot helmets which protected the head and, usually, the neck, cheeks and, to an extent, face. They wore jackets of thick uncured leather and thigh-length boots. Body armour – a cuirass (metal chest and back plates) – was unusual but not unknown. They were each armed with two pistols and a sword. The pistols were 18 inches (46 cm) to 24 inches (61 cm) long and had a very limited effective range. Most but not all cavalry pistols had flintlock firing mechanisms, which were more reliable in damp or windy weather than matchlock mechanisms. Flintlock mechanisms were more expensive than matchlock ones and were usually reserved for the cavalry, who found igniting and using the slow match while controlling a horse inconvenient. The swords were straight, 3-foot-long (90 cm) and effective at both cutting and thrusting. Cavalry were usually positioned on each flank of the infantry.
The Scottish cavalry were similarly equipped, with helmets, pistols and swords, and no body armour, although many bore lances rather than pistols. The main difference was that the Scottish horses were smaller and lighter; this made them more nimble but put them at a disadvantage in a face-to-face confrontation. Their tactics depended on manoeuvrability and a hit-and-run approach, their commanders recognising that they could not withstand the English in a face-to-face encounter. English cavalry tactics were intended to utilise their strengths. They would advance in a tight formation, their riders' legs interlocked, at no faster than a trot – to maintain formation. They would discharge their pistols at very short range and upon coming into contact attempt to use the sheer weight of their mounts and the mass of their formation to force back their opponents and burst through their ranks.
Both armies contained dragoons. These had originated as mounted infantry, using horses to increase their operational mobility and dismounting to fight with pikes or muskets. By 1650 they had largely become specialist mounted troops; none carried pikes. The English dragoons had exchanged their muskets for carbines (shorter-barrelled versions of the infantry's muskets) or, occasionally, pistols and been formally recognised as a cavalry arm. Scottish dragoons were part way through this transformation and carried both matchlock muskets and cavalry swords. Dragoons usually acted as scouts, or formed their army's rearguard.
Prelude
English invasion of Scotland
Scotland was actively rearming and the leaders of the English Commonwealth felt threatened. They pressured Thomas Fairfax, lord general of the New Model Army, which at this point was synonymous with the Parliamentarian army, to launch a preemptive attack. Fairfax was unwilling to strike the first blow against his former allies, believing England and Scotland were still bound by the Solemn League and Covenant. Oliver Cromwell succeeded him as commander-in-chief of the New Model Army and led it across the Tweed into Scotland on 22 July 1650 and by so doing, started the Third English Civil War.
Once the Treaty of Breda had been signed the Scottish Parliament started levying men to form a new army, under the command of the experienced general David Leslie. By the time Cromwell entered Scotland Leslie had some 8,000–9,500 infantry and 2,000–3,000 cavalry, although these numbers fluctuated during the course of the campaign. The government instituted a commission to purge the army of anyone suspected of having supported the Engagement, as well as men considered sinful or undesirable. This was opposed, unsuccessfully, by much of the Scottish nobility and the more experienced military leaders, including Leslie. The purge removed many experienced men and officers and the bulk of the army was composed of raw recruits with little training or experience.
Leslie prepared a defensive line of earthworks between the Scottish capital Edinburgh and Leith, employed a scorched earth policy from there to the Scottish border and allowed Cromwell to advance unopposed. Lack of supplies and the hostility of the local people towards the English invaders forced Cromwell to rely on intermittent seaborne supplies. Cromwell attempted to bring the Scots to battle at Edinburgh but he was not able to draw Leslie out. Cromwell's attack coincided with a visit by Charles II to the Scottish army, where he was warmly received. Members of the Covenanter government, concerned their godly war would be corrupted by feelings of personal loyalty to the King, ordered a new purge, which removed 80 officers and 4,000 of Leslie's men.
On 31 August Cromwell withdrew; the English army reached Dunbar on 1 September, having taken two days to march the final 17 miles (27 km), harassed day and night by the pursuing Scots. The Scottish army outflanked the English and a detachment blocked the road to Berwick and England at the easily defended Cockburnspath Defile. The Scots' main force encamped on the all but invulnerable Doon Hill, 2 miles (3 km) south of Dunbar, where it overlooked the town and the coastal road running south west from the town. On 2 September Cromwell surveyed the situation and wrote to the governor of Newcastle warning him to prepare for a possible Scottish invasion.