The battle of Preston was fought on 17 August 1648 during the Second English Civil War. A Parliamentarian army commanded by Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell attacked a considerably larger force of Royalists under James Hamilton, Duke of Hamilton, near the Lancashire town of Preston; the Royalists were defeated with heavy losses.
The First English Civil War between Royalist supporters of Charles I and an alliance of Parliamentarian and Scottish forces ended in 1646 with Charles defeated and imprisoned. He continued to negotiate with several factions among his opponents and this sparked the Second English Civil War in 1648. It began with a series of mutinies and Royalist uprisings in England and Wales. Meanwhile, a political struggle in Scotland led to a faction which supported Charles, known as the Engagers, gaining power. The Scots raised an army which crossed into England at Carlisle on 8 July to support the uprisings. Combining with English Royalists they marched south along the west coast road some 24,000 strong. Much smaller Parliamentarian forces fell back in front of them. Cromwell was suppressing uprisings in south Wales with 5,000 men during May and June; he captured the last Royalist stronghold on 11 July and was marching east within a week.
Cromwell concentrated 9,000 men in north Yorkshire and crossed the Pennines to fall on the flank of the much larger Royalist army at Preston. Not contemplating that Cromwell would act so recklessly, Hamilton was caught with his army on the march and with large detachments too far away to intervene. A blocking force of about 3,000 English Royalist infantry, many ill-armed and inadequately trained, proved no match for the Parliamentarians, most of whom were well-trained veterans from the New Model Army. After a ferocious hour-long fight these Royalists were outflanked on both sides, which caused them to break. The largest part of the Royalist army, predominately Scottish, was marching south immediately to the rear of this fighting. Most had crossed a bridge over the Ribble, a major river just south of Preston; those still to the north of it were swept away by the Parliamentarian cavalry and either killed or taken prisoner. A second round of prolonged infantry hand-to-hand fighting took place for control of the bridge; the Parliamentarians were again victorious, fighting their way across as night fell.
Most of the survivors, nearly all Scottish, were to the south of Preston. Although still at least as strong as the whole Parliamentarian army they fled towards Wigan in a night march. They were hotly pursued and on 19 August were caught and defeated again at the battle of Winwick. Most of the surviving Scots surrendered: their infantry either at Winwick or nearby Warrington, their cavalry on 24 August at Uttoxeter. In the aftermath of the war Charles was beheaded on 30 January 1649 and England became a republic on 19 May.
Background
Charles I, king of Scotland and England in a personal union, went to war with his Scottish subjects in the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640. Charles was unsuccessful and the settlement with his Scottish Parliament in 1641 severely limited his powers. After years of rising tensions the relationship between Charles and his English Parliament also broke down, 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. In 1643 the latter pair formed an alliance bound by the Solemn League and Covenant. After four years of war the Royalists were defeated and Charles surrendered to the Scots on 5 May 1646. The Scots agreed with the English Parliament on a peace settlement which the Scots spent months trying to persuade Charles to agree to, but he refused. The Scots eventually handed Charles over to the English Parliamentary forces on 3 February 1647 in exchange for a financial settlement and left England.
Charles engaged in separate negotiations with different factions, eventually signing an agreement known as the Engagement, which had been thrashed out with the Scottish delegation, on 26 December 1647. Charles agreed to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by act of parliament in both kingdoms in return for the Scots' assistance in enforcing his claim to the English throne. When the Scottish delegation returned to Edinburgh with the Engagement, the Scots were bitterly divided on whether to ratify its terms. After a protracted political struggle those in favour of it, known as the Engagers, gained a majority in the Scottish Parliament and on 11 April 1648 repudiated the 1643 treaty with the Parliamentarians.
War
The coalition of interests on the Parliamentarian side during the first war fractured in 1647. In early 1648 there were uprisings in support of the Royalist cause in England and Wales and mutinies by Parliamentarian garrisons, marking the start of the Second English Civil War. The most reliable military force the Parliamentarian leaders had at their disposal was the New Model Army. This had been split into garrisons across the country; its commander, Sir Thomas Fairfax, based in London, put down the revolt in Kent on 1 June, then moved into Essex and began an eleven-week siege of Colchester. In south Wales the Parliamentarians faced mutinous garrisons in Chepstow, Tenby and Pembroke Castle as well as Royalist uprisings.
The Scots raised an army under the command of the Duke of Hamilton to send into England to fight on behalf of the King. With rebellion breaking out in England and Wales and the Scottish army marching for the border, the future of Britain hung in the balance, in the view of the modern historian Ian Gentles. The summer of 1648 was extremely wet and stormy, hampering both sides. Major General John Lambert was in charge of Parliamentarian forces in the north of England and his men harassed the Royalist force around Carlisle, gathered information and besieged Pontefract Castle from early June. Marmaduke Langdale, who had fought as a cavalry commander in the First Civil War, raised 4,000 English Royalists in northern England and covered the arrival of Hamilton's army.
When Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell arrived in south Wales on 11 May with 5,000 men of the New Model Army, he found the local Parliamentarian forces regaining control. Cromwell undertook the Siege of Pembroke castle in the far south west on 31 May, hampered by a lack of artillery. As the siege progressed and the restiveness of the local populace declined, Cromwell despatched cavalry regiments one at a time to march north and reinforce Lambert. Siege guns arrived on 1 July and the castle, the last Royalist stronghold in South Wales, surrendered on 11 July. Cromwell mopped up and his infantry was marching within a week. Rather than moving directly towards the Scottish army they left Wales at Gloucester and then headed north east through Warwick and Leicester before turning north towards Yorkshire. Cromwell did this to place his force on the direct route from Carlisle to London and to ensure as far as he could that he would be able to combine with Lambert's detachment.
Invasion
Hamilton crossed into England on 8 July and joined Langdale's force at Carlisle the next day. After some fierce skirmishing around Appleby, Lambert's smaller Parliamentarian force withdrew, concentrating around Barnard Castle, to the east of the Pennines. Over the following three weeks the Scots besieged and captured Appleby Castle, giving the impression that they planned to move into Yorkshire. They then moved south to Hornby, with Langdale's 4,000 men acting as an advance guard and pushing as far as Settle by 9 August, suggesting that they would continue south to the west of the Pennines. Lambert, despite being steadily reinforced, acted on Cromwell's orders and stood on the defensive; the historian Peter Reese describes his performance during this period as brilliant. On 2 August he took his corps south and joined with Cromwell and his accompanying infantry at Wetherby on 12 August. These infantry had marched 287 miles (462 kilometres) in thirteen days. Cromwell took command of the combined force.
The Scots had sent a force to Ulster in 1642 to intervene in the Irish Confederate Wars. It was recalled to join the invasion of England. Some of the vessels ferrying the men of this corps back to Scotland were intercepted by the Parliamentarian navy; 300 men of one regiment are known to have been captured. How many mustered for the invasion is unclear but it was probably around 2,800 – all of them experienced fighting men. Their effectiveness was reduced because their commander, Major General George Munro, refused to accept any subordination to Hamilton. This led to Munro's corps manoeuvring as an independent force and being well to the north of Hamilton's main army when the Parliamentarians attacked.
On 13 August, Cromwell directed his army westward, leaving his artillery at Wetherby to enable his army to advance more rapidly. He assumed that his opponent would continue south down the English west coast, rather than head directly for London via Upper Ribblesdale and Craven. It was not until the next day that a Royalist council of war agreed on the west coast route. By 15 August, Cromwell had decided to engage the Royalist army, despite it numbering more than twice as many men as that of the Parliamentarians; the modern historians, Stephen Bull and Mike Seed, describe this as daring. Langdale's scouts passed information to him about the Parliamentarian dispositions and he informed Hamilton that the combined Parliamentarian force was bearing down on their east flank but this warning was disregarded. Hamilton and his senior advisors could not believe that Cromwell would carry out an extended forced march and then seek battle against a much larger force; as Bull and Seed put it "such impertinence and impetuosity was hardly credible". The historian, Malcolm Wanklyn, describes Cromwell's decision on the morning of 17 August, to force a battle while in ignorance of most of the Royalist positions as an enormous gamble.
Opposing forces
Infantry
Infantry formations, equipment and tactics were similar in the armies. The basic tactical formation was the regiment, which varied greatly in size. An infantry regiment was usually made up of 10 companies and typically had a nominal strength of 800 or 1,000 men that was rarely met. Each was composed of musketeers and pikemen.
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. Keeping the slow match burning resulted in the consumption of a vast amount but dowsing it rendered the musket useless. Balancing combat readiness against logistical capability called for fine judgement from a regiment's officers. These muskets were reliable and robust weapons, but their effectiveness was severely reduced in poor weather. Persistent rain during the battle of Preston may account for the frequent contemporary references to hand-to-hand fighting and the use of pikes. A few musketeers on each side were equipped with the more reliable flintlock muskets. In 1648 musket tactics were changing from firing one rank at a time so as to maintain a steady fire, to the entire unit discharging a volley for shock effect. A well-trained musketeer took approximately 40 seconds to reload and would carry ten rounds of ammunition.
Pikemen were equipped with pikes: long wooden shafts tipped with steel points. Pikes as issued were normally 18 feet (5.5 m) long, but on the march they were commonly cut down to a more wieldy 15 feet (4.6 m) or so. The pikemen carried basic swords and typically wore steel helmets but no other armour; in some regiments a few pikemen, usually those in the front rank, would have also worn body armour. Military manuals of the time suggested a ratio of two musketeers per 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 doctrine suggested be deployed two regiments abreast, with the third behind as a reserve. The men in each unit would form four or five ranks and in a relatively loose formation, with about 1 metre (3.3 ft) of frontage per file; so an infantry regiment of 600 might form 120 men wide and 5 deep, giving it a frontage of 120 metres (390 ft) and a depth of 5 metres (16 ft). The pikemen would be placed in the centre of a formation, in a "stand", with the musketeers 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 attempt to envelop the opposing formation.
Against cavalry, doctrine called for infantry units to tighten the spacing between their files to approximately 45 centimetres (18 in) per man and to advance steadily. To be effective against infantry, the cavalry needed to break into their formation, and if the men were too close 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. The flanks and rear were increasingly vulnerable when the infantry packed more closely together, as this made manoeuvring or turning the unit more difficult.
Cavalry
Most of the Parliamentarian cavalry were mounted on large horses (for the time). The cavalrymen all wore metal lobster-tailed pot helmets which protected the head and, usually, the neck, cheeks and, to an extent, face; and thigh-length boots. Body armour was worn by most cavalry and consisted of a cuirass – metal chest and back plates – although many relied on just a jacket of thick uncured leather. 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 cavalry pistols had flintlock firing mechanisms, which were more reliable in damp or windy weather than matchlock mechanisms. Flintlocks were more expensive than matchlocks 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 cutting and thrusting.