Cavaliers and Roundheads. Christopher Hibbert

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      Both armies presented a colourful appearance, beneath the bright, emblazoned standards of their various troops. The men in some regiments were clothed in red coats, in others blue or green, grey or buff or russet. Officers and sergeants, who provided their own clothes, were dressed as their fancy dictated, in some cases more flamboyantly than was deemed appropriate by the more sober minded, with velvet hats, fringed silk scarves about their waists, and cloaks ‘laden with gold and silver lace’. ‘The daubing of a coat with lace of sundry colours, as some do use them,’ wrote one disapproving observer, ‘I do neither take to be soldierlike nor profitable for the coat.’

      Several officers in Parliament’s army were quite as flamboyantly dressed and wore their hair quite as long as their Royalist counterparts, as luxuriantly indeed as the Parliamentary Colonel John Hutchinson who, as his wife proudly related, had ‘a very fine thicksett head of haire, a greate ornament to him’. Even Roundhead sergeants were not above dressing extravagantly. One of these was happy to make use of a gift of his ‘mistress’s scarfe and Mr Molloyne’s hatband, both of which came very seasonably for [he had just had made] a soldier’s sute for winter, edged with gold and silver lace’. Later in the war coats became even more showy, with linings of a contrasting colour, and crosses or swords embroidered in red or blue silk on white sleeves. Brightly coloured scarves and sashes also became commonplace, usually crimson silk for Cavaliers, orange silk for Roundheads; and men on both sides wore field-signs in their hats, bits of white paper or sprigs of oak, so that they could recognize each other in the confusion and smoke of battle.

      In the best-equipped infantry companies the men were provided with outer coats of thick, buff-coloured leather and steel back and breast plates. They also had, as well as their beaver hats or monteros, steel helmets, known generally as ‘pots’ which they were all too ready to take off and throw away, together with their even heavier ‘backs’ and ‘breasts’, when on the march in hot summer weather. For carrying their provisions they were issued with what were known as ‘snapsacks’ of leather or canvas. They were also given bandoleers for their cartridges and, for their powder, bags to hang from their belts.

      They were told to take good care of their powder. Much of it had to be imported; the rest came from powder mills in England which might fall into the hands of the enemy, as those at Chilworth in Surrey and Lydney in Gloucestershire subsequently did. Moreover, saltpetre, an essential ingredient, was never in large supply. It had been a royal monopoly before the war; and, since it was a byproduct of bird droppings and human urine, government officials had authority to enter any properties they chose to dig in henhouses and privies. In 1638 ‘saltpetre men’, as they were known, had sought permission to extend their activities to the floors of churches ‘because women pisse in their seats which causes excellent saltpetre’.

      Most soldiers carried short swords or axes as well as matchlocks, clumsy firearms which were as difficult to load quickly as they were to fire accurately. Until paper cartridges came into more general use, the requisite amount of powder had to be poured down the barrel, then rammed home with a rod before the ball was inserted, followed by a wad to ensure that it did not fall out again. To light the powder, the musketeer carried his match, a length of flax impregnated with saltpetre or cord boiled in vinegar, and this he lit at both ends when the time for firing came. Accidents were common. It has been calculated that three hundred men were killed by accident before the war was over, and hundreds more were injured. A Royalist officer commented, ‘We bury more toes and fingers than we do men.’ The open flame of the match could not, of course, be tolerated near large stores of powder; so infantry guarding the artillery train were equipped with flintlock muskets, a far superior weapon which was too expensive to be supplied to the infantry generally. Nor were cavalry troops usually supplied with the flintlock carbines which later became standard equipment. A few had wheel-locks in which the powder was fired by the friction of a small clockwork wheel, wound up by a spanner, against a piece of iron pyrites. But most had to be content with a pair of flintlock pistols which were even less reliable than flintlock muskets. They also had swords, often none too sharp, and they wore the same back and breast plates as the infantry, as well as high boots of thick leather which offered some protection to their legs. One or two regiments were supplied at their commanders’ expense with the kind of articulated plate armour to be seen in Continental cavalry regiments and with helmets designed to protect the neck and nose as well as the skull. Sir Arthur Haselrig’s cuirassiers from Leicestershire were issued with such comprehensive armour that they were nicknamed ‘the Lobsters’.

      Even the most sophisticated armour, however, offered little protection against a determined pikeman armed with a pike sixteen to eighteen feet long, the hilt of which he would hold firmly in the earth beside his instep while the sharp steel point was levelled at the chests of the oncoming horse.

      Men who had served in armies on the Continent argued endlessly as to the merits of the cavalry tactics favoured in the contending armies. There was, for example, the tactic known as ‘the Dutch’, in which a troop of horsemen came on at a quickish trot in about six ranks, firing their pistols as they advanced upon the infantry, then wheeling to one side to reform and charge again, brandishing their swords. Advocates of this tactic tended to deride the practice, perfected in the Swedish army of King Gustavus II Adolphus, in which the cavalry charged in not more than three ranks, the troopers riding so close together that their knees were interlocked, and holding their fire until the crash, or just before the crash, of impact.

      Gustavus Adolphus himself had devised a drill for infantrymen to withstand these cavalry charges: they were to form up in three ranks, the first kneeling, the second crouching, the third standing, so that all could fire in the same instant, waiting until the last possible moment to do so, it being impossible for even the most skilled marksman to be sure of hitting his target at distances greater than sixty yards. After firing they were to retire quickly to reload, while another three ranks took their place. In the confusion of battle such drill, practised on the parade ground, was rarely performed satisfactorily. More often, once the infantrymen’s matchlocks had been discharged they lashed out with their swords or axes or the stocks of their firearms in the ensuing mêlée, inflicting as many savage wounds on horses and riders as they could until the survivors retreated from the field or rode away for another charge, disappearing into the sulphuric gunpowder smoke of the battlefield.

      Pikemen were drawn up closely packed in square, rectangular or circular ‘hedgehogs’, sometimes protected by ‘swines’ feathers’, stakes with metal tips driven into the ground at an angle of 45 degrees. If steady and well-trained, pikemen could be relied upon to resist a cavalry charge, since horses would shy or turn away from an apparently immovable and dangerous obstacle. But the sight of thundering, shouting troops of horse would unnerve all save the most resolute man; and once a ‘hedgehog’ had begun to waver it could rapidly disintegrate, and was more than likely to do so when the pikemen comprising it were also being engaged by enemy infantry. Often the two sides were so closely interlocked that it was scarcely possible to raise an arm in defence or attack; men mortally wounded remained upright in the crush; and brave men could be carried off willy-nilly in a surge of terror-stricken soldiers struggling to escape the conflict, as was to happen to both Sir Thomas Fairfax and the King in the days to come.

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