For several months after the battle of Dunbar
both parties rested in comparative inaction. Edinburgh
castle, after a brief siege, was surrendered
by Dundas, without, indeed, if the assertions of the
royalists are to be credited, any sufficient reason.
During the winter Oliver remained in the metropolis
of Scotland, engaged, for the most part, in disputations
with the Presbyterian clergy, who hated

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him with bitter and incessant rancour; and here
he was attacked by a sharp fit of ague, threatening
to undermine his constitution, and actually reducing
him so low that it was early in July before
he was prepared to take the field. Meanwhile,
Charles had been crowned at Perth, on the first
day of January, '51, King of Great Britain, France,
and Ireland, most of the nobles being present in
their robes of state and coronets—had sworn both
to the “National Covenant” and to the “League
and Covenant”—had levied a strong army under
command of the stout veteran Lesley—and had
taken post, meaning to act on the defensive, on
strong ground in the neighbourhood of Torwood.
Here for some days the hostile armies faced each
other, manœuvring to gain, if possible, advantages
that might ensure success—Oliver continually desiring,
Lesley as obstinately shunning, any contact
that might lead to a general action. Skirmishes
occurred almost every day between the cavalry
and outposts — but none of much importance,
whether from loss sustained or permanent results
on the campaign; till, at last, wearied by a game in
which he had sagacity to see that he in the long
run must be the loser, Cromwell transported his
whole army into Fife, besieging and in two days
making himself the master of the town of Perth.
His object in this bold manœuvre was to draw
down the Scottish army from its ground of vantage,
and in this he succeeded fully, though not,
perhaps, exactly in the manner he had contemplated;
for, breaking up his camp at Torwood on
the thirty-first, Charles turned his face toward the
border, loading some twelve or fourteen thousand
men, with the intent of concentrating his powers at
Carlisle, where he expected to be re-enforced by
a great rising of the royalists en masse from all the

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northern counties. The consternation throughout
England at the news of this advance was general
and excessive—the parliament were in extremity
of terror and suspicion—Bradshaw himself, stout-hearted
as he was in public, privately owned his
fears, and more than half suspected the good faith
of Cromwell. Their terrors grew more and more
real daily, when it was told in London that the
cavaliers of Lancashire were gathering head under
Lord Derby, and the Presbyterians threatening to
make common cause with them under their Major-general
Massey; and, in good sooth, had it not
been for the insane fanaticism of the Scottish clergy—
who, with a fierce intolerance that ruined their
own cause, would suffer none to join the standard
of the king without subscribing to the covenant—
the forces of the royalists would have been truly
formidable, and might have, not improbably, succeeded
in restoring Charles to his ancestral throne.
But, happily for England, hundreds of gallant cavaliers
and hundreds of stout-hearted English Presbyterians
were refused the miserable boon of sacrificing
life and fortune in behalf of the least grateful
prince of an ungrateful line, because, forsooth,
they would not sacrifice the interests also of their
native land to the intolerant and selfish policy of
Scotland. Still, though his ranks swelled not as
rapidly as, under a more prudent system, they
would assuredly have done, Charles marched with
little opposition, and still less real loss, as far into
his southern kingdom as the fair town of Worcester.
Lilburne, indeed, with a small independent
party, surprised and utterly defeated, at Wigan-lane,
in Lancashire, three or four hundred gentlemen
commanded by the Earl of Derby; who, himself
desperately wounded, escaped with difficulty from
falling into the hands of his rude conquerors!

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Lambert and Harrison attempted, with inferior
forces, to dispute the passage of the Mersey with
the king; but, after a few ineffectual charges, and
offering Charles an opportunity of bringing on a
general action, were forced to draw off, and permit
the enemy to enter Worcester unmolested. Here
he was instantly proclaimed, amid the acclamations
of the mob and the good wishes, faint though faithful,
of the loyal gentlemen assembled in that city.

While tarrying here it became visible to Charles
and his advisers that succour came not in by any
means so rapidly as they had hoped; that the
Welsh cavaliers, who had been most severely
handled in their last insurrections, were not disposed
to risk a general rising; and that there was
but little hope of any common or extensive movement
of the royalists until some such advantage
should be gained as would, at least, be a justification
to their daring. In this predicament it
was decided that they should await Cromwell's
arrival from the north, and give him battle there
beneath the walls of Worcester. Nor, indeed, had
they long to tarry; for, with his wonted energy of
mind and motion, that able leader had pursued the
footsteps of his enemy, so that, within a very few
days of the king's arrival, the various detachments
of the pursuing army concentrated on the Severn,
and on the twenty-eighth of August Oliver joined
in person, and found at his disposal not less than
thirty thousand soldiers of all arms, regular troops
and militia both enumerated. No sooner were the
hostile armies face to face than skirmishes, in
which there was much desperate fighting and much
loss on both sides, commenced and were continued
daily. Lambert, after a well-disputed contest, carried
the bridge at Upton, and established his position,
Massey having been wounded so severely as

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to be wellnigh hors de combat. The Scots, on the
first day of September, destroyed two bridges on
the Team about three miles from Worcester, and
the second was consumed in preparations for reestablishing
the communication. Late on that evening
Oliver dismounted from his charger at headquarters,
and issued his directions, brief, luminous,
and rapid, for the morrow—which, he reminded his
high-spirited but superstitious officers, was his peculiar
day of glory—“A day whereon, from his
childhood, by the Lord's wondrous grace, up to
that present time, he never had attempted aught
but he had therefrom reaped a golden harvest.
Wherefore,” he said, “let us fall on more boldly—
mindful of the last anniversary which saw the glorious
blessing at Dunbar—and putting trust in our
own stout right arms, and in the aid of that Lord
who is all in all—trusting, I say, that this shall
prove a final and decisive end to our labours—yea!
and a crowning mercy!” Fleetwood was then
commanded to force the passage of the Team at
noon, when they supposed the cavaliers would have
abandoned any thoughts of a decisive action for
that day, while Cromwell should himself establish
a bridge of boats across the Severn at Bunshill.

The morning of the third broke gloriously and
bright. The independent forces were full of ardour
for the onset, inflamed even beyond their
wont by the prophetic exhortations of their leader,
who, himself kindling like a warhorse to the trumpets,
proclaimed to them, no longer darkly nor in
doubtful hints, but in wild glowing eloquence, that
they should now ride forth to glory!—that their
right hands should teach them terrible things—that
they should smite the sons of Zeruiah utterly, and
suffer not a man of them to live. At the appointed
hour Fleetwood attacked in force, and, after a most

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furious cannonade, carried the passage of the
Team, and was already strengthening his position,
when Charles, alarmed by the incessant firing,
despatched strong re-enforcements to support his
friends, with orders at all hazards to prevent a
bridge from being formed. Again the action became
hot and doubtful—and now the independents
were forced back, although fighting foot by foot,
before the masses of the royalists; but just when
these imagined their success decisive, Fleetwood
in turn was re-enforced, and, acting with a fiery
daring, that was well seconded by his stout veterans,
charged instantly along his whole line, and
repulsed the Scots. Those sturdy troops, however,
rallied instantly, thus hoping to afford their
countrymen a chance of breaking Cromwell's regiments
on the other side of the Severn. The
ground on which they fought, though for the most
part level, was intersected everywhere by thick
strong fences of old thorn, with banks and ditches;
and each of these positions was lined with musketry,
and was defended with an obstinate and
dogged courage that cost the independents hundreds
on hundreds of their bravest soldiers. One
by one they were forced, however, at the pike's
point; and still, as Fleetwood's men advanced, the
Scotch pike-regiments rushed on, charging with
more of spirit than they had displayed throughout
the whole course of the war; and still, when forced
to give way, leisurely and in perfect order falling
back to the next fence, which was by this time
glancing with the sharp volleys of their musketeers.
But, notwithstanding all their efforts, ere
nightfall they were driven from their every line
with unexampled loss—beaten at every point—and
forced to seek for refuge in the walls of Worcester.
On the other side the river the battle raged

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with equal fury and almost equal doubtfulness during
five hours at the least. Cromwell, who had,
from a flying battery of heavy guns, commenced a
cannonade upon the fort built to defend the main
gate of the town, and brought up all his forces in
two lines to assault the place, was charged at all
points by a general sally of the whole infantry of
the king's army, who, issuing simultaneously from
several gates, firing and cheering till the welkin
rang as they came on, burst on the newly-levied
regiments and the militia with such enthusiastic
valour, that they drove them back in absolute confusion,
took Cromwell's battering guns, and turned
them with effect on his disordered squadrons. But
at this juncture Charles was unequal to the great
part which he had to play; had he brought out his
cavalry, and charged again while the militia of the
independents were forced pell-mell into the ranks
of the reserve, he hardly could have failed of gaining
a complete victory. But his horse, save one
squadron, were within the city—he saw his error
when it was too late, for the keen eye of Cromwell
saw it likewise, and gave him not a second's
space even to struggle to redeem it. Leading his
cavalry—his own invincibles—at a quick trot, in
squadrons, through the intervals of the defeated
regiments, he set up one of his triumphant hymns,
and, sweeping on like a springtide, with full five
thousand horse, he beat the victors back—regained
the cannon, sabring the artillerists over their guns--
and, while his cavalry reformed, brought up the
whole of his reserve—the conquerors of Marston,
Naseby, and Dunbar—column on column—with a
succession of tremendous charges that no troops
then in the world could have resisted! Scarce
had his musketry and pikemen shattered the Scottish
masses ere he again came thundering down

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on them with his unrivalled horse. And back!
back! they were borne, hopelessly, irretrievably
defeated. Still they had steadiness enough to retreat
corps by corps, facing and firing till all were
within the walls who had the power to crawl into
that too precarious place of refuge. The last
beams of the setting sun glanced red and lurid on
the weapons of the last band that filed into the
gates—a feeble cheer arose! and then a heavy
cannonade ensued from the whole line of battlements,
compelling Oliver to draw his forces off for
a short space of relaxation and repose. Short
space it was, however; for twilight was yet lingering
upon that fatal plain when Cromwell's trumpets
summoned the fortress to surrender. The
summons was refused, and instantly a dozen rockets
rushed up to the darkening sky—the batteries
opened for ten minutes space more furiously than
ever—and then, with Cromwell personally leading
them on sword in hand, with an apalling shout,
the forlorn hope rushed forward—with ladders, and
fascines, and boarding-axe, and pike, and every
instrument most fearfully destructive, they hurried
to the walls, which now, from every porthole, battlement,
and embrasure, poured forth the ringing
volleys of the ordnance. Scarcely ten minutes
passed, however, before the cannon again ceased—
and the loud roar of thousands, blent with the maddened
shrieks of women, and all the horrid noises
of a captured city, announced that all was over.
The gates were instantly thrown open, and in
poured the furious zealots; throughout the livelong
night the din, and rage, and agony, and sacrilege
continued; full fifteen hundred men were slaughtered
in the streets; the thoroughfares were choked
with corpses, the kennels ran knee-deep with human
gore.

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The morning of the fourth arose, like that of
the preceding day, serene and glorious. The massacre
was checked, peace was restored, and, at
the least, comparative tranquillity; the king was
a despairing fugitive, with scarce a hope remaining
even of personal escape; his army was annihilated—
his party was no more — his friends
slaughtered or hopeless captives — his kingdom
numbered, weighed, divided, and apportioned!—
and with a steady countenance, lighted by no fiery
exultation, the winner returned praises to the Giver
of all goodness for this HIS CROWNING MERCY!