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Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.
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Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots to from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. January 30, 1649 Outside the banqueting house in Whitehall, London, a crowd of thousands stands in stunned silence as a condemned man approaches a wooden scaffold. He wears two shirts, not out of vanity, but to prevent the winter cold from making him shiver because it might be interpreted as fear. This prisoner though, is no ordinary condemned felon. This is Charles, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland and Ireland. And in a matter of moments the King would take his last breath as the executioner raised his axe. How did England arrive at this unprecedented moment in its history? How did a kingdom that had believed in the divine right of kings come to put their own monarch on trial for treason? In the last episode of Not Just the Tudors, we explored how Charles had embraced his divine right to rule with fatal conviction. When Parliament refused to grant him traditional subsidies, Charles bypassed it entirely, levying forced loans and newly expanded taxes. But perhaps Charles most provocative act was religious. Married to the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, he attempted to impose Anglican prayer books on Presbyterian Scotland. The Scots saw this as religious tyranny and they were willing to fight the bishops wars of 1639 and 1640. The first of the wars of the Three Kingdoms drained Charles treasury and forced him to recall Parliament, the very institution he had tried to govern without. And within two years, the tensions that had been simmering for over a decade erupted into open conflict. The turning point of the first English Civil war occurred on 2 July 1644 at Marston Moor in Yorkshire, the largest battle of the entire conflict, which resulted in 4,000 royalist casualties compared to no more than 300 parliamentarian losses. At the centre of the Parliamentary line rode a man who'd be part of a cohort, who would do the unthinkable, kill the King and turn Britain into a republic. Oliver Cromwell. But before we get to that seismic shift, let's rewind four years as the disciplined New Model army of the Parliamentarians was put to the decisive test at the Battle of Naseby. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and with the help of some brilliant expert historians, drawn from episodes in the Not Just the Tudors archive, I'll now bring the story of the English Civil wars to their dramatic climax. At dawn on 14 June 1645, the fate of Britain was hanging in the balance. Two armies converged upon the misty moorlands of Northamptonshire. King Charles's beleaguered Cavaliers were gravely weakened. Charles had committed the fatal error of dividing his forces, dispatching 3,000 precious cavalry to the west country, leaving his main force dangerously outnumbered. His commanders, chosen more for their noble blood than their battlefield prowess, were at odds with each other. The King's brilliant but headstrong nephew, Prince Rupert, had counselled against giving battle, sensing the trap that was closing around them. Yet Charles, driven by pride and the indignity of being pursued like a common fugitive, overruled his most experienced general. The King's desperate gambit, the brutal storming of Leicester on 31 May had succeeded in drawing Parliament's New Model army away from Oxford. But now that same professional force was bearing down upon him across the field. The New Model army deployed with the cold precision of England's first truly professional military force. Almost 15,000 strong, these red coated soldiers were a revolutionary departure from the amateur militias that had stumbled through the Civil War's early years. Under the steely gaze of Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentary cavalry took their positions on the ridge, while disciplined ranks of pikemen and musketeers stretched nearly two miles across the battlefield. Sensing their numerical disadvantage, the Royalists drew up on lower ground with their backs to Solby Hedges. Prince Rupert's cavalry massed on their right flank, poised to unleash one final desperate charge. As the morning fog began to lift, revealing the size of the forces arrayed against him, Charles faced perhaps the bleakest odds of his reign. A professional army twice the size of his own, commanded by generals who had learned from every previous defeat and stood between him and any hope of victory. Suddenly, spurred by Rupert's impatience and the crackle of Parliamentarian muskets from the hedgerows, the Royalist cavalry surged forward. The charge smashed through the Parliamentarian left, scattering horsemen and tearing into the baggage train beyond. For a heartbeat, it seemed the Cavaliers might sweep the field. But in the center, the battle quickly turned into a brutal melee. Pike and musket, flesh and steel, men grappling in the mud. And the Parliamentarian infantry, drilled and resolute, began a relentless push to grind down their Royalist counterparts. On the Parliamentarian right. Cromwell's cavalry thundered into the Royalist flank. The Royalist left buckled, then broke, the Parliamentarian horse, wheeling and crashing into the exposed Royalist centre. Charles himself tried to rally his lifeguard for a desperate counter attack, only to be physically restrained by his own men, the reality of imminent defeat dawning as his army crumbled around him. Rupert's cavalry, having squandered their momentum on the baggage train, returned too late to stem the tide. The Royalist infantry, surrounded and exhausted, were cut down or forced to surrender en masse. The route was merciless. Royalist fugitives fled north beyond the battlefield, many of them cut down in the fields and villages. More than a thousand Royalists lay dead, with a further 4,500 taken prisoner. By comparison, Parliament's losses were minimal. The King's private papers, seized in the aftermath, exposed his desperate intrigues and doomed hopes. The Royalist cause was shattered at Naseby, the heart of their army broken, their dreams of victory drowned in mud and blood on that fateful June morning. And at Naseby, Oliver Cromwell's skills were evident for all to see, displaying not only tactical brilliance but also iron restraint. His cavalry's ability to regroup after their initial charge and return to the main battle was the decisive factor, contrasting sharply with the Royalist horse's lack of contrast control. Cromwell's innovations, close order formations, relentless pursuit of the enemy and the refusal to allow his men to scatter turned the tide of the battle and cemented his reputation as one of the era's great commanders.