10 Interesting Facts about the Battle of Naseby

These following facts about the Battle of Naseby should probably give you much information about the battle itself. The Battle of Naseby was fought on June 14, 1645. The Battle of Naseby was the decisive battle of the first English Civil War. On 14 June 1645, near the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire, the main army of King Charles I was destroyed by the Parliamentarian New Model Army commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfay and Oliver Cromwell. Prior to the battle, there was no obvious indication that either Parliament, with Oliver Cromwell highly influential, nor the Royalist had any obvious military advantage over the other. For further information, to get you to know more about this battle, here are some other facts about the Battle of Naseby you might be interested in.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 1: The Campaign

At the beginning of 1645, all of King Charles’s advisers urged him to attack the New Model Army while it was still forming. However, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who had recently been appointed General of the Army and therefore the King’s chief military adviser, proposed instead to march north to recover the North of England and join forces with the Royalists in Scotland under Montrose.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 2: New Model Army

Parliament decided that a more modern approach was needed and that a new model of an army had to be created. This was to lead the New Model Army, which Martyn Bennett refers to as “the beginning of the modern professional British Army” in ‘Battlefields of the English Civil War’.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 3: Committee of Both Kingdom

At the same time, after the New Model Army had abandoned an attempt to relieve Taunton, Parliament’s Committee of Both Kingdom had directed Fairfax, its commander, to besiege Oxford, the King’s wartime capital.Initially, Charles welcomed this move, as Fairfax would be unable to interfere with his move north. Then at the end of May he was told that Oxford was short of provisions and could not hold out long.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 4: First Contact

The morning of 14 June was foggy, preventing the opposing armies from sighting each other at first. The Royalist army occupied a strong position on a ridge between the villages of Little Oxendon and East Farndon about 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Market Harborough.^[5] The Royalist scoutmaster Sir Francis Ruce was sent out to find the Parliamentarian army and rode south for two to three miles (3-5 km) but saw no sign of it, perhaps through negligence.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 5: Royalists’ Deployments

The Royalist army occupied a front of about a mile and a half, between the Clipston-Naseby track on the left and the Sulby Hedges on the right. Their right wing consisted of between 2,000 and 3,000 cavalry under Rupert and his brother Prince Maurice. The centre was organised as three infantry tertias (brigades) commanded by Lord Astley, with a regiment of horse under Colonel Howard in support.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 6: Parliamentarians’ Deployments

Fairfax had drawn up his army on the ridge a mile north of Naseby, although some of it was behind the crest on the reverse slope. Commissary-General Ireton’s wing of five and a half regiments of cavalry was on the left. The infantry under Sergeant-Major General Sir Philip Skippon was in the centre with five regiments in the front line and three in support. For other information about other battles, you might want to check out facts about the Battle of Midway.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 7: Action

The Royalist centre attacked first, Rupert keeping his own wing of cavalry in hand so that the horse and foot could hit the enemy simultaneously.Skippon’s infantry moved forward over the crest of the ridge to meet the Royalist foot. There was time for only one volley of musketry before both sides were fighting hand-to-hand, the veteran Royalist infantry using their swords and the butt ends of their muskets.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 8: Royalist Survivors

Fairfax’s forces pursued Royalist survivors fleeing north towards Leicester. Archaeological evidence suggests that fugitives and Royalist baggage guards tried to rally on the slopes of Castle Yard (also known as Wadborough Hill), a wooded eminence which once had a motte and bailey castle, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) behind the Royalist position at the start of the battle.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 9: Aftermath

The main Royalist military force had been shattered at Naseby. The King had lost his veteran infantry (including 500 officers), all his artillery, and many arms. He lacked the resources to create an army of such quality again, and after Naseby it simply remained for the Parliamentarian armies to wipe out the last pockets of Royalist resistance.

Facts about the Battle of Naseby 10: In Fiction

Ann Turnbull’s historical novel “Alice in Love and War” illustrates the parliamentarians’ attack and slaughter of the unarmed female camp-followers.

Hope you would find those Battle of Naseby facts really interesting, useful and helpful for your additional reading.