Rebels and traitors

Chapter Sixty-Five — Dunbar: 1650

On the bleak dark night of the 2nd of September 1650, Captain Gideon Jukes of the New Model Army lay on the ground on his belly at the edge of a cornfield, soaked to the skin, believing he would die next day and thinking about life. Life, Gideon believed, should be better than this. He was hungry and freezing. His Monmouth cap was so sodden with rainwater, it had stretched to almost twice its normal size — unwearable, but he diligently kept it on because it was a dark colour and camouflaged his light hair. Corn stubble had prickled his wet skin like six-inch nails, adding to the insect bites that already tormented him. Dunbar lay on a great curve of coastline that angled out, where the Firth of Forth runs into the North Sea, dark and heaving water, often dangerous to fishermen and sailors. The night was wild. Great curtains of gale tore across the town, dragging sheets of vicious rain and hail. Town was hardly the word, to a Londoner: just a line of hunched seaside houses around a small harbour. On the east side, the army camped out on a soggy, quagmired, fifty-year-old golf course. Camped was not strictly accurate either. Most had no tents. The luckier ones who did could not pitch them because the wind was too strong. Many men were too sick and demoralised to care; disease was careering through the ranks by the hour. A few found the energy to cheer themselves up by praying. There was no point trying to sleep. The wailing wind and the battering rain destroyed their rest. Besides, armies generally know when they are on the verge of great endeavour. Especially when there is no hope for them.

Up on the high ground, Gideon could sense the enemy very close by. He was not surprised. It merely confirmed what they had seen happening all day: the Scots had moved down from the summit. The New Model did not know why; it would take the kind of spies they could not use — spies who could go right in among the Scots regiments and overhear what had compelled Leslie to this unnecessary decision when he had had it so easy. Gideon could guess one reason: the misery the English were suffering down on the shore was nothing to the buffeting that the Scottish troops must have endured, when they were exposed to all the elements threw at them, up high on the crest of Doon Hill. Battered to exhaustion, the men must have pleaded for respite.

Gideon would hardly have believed that David Leslie had been forced downhill by the Kirk Committee. But those dough-brained Presbyterian ministers wanted a fast solution. Since their cannon could not reach Cromwell's men from the hill and they wanted to see bombardment, they dumped Leslie's patient tactics. Fairfax and Cromwell had never been so overruled. Fairfax had made sure he was given a completely free hand as soon as the New Model Army was formed and the volatile Cromwell would have beaten up insufferable civilians who interfered.

On Sunday, when Cromwell's men first arrived, Leslie had wanted to attack before they could establish proper defences. Then, the ministers of the Kirk refused to let him fight on the Sabbath. Now that the New Model was properly positioned, Leslie preferred to leave disease and hunger to do his work. But on Monday, the Kirk worthies instructed him to move his men downhill, ready to do battle. After fruitless argument, he gave in. From four o'clock in the afternoon the English had been aware of this enormous army moving closer towards them — the shuffles of men and horses, the groan of wheels under gun carriages. The Scots descended the hill slowly, until they had formed a huge arc, hemming in their opponents against the coast. They were stretched out over almost two miles, intending to leave no exit for escape. That night they settled down in the cornfields along the far side of the Brox Burn; this was where Gideon was reconnoitring after dark. They had no tents at all. He could hear that they were extremely unhappy.

The Brox Burn was normally fordable, but after so much rain it now crashed down its forty-foot-deep chasm in furious torrents until it flowed into the sea. Gideon had just managed to cross at a lower place near the shore, where the banks dropped and the widened water calmed. This place had been discovered earlier in the day, when Cromwell and his deputy, 'Honest John' Lambert, had ridden out to survey the enemy's movements. Leslie had deployed most of his cavalry opposite this area, his right wing, intending to prevent the English using any crossings near the shore.

Lambert, a sensible, dogged Yorkshireman, had spotted weaknesses in Leslie's deployment. The Scots' line spread too far towards the sea; it had them stretched and vulnerable on their right, while their left was cramped up, too close to Brox Burn to manoeuvre in support of their central infantry. Monck, the artillery commander, was consulted, a serious tactician; he agreed. A mounted council of war was held at nine o'clock that night, to demonstrate Lambert's observations and persuade the regimental officers that instead of waiting to be attacked and annihilated, the New Model should mount an unexpected offensive. Though many officers still favoured evacuation by sea, John Lambert won the argument.

With such heavy numbers arrayed against them, they relied on absolute surprise. In the dark, covered by the noise of the storm, men were discreetly moved to position. Cromwell, whose forte was careful placement of regiments in battle, rode around on a small pony to supervise. He was so intent, he bit his lip until the blood flowed. During that night, most of the English army slipped across the burn and formed up. John Lambert took three regiments of cavalry in a great loop, so they would not be noticed, aiming to attack the enemy's flank. All this was achieved while the Scots had no idea the English were on the move. For them that howling night, never was Cromwell's proverb more true: 'Praise the Lord — and keep your powder dry!'

In his cornfield, Gideon twice heard an alarm raised among the Scots. He tensed, but then twice he heard them ordered to stand down again. Although they were drawn up in their regiments ready for battle, they were so confident of victory they did not stand on guard. The men lay down among the stooks, trying as best they could to escape the weather. Gideon crawled so close that when they snuggled back among the dripping, sodden sheaves, he could hear men's groans and snores. It seemed some of their officers had left them, retreating to local farms and barns for a good warm night's sleep. Unsaddled horses were left free to forage. Weapons were stacked. What Gideon could not see — and as a musketeer he looked for it — were many twinkles of lit matchcord.

'Alas poor Jocky!' he mouthed to himself, quoting a catchphrase from a London news-sheet. What he observed excited him. Some harebrained field officer had allowed the Scots infantry to extinguish their match, apart from just two men per company. They could be caught unprepared. Slowly Gideon began wriggling backwards to report and to join his comrades for the coming fight.

Just before dawn, at five in the morning, John Lambert suddenly attacked the Scots' right flank from the shore side. The New Model let out their famous exhilarated shouts. Drums beat. Trumpets sounded. The great guns they had brought from London began a powerful bombardment, as the bleary Scots scrambled to order, barely able to grasp what was happening. Lambert's cavalry and Monck's infantry crossed the burn and together attacked from the front. This large concentration soon made the Scots' right wing crumble, despite a furious downhill charge by lancers, who held up Lambert's advance temporarily. Cromwell and Lambert were using a tactic they had employed at Preston, when also faced with superior numbers; they were pinpointing one section of the enemy at a time, then rolling up the opposition systematically. They took few losses themselves but wreaked havoc.

The Scottish infantry roused themselves from sleep, at first unable to fire because their match was out. They recovered as fast as they could, but were disadvantaged from then on. Furious hand-to-hand fighting ensued: push of pike and butt of musket — the most brutal kind. The battle line swayed to and fro several times across the burn. Then Cromwell threw in his reserves at exactly the right moment. At six o'clock, the sun came up to sparkle off the now-calm sea. Cromwell famously quoted the 68th psalm: 'Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered.' The Scottish right had failed. Unable to manoeuvre, their cavalry were driven back, trampling through their own infantry. Panic set in. Scots began to throw down their arms and run away. Their left wing fled without firing a shot. The indefatigable Ironsides slammed into the infantry and broke through the Scottish lines, according to Cromwell flying about the field like furies — or as another officer said colourfully, 'The Scots were driven out like turkeys.'

Cromwell himself was so overcome by the relief of tension he laughed uncontrollably as if he was drunk. He had saved a disaster. It was his most perfect victory, a masterpiece of tactics, both in planning and execution. By seven o'clock in the morning it was all over. The English had lost only an estimated forty men, the Scots three thousand dead, with ten thousand more rounded up and taken prisoner. The New Model could not cope with such numbers. The wounded would be released, but half of the prisoners were taken to Durham in a terrible eight-day march, then held in revolting conditions. Between three and four thousand died of hunger and mistreatment, the rest being transported as slaves to New England.

As the English cavalry pursued fugitives, they paused to sing the 117th psalm: not a long delay, for it has only two verses. English booty included Leslie's entire baggage train, all of the Scottish artillery, armour and colours. Retreating to Stirling, Leslie had lost over half his army and although the war was not yet won, Cromwell would control Edinburgh and Leith. Edinburgh city surrendered at once and was occupied by Lambert; its strong castle followed by the end of the year.

When news of this victory reached London, the Rump Parliament ordered that a Dunbar medal should be struck for both officers and men. It was the first military medal celebrating a battle ever issued to British armed forces.

Captain Gideon Jukes fought in the savage melee at the centre. Hopping on his pony after he returned from reconnaissance, he joined himself to Okey's dragoons for old times' sake. They piled into the Scots' infantry from the shoreward end. At some point, he felt as if he had been punched hard; a bullet had gone into his body from the front, on the left side, though somehow bypassing his heart. Strangely exhilarated, he kept going. He took a sword thrust in his right thigh. He began losing blood from that. Unable to keep on his horse any longer, he reined in and slid off, landing on his right side so his pelvis moved, his ribs crunched and his shoulder came out of its socket, the same one he had dislocated four years before in the West Country.

In disappointment and surprise, Gideon tried to curl up for protection as the battle raged over and around him. He had no way to avoid being fatally trampled; he felt worse fear than ever in his life. He could do nothing for himself. Only when his loyal pony came and stood over him with its head down sadly, was he sheltered. He had not yet lost consciousness. In a dreamlike state, he experienced waves of blackness and devastating pain. He thought he saw visions. He wished it could be over.

Then he was kicked in the head — by man or horse he never knew — which solved that problem. The noise of guns and men shouting faded to a remote blur. The buffets his body was taking seemed no worse than being shaken by a companion in the night, who had heard a cat make suspicious noises on the roof. Believing himself in his own bed, Gideon Jukes smiled briefly before he sank back dangerously into sleep and knew nothing for a long time.