When city became battleground and an army invaded
IT WAS REPORTED AS THE ‘BLOUDY MASSACRE’
IN the chaos of the English Civil War 376 years ago, Leicester became a battleground between the two sides.
In a fascinating new essay about the clash, historian Robert Hodkinson has shed light on the battle, which is probably not known about by many people in the city today.
It was back in 1645, three years into the war between King Charles I’s Royalists and the Roundhead army of the Parliamentarians, who would eventually win, taking victory at the Battle of Naseby, to the south of Leicester, the following month.
But the attack on Leicester was a victory for the Royalists, who brutally overcame the city’s defences, forcing the Roundheads to surrender.
In his history of the battle, Mr Hodkinson said: “Although the attack on Leicester in May 1645 barely registers as a footnote in the history of the English Civil War, this brief action was seized on by Leicestershire parliamentarians at the time as undeniable proof of the King’s bloody treatment of his subjects and was used as evidence against him at his trial in 1649.”
The Roundheads had about 500 troops holding Leicester but a large army of Royalists – numbering 10,000 to 12,000 men – were marching north from Oxford towards Newark via Leicester.
The Royalists already had their own garrisons in Ashby and at Belvoir Castle, so taking Leicester would help secure the whole of Leicestershire for them.
Leicester was not totally prepared for an invasion.
Mr Hodkinson, who lives in Derby, said: “Fortifying Leicester had been a long-standing contention between military commanders and Leicester’s civilian authorities.
“The town corporation had been reluctant to dig defences and raise earthworks, possibly for fear of lowering the value of their property.
“As a consequence, Leicester’s defences were rather modest.”
He said another error may have been that a 350-strong Roundhead force at Coleorton, near Ashby, with valuable artillery, “made no move as the Royalist army swept by them”.
There were plans to arm 900 civilians but only 400 were enlisted, probably due to a shortage of weapons, Mr Hodkinson said.
But unarmed locals, including women, helped shore up the city’s walls, repairing it as cannon fire damaged it.
The town corporation had been reluctant to dig defences possibly for fear of lowering the value of their property
There were military reinforcements for the Roundheads from Kirby Bellars and elsewhere, getting the total number up to about 1,000 soldiers and 750 on horseback – who managed to get to Leicester by the time the Royalist cavalry appeared on May 28.
Twenty-three-year-old Colonel Robert Pye took overall command of the defence of Leicester as the Royalists, led by the king’s nephew, Prince Rupert, approached from the north and the south at the same time.
On May 30, two cannon shots were fired at the city and a trumpeter was sent into Leicester to demand a surrender.
Mr Hodkinson said: “Before they had delivered their answer, Royalist batteries began firing on the town’s southern defences. In three hours a large breach had been made in the Newarke’s unprotected walls.
“Impatient to have begun firing on the town that afternoon, Rupert was equally impatient to storm the defences.”
The first attempts to storm the city via The Newarke were ineffective but on the other side of the city the Royalists scaled the town’s earth ramparts with ladders, throwing “hand granadoes” and breaching the defences. The Royalist foot soldiers opened the gates to the city and let the cavalry in.
Colonel Pye led a cavalry charge up the High Street, but the parliamentarians were overwhelmed and Pye was captured.
About 80 Royalists were killed in the attack and between 120 and 300 defenders.
Mr Hodkinson said: “The London paper Mercurius Civicus referred to the action as ‘The bloudy massacre’ of Leicester, although reports of atrocities following the town’s surrender, such as the wholesale seizure and hanging of the town’s committee, were subsequently accepted to have been fabrications.”
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