Two hard fights with no clear winner fell on 27 October. In 1622 the Huguenot fleet of La Rochelle under Jean Guiton fell on the royal fleet of the Duke of Guise off Saint-Martin-de-Ré, grappled two fireships to the duke's flagship and set it ablaze, then slipped away in the dark, days after the king had already made peace with the Huguenots at Montpellier. In 1644 Parliament's armies, about twice the size of King Charles I's, sent most of their army on a night march to attack him from two sides at Newbury. They retook the guns they had lost in Cornwall and still let him escape, and the quarrel that followed led to the New Model Army.
La Rochelle's fleet, autumn 1622
In 1622 Louis XIII was at war with the Huguenot towns of the south and west, and while he besieged Montpellier, La Rochelle, the principal Huguenot stronghold, kept a fleet at sea. Its admiral was Jean Guiton, from a family that, according to the Musée protestant, had already given the city two mayors. Against it the crown gathered a fleet under Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Guise: by Arcère's count about thirty sailing ships in three divisions, with ten galleys from Marseille under the Count of Joigny and the great galleon of Malta.1
Contrary winds held Guise back for days. His fleet came in sight of the Île de Ré on 24 or 25 October, depending on the account, and a flat calm delayed the attack until the 27th.2
Fireships against the flagship
The Rochelais lay at anchor off Saint-Martin, on the island's north coast. As the galleys came on, Guiton's ships seemed to run, but the move was a feint to win the wind, and at about three in the afternoon they came down on the royal vanguard under the vice-admiral, Saint-Luc. Arcère counts 39 fairly small Rochelais ships carrying 5,000 men; the royal relation printed in London claimed 70.3
Seeing his vanguard in danger, Guise took his own flagship into the fight, although the rest of his division lay downwind and could not follow. The London relation says his officers and pilots went down on their knees to stop him. The Rochelais turned on the flagship, grappled two fireships to it and set it alight, and men fought hand to hand while the flames climbed the rigging. Part of the crew fought the fire and the rest fought off the attackers. According to Arcère, the grapnel lines were cut and the fireships pushed off, but the wind drove them back onto the stern and the fire flared again. When men then urged Guise to save himself in the longboat, he answered that he could not leave men who were fighting so bravely, and that if they had to die, his satisfaction and his glory would be to die with them. Cannon fire finally drove the fireships off, and the blaze was put out.4
The battle broke up into a general melee and ended only with darkness. The ship of the Rochelais captain Arnaud went down with many of the city's gentlemen and volunteers aboard, and a counselor of La Rochelle was among the few pulled out of the water and taken prisoner. The London relation counted more than 15,000 cannon shots fired that day.5
A victory claimed, a peace already made
The royal side counted the enemy's dead generously. The royal relation claimed ten Rochelais ships sunk and more than 2,000 men killed or drowned, against about 400 on the king's side. Arcère, the city's 18th-century historian, puts the Rochelais loss at 1,500 men. Guiton's fleet got away under cover of darkness, and the London relation admits that "if we had had but one hour of day more, there had few of them escaped". Arcère's verdict was that the duke had deserved a success that he did not obtain. The Musée protestant says Guiton fought Guise "with the greatest courage".6
The battle was fought after peace had already been made. At Montpellier the Huguenots accepted the king's peace on 18 October and made their submission the next day. According to Stephen M. Davis, Montpellier lost its walls, and La Rochelle and Montauban were left as the only Protestant strongholds. Guise was preparing a new attack when letters reached him confirming the peace.7
Arcère describes how it ended at sea: Guiton came to the duke and laid his flag at his feet, and Guise replied that the king needed no trophy to remind him of a wrong he wished to forget, and told Guiton to take the flag back and burn it or sink it. The royal Fort Louis outside La Rochelle stayed in place. When war returned, Guiton was elected mayor in April 1628, in the middle of the great siege of 1627 to 1628, and led the city until famine forced it to surrender.8
Newbury, 1644: three armies and no commander
In the summer of 1644 King Charles I had trapped the Earl of Essex's army at Lostwithiel in Cornwall, where its infantry surrendered with their guns. The king then marched east to relieve his besieged garrisons, among them Donnington Castle, just north of Newbury. Parliament gathered three armies against him, under Essex, the Earl of Manchester and Sir William Waller: about 17,500 to 19,000 men against roughly 8,000 to 9,000 Royalists. Essex fell ill and stayed behind, and no one was put in overall command. The historian S. R. Gardiner wrote that the Committee of Both Kingdoms in London "had taken good care that there should be no commander-in-chief at Newbury".9
The king held a strong position north of the town: Shaw House, the fortified home of the Dolman family, on the east, and Prince Maurice's entrenchments on the high ground above Speen on the west. Parliament's answer was a pincer. Late on 26 October and through the night Waller took the larger part of the army, with Essex's infantry, Cromwell's cavalry and the London Trained Bands, on a march of 10 to 13 miles, by different reckonings, round to the north and west, while Manchester stayed east of Shaw to attack once Waller's column had engaged.10
Speen, 27 October: the guns from Cornwall
Manchester's men attacked Shaw at dawn and were thrown back. Waller's column reached the heath west of Speen at about two in the afternoon and found Maurice's breastwork covering a narrow strip of open ground, with hedges on both sides that hampered the cavalry. At about three, Essex's infantry stormed the works. Among the captured guns were pieces they had surrendered in Cornwall: Philip Skippon reported nine brass guns taken, six of them guns his men had left behind there.11
Edmund Ludlow, who fought in the battle, recalled that the soldiers "clapped their hats upon the touch-holes" of the guns, and Gardiner adds that they did it to claim them as their own. Remembering how the Cornish had treated them after Lostwithiel, they showed Maurice's Cornishmen little mercy and drove them out of Speen village.12
Then the attack stalled. A Royalist cavalry charge drove Sir William Balfour's horse back at the last hedges before the open field outside Newbury, and Lord Goring's counter-charge checked Cromwell; the Royalist Earl of Cleveland, charging into the enemy ranks, was taken prisoner. Manchester, although his own officers urged him to attack, held back until about four or half past, when the light was going, and his assault on Shaw House failed. Gardiner, who studied the depositions taken afterwards, judged that Manchester "had no heart in the battle". Night ended the fighting.13
The king slips away
Charles did not wait for morning. He rode off with a small escort and left his heavy guns, his baggage and his wounded in Donnington Castle under its governor, John Boys. His army marched out through the gap between Shaw House and the castle and reached Wallingford, and Parliament's generals did not realize it had gone until it was out of reach. On 9 November the king came back with reinforcements and carried off his guns from Donnington while Manchester refused to fight. In the BCW Project's words, "the Royalists marched away with the guns, their drums beating and colours flying".14
No reliable casualty figures survive. BritishBattles estimates about 1,000 on each side, Newbury Today says only that both sides lost heavily, and World History Encyclopedia notes that the records conflict. England still used the Julian calendar, ten days behind the Gregorian, so, as Gardiner notes, 27 October was 6 November by modern reckoning.15
"Why did we take up arms?"
At a council of war after the relief of Donnington, Manchester argued against risking another battle: "If we beat the King ninety and nine times, yet he is king still, and so will his posterity be after him; but if the King beat us once we shall be all hanged, and our posterity made slaves." Cromwell answered: "My Lord, if this be so, why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so, let us make peace, be it never so base."16
Cromwell took the quarrel to Parliament. In February 1645 Parliament created the New Model Army under Sir Thomas Fairfax, and in April the Self-denying Ordinance made members of both Houses give up their commands, which removed Essex, Manchester and Waller. In June 1645 the New Model won the decisive battle of Naseby.17
Also on 27 October
In 1806, thirteen days after his victories at Jena and Auerstedt, Napoleon rode into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate. The battles are told on our 14 October page.18
In 1870 Marshal Bazaine surrendered Metz and his army to the Germans: between 173,000 and about 180,000 men, with three marshals. The campaign that shut him into Metz is told on our 18 August page.19
Also on this day
- 1622: Naval battle of Saint-Martin-de-Ré. Off Saint-Martin-de-Ré, La Rochelle's Huguenot fleet led by Jean Guiton fought a larger royal fleet under Charles de Guise during the Huguenot rebellion against Louis XIII.
- 1644: Second Battle of Newbury. At Speen beside Newbury, Parliament's armies under Waller and the Earl of Manchester attacked King Charles I's Royalists in the First English Civil War.
