page_title: Battle of Marston Moor
section_title: Covenanters and Parliamentarians
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Marston Moor / Battle / Deployment / Covenanters and Parliamentarians
context_page_description: The Battle of Marston Moor was fought on 2 July 1644, during the First English Civil War of 1642–1646. The combined forces of the English Parliamentarians under Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester and the Scottish Covenanters under the Earl of Leven defeated the Royalists commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the Marquess of Newcastle.
  During the summer of 1644, the Covenanters and Parliamentarians had been besieging York, which was defended by the Marquess of Newcastle. Rupert had gathered an army which marched through the northwest of England, gathering reinforcements and fresh recruits on the way, and across the Pennines to relieve the city. The convergence of these forces made the ensuing battle the largest of the civil wars.
  On 1 July, Rupert outmanoeuvred the Covenanters and Parliamentarians to relieve the city. The next day, he sought battle with them even though he was outnumbered. He was dissuaded from attacking immediately and during the day both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, an expanse of wild meadow west of York. Towards evening, the Covenanters and Parliamentarians themselves launched a surprise attack.
context_section_description: The Covenanters and Parliamentarians occupied Marston Hill, a low feature (actually part of a terminal moraine) less than 100 feet (30 m) above the surrounding countryside but nevertheless prominent in the flat Vale of York, between the villages of Long Marston and Tockwith. They had the advantage of the higher ground, but cornfields stretching between the two villages hampered their deployment.
  At some point in the day, the Royalists attempted to seize a rabbit warren to the west of the cornfields from where they might enfilade the Parliamentarian position, but they were driven off and the Parliamentarian left wing of horse occupied the ground. The wing was under the command of Manchester's Lieutenant General, Oliver Cromwell. The first two lines consisted of over 3,000 cavalry from the Eastern Association, including Cromwell's own double-strength regiment of ironsides. They were deployed in eleven divisions of three or four troops of cavalry each, with 600 "commanded" musketeers deployed as platoons between them. The use of musketeers to disrupt attacking cavalry or dragoons was a common practice in the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years' War, and was adopted by both the Parliamentarians and Royalists at Marston Moor. Three regiments of Covenanter horse, numbering 1,000 and mounted on lighter "nags", formed a third line to Cromwell's rear under Sir David Leslie. Five hundred Scottish dragoons under Colonel Hugh Fraser were deployed on the extreme left.
  The centre, under the direction of the Earl of Leven as nominated commander in chief, consisted of over 14,000-foot, with 30 to 40 pieces of artillery. Thomas Stockdale recorded the disposition of the troops and the role of Leven in drawing up the order of battle:
  The Yorkeshire forces strengthened with a great party of the Scotts army hauing the main battle, the Earl of Manchester’s forces the left wing, and the Scotts the right wing, each battle hauing severall reserues and winged with horse, according to Generall Lesleys direction whose great experience did worthyly challenge the prime power in ordering them
  The Covenanter Sergeant Major General of Foot, James Lumsden, nevertheless noted (in a note on the map he made of the allied army's dispositions) that "... the Brigads drawen up heir as we [illegible] it is not so formal as it ought to be."
  Most of Manchester's infantry under Sergeant Major General Lawrence Crawford were on the left of the front line. A brigade of Lord Fairfax's foot was in the centre. Two Covenanter brigades each of two regiments, the "vanguard" of the main battalia commanded by Lieutenant General William Baillie, made up the right of the front line. The second line consisted of four Covenanter brigades, their "main battle", commanded by Lumsden. There is confusion as to the disposition of the third line and of the infantry deployment on the right wing, as the only map (Lumsden's) is badly damaged. The usual interpretation, based on Peter Young's reconstruction, is that the third line contained two or three Covenanter brigades and the Earl of Manchester's own regiment of foot. Young placed the main body of Fairfax's foot on the left of the third line, although more recent interpretations of accounts put them on the right of the third line or even behind the cavalry of the right wing. An unbrigaded Covenanter regiment may have formed an incomplete fourth line. There were a total of nineteen Covenanter regiments of foot, some of them incomplete, present at the battle.
  The right wing was commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, with John Lambert as his second in command. He had at least 2,000 horse from Yorkshire and Lancashire, deployed in nine divisions, with 600 musketeers posted between them in the same manner as on the left wing. There were also perhaps 500 dragoons. One regiment of Covenanter horse commanded by the Earl of Eglinton was deployed with Fairfax's front line, two more (one of them composed of lancers commanded by the Earl of Balgonie, Leven's son) were deployed behind Fairfax's second line. The second and third lines of the right wing ma
caption: Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven (1580–1661) – Leven commanded the Covenanter and Parliamentarian armies
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