The partnership of Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax was critical to the decisive defeat of the Royalist cause at Naseby in June 1645. But their collaboration had started to alter the course of the Civil War a year earlier, in an encounter that broke Charles I’s grip on northern England. This was the Battle of Marston Moor, fought some five miles west of York on the evening of 2 July 1644.
Approximately 18,000 Royalists faced a combined Parliamentarian and Scottish army 28,000 strong. This was the largest battle of the Civil War and, after Towton – fought in 1461 on a site 12 miles to the south – the second-largest ever fought on English soil. In two hours of fierce fighting over fields and moorland, some 4,000 Royalists lost their lives and a further 1,500 were captured, for the loss of fewer than 300 of their opponents.
Marston Moor destroyed the hitherto impressive reputation of Charles I’s cavalry arm, headed by his charismatic nephew Prince Rupert. It also made Cromwell’s name as a leading commander and set him on the path to political dominance. Why did the two sides clash in this location, and how did the battle result in such a crushing defeat for the Royalists?
