Battle of Dunbar (1650)

The Battle of Dunbar (3 September 1650) was a battle of the Third English Civil War. The English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell defeated a Scottish army commanded by David Leslie which was loyal to King Charles II, who had been proclaimed King of Scots on 5 February 1649. The battlefield has been inventoried and protected by Historic Scotland under the Historic Environment (Amendment) Act 2011.

Background
The English Parliament had long suspected the true intentions of the Scots. Their worst fears were realised when the Engagers invaded England in 1648, however the Duke of Hamilton proved to be a poor commander and was easily defeated at the Battle of Preston. On 23 June 1650 Charles II landed in Scotland at Garmouth in Moray. On his arrival he signed the 1638 Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant and was proclaimed King of Scots. This infuriated the English authorities and they decided on a pre-emptive invasion of Scotland. Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Army's commander, disagreed with this strategy and resigned. Oliver Cromwell was made General in his place. John Lambert was appointed Sergeant Major General and the Army's second-in-command.

As Cromwell led his army over the border at Berwick-upon-Tweed in July 1650, the Scottish general, Sir David Leslie, decided that his best strategy was to avoid a direct confrontation with the enemy. His army were not the battle-hardened veterans of the Thirty Years' War who had taken the field for the Scots at Newburn and Marston Moor. Many of them had perished during the Civil War and the ill fated 1648 invasion of England. Far more had left active service after the former event. This meant that a new army had to be raised and trained by the remaining veterans. Eventually the army comprised some 12,000 soldiers, outnumbering the English army of 11,000 men. Though the Scots were well armed, the pressure of time meant they were poorly trained compared with their English counterparts, all of whom had served with Oliver Cromwell for years. Leslie chose therefore to barricade his troops behind strong fortifications around Edinburgh and refused to be drawn out to meet the English in battle. Furthermore, between Edinburgh and the border, Leslie adopted a scorched earth policy thus forcing Cromwell to obtain all of his supplies from England, most arriving by sea through the port at Dunbar.

Whether in a genuine attempt to avoid prolonging the conflict or whether because of the difficult circumstances he found himself in, Cromwell sought to persuade the Scots to accept the English point of view. Claiming that it was the King and the Scottish clergy who were his enemies rather than the Scottish people, he wrote to the General Assembly of the Kirk on 3 August famously stating, I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. This plea, however, fell on deaf ears.

The battle


By early September, the English army, weakened by illness and demoralised by lack of success, began to withdraw towards its supply base at Dunbar. Leslie, believing that the English army was retreating, ordered his army to advance in pursuit. The Scots reached Dunbar first and Leslie positioned his troops on Doon Hill on the eastern edge of the Lammermuir Hills, overlooking the town and the Berwick Road, which was Cromwell's land route back to England. Cromwell wrote to the governor of Newcastle:

"We are upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass of Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination."

- Cromwell.

However, the Scots army, commissioned and funded by the Committee of Estates and Kirk representing the Scottish Parliament and the Church of Scotland, manoeuvred itself into a new position which was subsequently regarded as a tactical blunder. Eager to curtail the mounting cost of the campaign, the Kirk ministers in attendance are said to have put Leslie under great pressure to finish the battle quickly. On 2 September 1650, he brought his army down from Doon Hill and approached the town, hoping to secure the road south over the Spott Burn in preparation for an attack on Cromwell's encampment. Witnessing Leslie's men wedge themselves between the deep ditch of the Spott Burn, and the slopes of the Lammermuirs behind them, Cromwell quickly realised that here was an opportunity for him to turn the tables on the Scots. He knew that an attack on the Scottish right flank would leave the left flank unengaged and that a successful push against the right would roll the latter back. On observing the manouevre, he is said to have exclaimed, "The Lord hath delivered them into our hands!"

"The Major-General [Lambert] and myself coming to the Earl of Roxburgh's House [Brocksmouth House], and observing this posture, I told him I thought it did give us an opportunity and advantage to attempt upon the Enemy. To which he immediately replied, That he had thought to have said the same thing to me. So that it pleased the Lord to set this apprehension upon both of our hearts, at the same instant. We called for Colonel Monk, and showed him the thing: and coming to our quarters at night, and demonstrating our apprehensions to some of the Colonels, they also cheerfully concurred."

- Cromwell.

That night, under cover of darkness, Cromwell stealthily redeployed a large number of his troops to a position opposite the Scottish right flank. Just before dawn on 3 September, the English troops, shouting their battle cry "The Lord of Hosts!", launched a surprise frontal attack on the Scots, while Cromwell engaged their right flank. Soldiers in the English centre and on the right caught Leslie's men unawares but were held at bay by the long pikes of their Scottish opponents. The right flank of the Scots, however, with less freedom to manoeuvre, was pushed back under the weight of superior English numbers until its lines started to disintegrate. Cromwell's horse then clashed furiously with the Scottish cavalry and succeeded in scattering them. Observing this disaster, the rest of the Scottish army, hopelessly wedged between the Spott or Brox Burn and Doon Hill, lost heart, broke ranks and fled. Cromwell's secretary Rushworth wrote: "I never beheld a more terrible charge of foot than was given by our army, our foot alone making the Scots foot give ground for three-quarters of a mile together."

- Rushworth.

In the rout that followed, the English cavalry drove the Scots army from the field in disorder. Cromwell reported to Parliament that the "chase and execution" of the fleeing Scots had extended for eight miles.

Cromwell claimed that 3,000 Scots were killed. On the other hand, Sir James Balfour, a senior officer with the Scottish army, noted in his journal that there were "8 or 900 killed". There is similar disagreement about the number of Scottish prisoners taken: Cromwell claimed that there were 10,000, while the English Royalist leader, Sir Edward Walker put the number at 6,000, of which 1,000 sick and wounded men were quickly released. The more conservative estimates of the Scottish casualties are borne out by the fact that, the day after the battle, Leslie retreated to Stirling with some 4,000-5,000 of his remaining troops.

The aftermath
In his post-battle report to the Speaker of the English Parliament, Cromwell described the victory as "...one of the most signal mercies God hath done for England and His people...". As a result of the destruction of the Scottish army, he was able to march unopposed to Edinburgh and quickly occupied the Scottish capital, although Edinburgh Castle held out until the end of December. The prisoners taken at Dunbar were force-marched south towards England in order to prevent any attempt to rescue them. The conditions on the march were so appalling that many died of starvation, illness or exhaustion. By 11 September, when the remnants arrived at Durham Cathedral where they were to be imprisoned, only 3,000 Scottish soldiers were still alive. If Sir Edward Walker's statement is correct, that 6,000 prisoners were taken and 5,000 of them were marched south, then 2,000 captives perished on the way to Durham.

Of the estimated 5,000 Scottish soldiers that began the march southwards from Dunbar, over 3,500 died either on the march or during imprisonment in Durham Cathedral, more than the total number killed on the battlefield. Of the 1,400 survivors, the majority were eventually transported as convict labourers to English colonies in the New World and the Caribbean. After formally accepting the Solemn League and Covenant, Charles was finally crowned King in Scotland on 1 January 1651.