{"id":1420,"date":"2018-06-29T07:46:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T07:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2017-11-23T11:53:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T11:53:46","slug":"battle-cropredy-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/battle-cropredy-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of Cropredy Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Battle of Cropredy Bridge<\/h1>\n

At the start of the campaigning season Charles\u2019 men were lodged in and around their stronghold at Oxford. A Royalist force was despatched to the north under\u00a0Prince Rupert of the Rhine to attempt to wrestle back control. In the south Charles\u2019 council advised\u00a0using forces from Reading to support the siege of Lyme Regis. This shifted some two and a half thousand men at arms across the country and presented an opportunity for an advance on Oxford.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0parliamentarian army in the area was led by Generals Waller and The Earl of Essex. In late May the\u00a0parliamentarian forces advanced towards Charles\u2019 forces near Abingdon. Charles ordered a retreat and made feints to make his intentions hard to read. On June 9th Essex and Waller convened and decided that Essex would lead his men to Lyme Regis whilst Waller would track Charles\u2019 movements and engage him.<\/p>\n

By 29th June the two sides were shadowing one another down the banks of the River Sherwell. Less than a mile apart, they marched in full sight of each other. As they approached Cropredy, Charles ordered some men to seize control of the bridge there. At roughly the same time he was told of additional\u00a0parliamentarian horsemen closing in and moved to cut these off. The dragoons fought for the bridge and the main body of Charles\u2019 Royalist army\u00a0crossed a stream, leaving just a small reserve in the rear.<\/p>\n

Upon realising that there was just a small reserve in place, Waller made his move. They forced themselves over the bridge at Cropredy with ease. Then turned and advanced on the reserve\u00a0of the Royalist force. The Royalist forces were able to hold back the assault and\u00a0push the enemy toward a ford.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Charles became aware that his reserve was engaged in fighting and turned his main force around. Several charges led to the\u00a0parliamentarian army being forced back, losing a number of guns in the\u00a0process.<\/p>\n

A victory?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not\u00a0perhaps in the classic sense. At the end of fighting the\u00a0parliamentarians held the bridge. However they had suffered heavy losses and the Royalists were able to make their way unconcerned about Waller. In that sense they won as they had destroyed his ability to fight on.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This short article was inspired because of seeing comments and questions about famous \u2018lasts\u2019. One such question was about the last King to fight in battle, another to win. That has led to this post and one about\u00a0George II at the Battle of Dettigen<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Battle of Cropredy Bridge At the start of the campaigning season Charles\u2019 men were lodged in and around their stronghold at Oxford. A Royalist force was despatched to the north under\u00a0Prince Rupert of the Rhine to attempt to wrestle back control. In the south Charles\u2019 council advised\u00a0using forces from Reading to support the siege of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoolshistory.org.uk\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}