r united force did not exceed nine thousand
men; but the impetuosity of the general despised inequality of numbers; and
the

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. July 8.]

ardour of his men induced him to lead them without delay against the enemy.
From Clithero, Langdale fell back on the Scottish army near Preston, and
warned the duke to prepare for battle on the following day.[a] Of the
disasters which followed, it is impossible to form any consistent notion
from the discordant statements of the Scottish officers, each of whom,
anxious to exculpate himself, laid the chief blame on some of his
colleagues. This only is certain, that the Cavaliers fought with the
obstinacy of despair; that for six hours they bore the whole brunt of the
battle; that as they retired from hedge to hedge they solicited from the
Scots a reinforcement of men and a supply of ammunition; and that, unable
to obtain either, they retreated into the town, where they discovered that
their allies had crossed to the opposite bank, and were contending with
the enemy for the possession of the bridge. Langdale, in this extremity,
ordered his infantry to disperse, and, with the cavalry and the duke,
who had refused to abandon his English friends, swam across the Ribble.
Cromwell won the bridge, and the royalists fled in the night toward Wigan.
Of the Scottish forces, none but the regiments under Monroe and the
stragglers who rejoined him returned to their native country. Two-thirds
of the infantry, in their eagerness to escape, fell into the hands of
the neighbouring inhabitants; nor did Baillie, their general, when he
surrendered at Warrington, number more than three thousand men under their
colours. The duke wandered as far as Uttoxeter with the cavalry; there his
followers mutinied,[b] and he yielded himself a prisoner to General Lambert
and the Lord Grey of Groby. The Cavaliers disbanded[c] themselves in
Derbyshire; their gallant leader, who travelled in

[Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 17.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 20.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1648. Aug. 25.]

the disguise of a female, was discovered and taken in the vicinity of
Nottingham: but Lady Savile bribed his keeper: dressed in a clergyman's
cassock he escaped to the capital; and remained there in safety with Dr.
Barwick, being taken for an Irish minister driven from his cure by the
Irish Catholics.[1]

On the very day on which the Scots began their march, a feeble attempt had
been made to assist their advance b