‘The Battle of All for All'

Charles seemed optimistic as he spent the winter at Oxford preparing for the 1645 campaign. ‘I thank God my affairs begin to smile on me again; he boasted to his wife in May.’ ¹ The arrival of a peace overture from parliament soon after he returned to Oxford convinced him that the rebels were weakening. For the coming fight the king trained strenuously, energetically recruiting men, raising money at home and abroad, scrounging supplies wherever he could, and writing orders. The news of Montrose’s victories were most heartening. The mirage of help from Ireland seemed so real that Charles tried to purchase it at any price. As her health improved Henrietta Maria did all she could in France to assist her husband, while at sea royalist privateers won the king’s gratitude (and their own fortunes) by ravaging London’s maritime trade. Yet the enemy was no less energetic. They remodelled the army, replacing aristocratic leaders with plain russetcoated captains. Although Charles did not recognize the danger of these reforms, dismissing Fairfax as ‘the rebels’ new brutish general’, he did realize that the struggle was approaching its crisis. Convinced that ‘This summer will be the hottest for war of any that has been yet; he decided to fight ‘the battle of all for all.’ ²