ABSTRACT
The two armies drew up along parallel ridges, Red Hill and Dust Hill, in a small tract of open country between the villages of Naseby and Sibbertoft, five miles to the south of Market Harborough. The battlefield was hemmed in on the west by a patchwork of enclosures and on the east by a belt of gorse bushes and scrub concealing a steep slope. As a result, outflanking movements were out of the question. Rupert deployed the Royalist army on Dust Hill with Prince Maurice commanding the right wing and Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left. In total they amounted to just over 3,000 cavalry, with the Northern Horse reinforced by a regiment from Bristol being slightly more numerous than Maurice’s ‘old horse’ of the king’s field army strengthened by a regiment from the English army in Ireland. In the centre were seven small brigades of infantry totalling no more than 4,000 foot interspersed with another 800 cavalry drawn up in squadrons. The cavalry reserve comprised about 1,000 horse, two brigades from Newark on the wings and the king’s lifeguard in the centre. Stationed between them were the infantry reserves, the king’s and Prince Rupert’s regiments of foot. 1
