October 27th, 1644 - The Second Battle of Newbury

Conflict: First English Civil War

Combatants: Royalists vs. Parliamentarians

Location: England

Outcome: Inconclusive

At Newbury, Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentary allies met to block a Royalist army half its own size from reaching London. Charles I launched an attempt to break through the Parliamentary lines, but failed. However, the failure of the Parliamentarians to coordinate a counter-attack allowed the Royalists to withdraw to Oxford with no clear winner.

Oliver Cromwell and Charles I from paintings by Samuel Cooper and Sir Anthony Van Dyck

Points of Interest:

• The Parliamentarians would badly defeat the Royalists at Naseby a year later. Charles was beheaded in 1649.

• Cromwell would lead the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland as Lord Protector from 1653 until 1658. He died in 1658 of natural causes.

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Sources:

Dupuy, Trevor N., Johnson, Curt, & Bongard, David L. (1992). The Harper's Encyclopedia of Military Biography. New York: Castle Books (HarperCollins).

Dupuy, R. Ernest & Dupuy, Trevor N. (1993). The Harper's Encyclopedia of Military History. New York: HarperCollins.

Eggenberger, David (1985). An Encyclopedia of Battles: Accounts of Over 1,560 Battles from 1479 B.C. to the Present. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.