The treatment of enemy prisoners and civilians caught in the
jaws of war were pressing concerns in the seventeenth century, as they are
today. The generations that experienced
the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil Wars did not have access to video footage
of mistreated prisoners or massacred civilians, but they did receive reports of
atrocities through the propaganda media of the day. Efforts to excoriate opposition acts ensure
that detailed and inflammatory accounts of battles, sieges, and prison conditions
survived the four hundred year interval.
Records from the English Civil Wars from 1642 – 1689 are particularly
accessible, and reveal a level of restraint significantly absent from other
seventeenth century conflicts. English
restraint in dealing with prisoners and civilians during the Civil Wars is
notable due to its absence from fighting conducted in Ireland and Scotland
during the same period.
One of the primary reasons for the apparent English
restraint toward prisoners and civilians during the Civil Wars was the concept
of honor. For gentlemen honor and
reputation were their life’s blood, and was owed both to their families and to
the King. The obligations to family and
the King were parallel, since a gentleman’s honor came from both sources.[1] Because honor relied on reputation, it
required maintenance. If a gentleman
ignored his obligations to monarch or family, he would lose his honor by
damaging his reputation.[2] Since one of the sources of a gentleman’s
honor was his family, the misdeeds of his relatives could diminish his own
honor, requiring gentlemen to ensure the proper behavior of his siblings and
cousins. A single wayward relation might
blemish the reputation of an entire family, regardless of their own involvement
in the situation.[3] The relationship between honor and reputation
were not absolute. A gentleman’s own
interpretation of what his honor required might lead him to take actions that
others might disagree with – perhaps in leading his troops from a battlefield
to save them, or in refusing to pay a relative’s debt.[4] Since a gentleman’s derived much of his honor
due to the privileges and position provided him through the authority of the
King, he owed the King obedience and respect beyond that due to his family. During the Civil War, this conception of
honor forced gentlemen loyal to Parliament to claim that they were fighting for
the benefit of both King and Parliament.
It also led Charles I to remind English nobility of their obligations to
him as King, even during his trial.[5]
The English conception of honor combined with the experience
of English gentlemen and common soldiers who had served in Europe during the
Thirty Years’ War to create a standard of military practice that argued against
atrocities. Even nobles and soldiers who
did not take part in the Thirty Years’ War understood the standards of military
conduct due to their study of military doctrine and manuals from the
Continent. Ultimately all but the
greenest soldiers and youths knew that there were rules regarding taking
prisoners, killing the enemy, and controlling troops during battle.[6] Additionally, King Charles I called on the
honor all English gentlemen owed him when admonishing Prince Rupert and
royalist troops to fight with due consideration of their opponents as fellow
Englishmen.[7]
The professional military code, although not completely
documented in a single place, told soldiers how to behave: when they could
surrender during sieges, what and whom they could plunder, and not to kill
surrendered enemies. The devotion to
soldierly honor owed a great deal to training and indoctrination by officers,
veteran soldiers, and even loyalty to the king, as well as basic Christian
principles and pride.[8]
Honor and professional standards were not the only things
restraining the behavior of the combatants during the English Civil Wars. Pragmatism played a central role in
preventing the cruelties of the Thirty Years’ War and the Irish Rebellion. Both royalists and parliamentarians worried
that if they acted in dishonorable ways toward the enemy, did not keep
agreements, or if they committed atrocities, that their opponents would act in
similar ways. Preserving the lives of
soldiers and civilians, and ensuring that prisoner exchanges continued were key
motivations for both sides observing the established laws of war.[9]
A final restraining influence on treatment of prisoners were
the decisions of King Charles and Parliament to treat the English Civil Wars as
if they were fought against a foreign army rather than a rebellion against
lawful authority. King Charles I
initially determined to execute all captured parliamentary soldiers and
officers. The King ordered Colonel Viver
and Captains Catesby and Lilburne tried from treason after their capture at
Brentford in 1642, although Lilburne escaped execution when his wife persuaded
Parliament to threaten reprisals.[10] Threat of reprisals did not end executions or
massacre of prisoners by either side, but acted as a pragmatic hedge against
excesses. Early in the war, the King and
his council determined that exchange of prisoners and other practices of war,
rather than rebellion, should apply, if only to protect captured royalists from
execution.[11]
Despite these restraining influences on the conduct of the
English Civil Wars, atrocities did occur against soldiers, officers, and
civilians. Massacre, execution, rape,
and plunder were still unfortunate occurrences, even if they were less
prevalent than in other seventeenth century conflicts. The Second Civil War witnessed more abuses
against royalist forces by parliamentarians, who believed that the royalists
were traitors based on parliamentary victory.
Similarly, royalists argued that the parliamentarians had lost all
claims to honor by imprisoning King Charles I.[12]
The Puritan tradition of Christian warfare also acted to
remove some levels of restraint from the activities of parliamentary
forces. Timothy George contends that in
rebelling against the crown, Puritans were unable to describe the Civil Wars as
just war, and came to view the conflict as a holy war based on the teaching of
John Calvin and Henry Bullinger.[13] These two theologians supported the doctrine
of holy war using Biblical examples.
Bullinger argued that in the Old Testament God ordered Joshua and Judas
Maccabeus to destroy cities that rejected God and in St. Paul’s war on the
false prophet Elymas in the New Testament.[14] The adoption of holy war rather than just war
theory was muted by William Ames’ argument that war must be conducted in
accordance with God’s law. This meant
that noncombatants must not be harmed – only the guilty were legitimate targets
of war. Despite Ames’ arguments, the
idea that God justified war in the Old Testament won out in Puritan doctrine,
as espoused by William Gouge.[15] George contends that Puritan iconoclasm
during the English Civil Wars was a logical outgrowth of this doctrine and
ministers preaching to extirpate the enemy “root and branch.”[16]
In this way, at least the Puritans among the parliamentary
forces saw themselves as holy warriors in the tradition of the knights of the
Crusades. These holy warriors were not
simply fighting against absolute government, or to maintain a system of church
government, but to defend the true faith from the powers of darkness.[17] Led by William Gouge, promoters of this
ideal, argued that it was acceptable to wage holy war against other Christians
based on the biblical slaughter of the tribe of Benjamin by the
Israelites.
The cause of war is more to be respected then the person
against whom it is waged. If Protestants
should give just occasion of warre, warre might justly be undertaken against
them. Before the division of the ten
Tribes from the rest, the rest if the Israelites fought against the Benjamites,
and that by God’s advice. David also was
forced to fight against the men of Israel that tooke part with Ishbosbeth: and
after that with Absalom; and after that with Sheba the sonne of Bichri.[18]
Further, mere conformists and papists, by not accepting the
true faith were the enemies of God, deserving the same treatment as any other
infidel. Luckily, for the royalist
forces and their supporters, this extreme view of the nature of English Civil
Wars was a minority one.
If the English Civil Wars were more restrained in the
treatment of prisoners and civilians, they were still wars, with the seemingly
inevitable consequences: despite the efforts of even the most diligent
officers, atrocities still occurred.
While they did not reach the extremes of the Thirty Years’ War, the
English viewed them through the lens of that bloody conflict. English civilians greatly feared the specter
of war and the undisciplined, drunken soldiers raping, pillaging, and burning
their way across England as they had done in Germany.[19] The belief that English communities were
sending off their coarser, ruder elements to fight only added to English fear
of the dangers of war.[20] Both sides took pains to highlight the
barbarity of the other, documenting plundering, massacres, and rapes.
When war crimes occurred, the perpetrators frequently went
out of their way to justify their acts, as in claiming that is was acceptable
to kill prisoners in cold blood if they represented a danger to the army, or
that God sometimes sanctioned the murder of women and children in the Bible.[21] It was also common to claim that a massacre
or decimation of surrendering troops was acceptable if they had violated the
laws of war themselves by either stubbornly defending a besieged town beyond
reasonable chance of success[22],
using poisoned bullets, or by using chewed bullets. During the Siege of Colchester parliamentary
troops claimed that General Goring ordered his troops to chew bullets, roll
them in sand, or to otherwise poison them in order to inflict more casualties
among the attackers. Although the chewed
bullets in question appear to merely have come from crude bullet molds,
parliamentary forces executed twenty prisoners who had poorly made bullets
after the end of the siege.[23]
Reprisals were another common excuse for committing war crimes. In 1644, William Doddington hanged twelve
civilians in response to the execution of Irish prisoners by Colonel William
Sydenham.[24] The execution of Irish prisoners itself, was
justified by Parliament as justice for the rape and murder of Protestant civilians
in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion.
Reprisal was also the justification provided when royalist forces led by
Major John Connaught smoked parliamentarians out of their refuge in a church
steeple in Bartholemy, and then stripped and murdered all but three of the
men. Oral tradition indicates that the
reason behind the massacre was that the church rector’s son had fired upon the
besieging royalists from the steeple.[25]
Not all war crimes fell into the category of reprisals. Like other wars, rape was part of the
unofficial activities of the English Civil War.
William Trumbull of Berkshire claimed that troops quartered in his home
raped a servant taken from her bed.
While the Berkshire incident seems divorced from the context of battle,
other rapes were part of normal pillaging activities. Sir Marmaduke Langdale’s men reportedly
pillaged and raped their way across Northamptonshire in 1645, binding men and
forcing the, to watch as soldiers assaulted the women of their families.[26] The royalist capture of Burton-on-Trent
produced additional claims of rape by pillaging soldiers, who allegedly
assaulted the women and forced them into the river, where many drowned.[27] English horror of rape for reasons of honor
and religion sometimes led them to blame sex crimes on foreigners, as was the
case when General Fairfax blamed three French royalist soldiers for the rape of
a farm wife in Yorkshire.[28]
The number of rapes documented during the English Civil Wars
appears abnormally low when compared to the Irish Rebellion and the Thirty
Years’ War. Although rape continues to
be an underreported crime in the modern era, the propagandists of the English
Civil War would have relished the opportunity to blacken their opponents’ good
name. This was certainly the case in a
1644 pamphlet denouncing the deeds of gangs of demobilized soldiers operating
throughout the country, but particularly the Barwick exploits of John Hawkins
and companion in assaulting six young women.[29] Despite the horror of rape, courts-martial
for the offense are vanishingly rare in the surviving records of both royalist
and parliamentary forces. In ninety-two
cases, only two were for rape. One
convicted soldier received sixty lashes, while another received a lash from
every carter in the baggage train.[30] Even these punishments were handed out more
due to the negative effect crimes by troops have on discipline and
civil-military relations.
While civilians were repeatedly plundered with, and without,
official sanction, most civilians survived the attentions of marauding
armies. One explanation for the relative
lack of civilian casualties, other than during sieges, is the lack of ethnic
tensions among the combatants. The homogeneity
of ethnicity and religious practice acted to reduce the excesses experienced by
civilians in Ireland, Scotland, and Germany during seventeenth century
wars. Atrocities against surrendered
soldiers, committed in the heat of battle or in cold blood, predominated the
war crimes of the English Civil War.
While international laws of war and the codes adopted by
both armies guaranteed the safety of soldiers who surrendered in battle, common
soldiers did not always honor this in the heat of battle. The Earl of Essex attacked his own troops at
Reading when they attempted to pillage surrendered royalists. The King himself sent officers to beat back
royalists who tried to plunder parliamentary infantry after Lostwithiel,
ultimately executing seven of the perpetrators on the spot.[31] Such atrocities went without consequence to
the guilty, as was the case when parliamentary soldiers massacred one hundred
women after the Battle of Naseby. The
slayings of twenty-five prisoners at Hopton did not occur in the heat of
battle, but afterward as acts of vengeance toward stalwart defenders accused of
using “chewed” bullets.[32] Massacres almost became a matter of policy in
1644 when Parliament enacted legislation denying quarter to any Irish soldiers
captured fighting for the royalists.
This anti-Irish policy largely fell into disuse when Prince Rupert
retaliated by executing parliamentary prisoners in retaliation.[33]
In general the persons of prisoners as safe, even if their
goods were not. Even prisoners granted
quarter were frequently plundered of clothing and money. Many regular soldiers switched sides when
captured, or were paroled to go home.
The parole process included a promise not to fight against the paroling
army, and officers found violating their parole were sometimes executed if
captured a second time. Some prisoners
were exchanged, and found themselves under arms once more.[34] While most royalist soldiers captured during
1646 were paroled, those taken earlier sometimes found themselves imprisoned
for extended periods.[35]
Although most soldiers did not describe parliamentary
imprisonment, they remembered it as long and tedious, and the food lacking.[36] Food ranged from turnip greens and cabbage to
bread and beer or beef, cheese, and pottage.[37] The facilities used as prisons ranged from
the open fields used by prisoners after Naseby, to churches in Gloucester, to
floating Hulks anchored in the Thames.
The amount of freedom afforded prisoners was also variable. Some were allowed to find lodging after
giving their parole, while others were kept manacled, or tied to another with
match from muskets.[38]
Although not deliberately cruel, prison conditions
frequently led to sickness or death.
Conditions on the hulks in the Thames were described as hellish – cold,
damp, crowded, and filthy with bad food.
Conditions in other prisons were equally bad, particularly if prisoners
were unable to secure additional sources of food and warm clothing. Prisoners at the Lion’s Den were denied
medical treatment for wounds because Captain Palmer, the jailor did not want
anyone to waste the effort on the “enemies of God” imprisoned there.[39]
The interference of civilian authority in the fates of
military prisoners during the Second Civil War made the fate of prisoners even
less predictable. This was certainly the
case at Colchester. When Fairfax
executed Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle as examples of the possible
fate of future traitors, he granted the remaining officers quarter along with
their men. Royalists protested at the
executions, which were justified by the fact that Fairfax accepted their surrender
at mercy, rather than for quarter[40]. Parliament insisted that Fairfax had
overstepped his authority in dealing summarily with prisoners. Later battles saw the fates of some military
prisoners reserved for Parliamentary disposition.
Although the English Civil Wars incited the same types of
raw emotions among combatants and sympathizers, England was spared the levels
of violence and devastation that occurred in Ireland, Scotland, and Germany
during the seventeenth century. The
reasons for the relative restraint practiced by parliamentary and royalist
forces were the short durations of the struggles, the decision to treat the
First Civil War as a conflict between lawful enemies, and the ethnic and
religious homogeneity of England. Honor
and professional codes of military conduct also played a key role in enforcing
common standards of behavior among the armies contending for supremacy in
England, as did the request of King Charles I for his forces to remember that
their opponents were also his beloved, if misguided subjects. The level of violence inflicted upon captured
soldiers and officers increased with the Second Civil War primarily due to
Parliaments belief that royalists were rebelling against the lawful government
of England. Pragmatism to preserve
parliamentary forces and to end the conflict quickly dictated that the majority
of royalist forces in the Second Civil War still enjoyed the tradition
protections of the laws of war.
[1] Marston,
Jerrilyn Greene. “Gentry, Honor, and Royalism in Early Stuart England,” The Journal of British Studies 13, no. 1
(1973): 22.
[2] Marston,
24.
[3] Marston,
28.
[4] Donagan,
Barbara. “The Web of Honour: Soldiers, Christians, and Gentlemen in the English
Civil War”, The Historical Journal
44, no. 2 (2001): 366.
[5] Marston,
35-36.
[6] Donagan,
“The Web of Honour,” 367-368.
[7] Marston,
37.
[8] Donagan,
“The Web of Honour,” 369, 372.
[9] Donagan,
“The Web of Honour,” 377.
[10]
Carlton, Charles, Going to the Wars: The
Experience of the British Civil Wars 1638-1651 (New York: Routledge, 1992),
241.
[11]
Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 4
(1994): 1140.
[12]
Donagan, “The Web of Honour, 378.
[13] George,
Timothy, “War and Peace in the Puritan Tradition.” Church History 53, No. 4 (1984): 493.
[14] George,
494.
[15] George,
496.
[16] George,
499.
[17] George,
500.
[18] Gouge,
William, Gods Three Arrowes: Plague,
Famine, Sword (London, 1631), 213.
[19]
Donagan, “Codes and Conduct in the English Civil War,” Past and Present 118 (1988): 71.
[20]
Donagan, “Codes and Conduct,” 72.
[21]
Donagan, “Codes and Conduct,” 77.
[22]
Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime and Treason,” 1144.
[23]
Carlton, 323.
[24]
Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime and Treason, 1148.
[25]
Donagan, Atrocity, War Crime and Treason, 1154n.
[26] Charles
Carlton, “Civilians,” in The Civil Wars:
A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 294.
[27]
Carlton, Going to the Wars, 256.
[28] Charles
Carlton, “Civilians,” in The Civil Wars:
A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 294.
[29]
Carlton, Going to the Wars, 259.
[30] Charles
Carlton, “Civilians,” in The Civil Wars:
A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 294.
[31] Ian
Gentles, “The Civil Wars in England,” in The Civil Wars: A Military History of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1638-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), 112.
[32]
Donagan, Barbara, “Prisoners in the English Civil War,” History Today 99 no. 4 (1994): 28.
[33]
Donagan, “Prisoners in the English Civil War,” 29.
[34]
Donagan, “Prisoners in the English Civil War,” 20.
[35] Stoyle,
Mark, “’Memories of the Maimed’: The Testimony of Charles I’s Former Soldiers,
1660-1730,” History 88 no. 290
(2003): 216.
[36] Stoyle,
217.
[37]
Donagan, “Prisoners in the Englisg Civil War,” 33.
[38]
Donagan, “Prisoners in the English Civil War,” 32.
[39]
Carlton, 246.
[40] Barbara
Donagan, “Army, state, and soldier in the English civil war,” in The Putney Debates of 1647 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 91
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