Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (65 page)

As for the rebels, they had around fifteen hundred fighting men, perhaps a dozen small artillery pieces and a relatively meagre supply of gunpowder. They were outnumbered, outgunned and the city defences were relatively weak. But they had a new military leader, who would become the Parliamentarian hero of the siege. Edward Massie was indeed the rather ambiguous character I have described. The twenty-three-year-old son (though he may have been twenty-nine) of a Cheshire gentleman, the governor had, at the start of the war, allegedly attempted to obtain a commission with the king’s army at York, but sensing there would not be sufficient opportunity for promotion, he headed instead for London and the rebels. Though his name went on to become a talisman of rebel resistance, he was clearly a man whose ambition ranked higher than his ideals. I describe in the book how Massie sent secret messages to his old commander in the Scottish wars, one Colonel Legge, suggesting that, should the king appear in person before the walls, Massie would gladly surrender. This was, according to the Earl of Clarendon, the final encouragement King Charles needed to march upon Gloucester. Was Massie serious, changing his mind when the Royalists eventually appeared? Or was it all a ruse to confuse his enemies? We will never know for certain.

Either way, it is clear that Massie’s leadership was at the very heart of Gloucester’s unlikely resistance. He was an experienced engineer, and that knowledge proved crucial in taking the decision to fire the suburbs, in rebuilding the crumbling city walls, constructing sconces, ditches and breastworks, and countermining the Royalist tunnels. All these measures were successful in delaying the Royalist advance and damaging their collective morale, but Massie’s greatest contribution was arguably his sheer charisma. He was later described (as part of a ‘Wanted’ notice) as being of ‘
brown hair, middle stature, sanguine complexion
’, which leads one to think that perhaps he was not a great physical presence. But he led the people of Gloucester from the front. He walked the walls, paced the streets, offered solace to those in need, and, crucially, adopted a strategy of taking the fight to the besieging army. They would not sit and wait for the inevitable assault, which would surely engulf their patchwork defences. Massie arranged a series of raids through small ports in the walls to harry and disrupt the network of saps that were being dug all around Gloucester’s perimeter. The sallies met with varying degrees of success, but the net effect was a populace that felt empowered despite their predicament, and an enemy constantly thrown into disarray.

Indeed, the Royalist army, huge and confident at the beginning of the siege, became increasingly frustrated and mutinous as the days dragged by. The boggy terrain cannot have helped matters, for Gloucester’s natural springs made difficult work for the king’s sappers, and torrential rainfall compounded the problem, rendering attempts to undermine the East Gate extremely hazardous.

Conversely, morale inside the battered walls seems to have increased as the siege continued. Defence of the city was shouldered by the entire populace, with Massie as their inspiration. Women ventured out into the Little Mead, within range of Royalist snipers, to graze cattle and cut turfs for the walls, while children acted as messengers and, in many cases, took up arms themselves. In turn, their courageous story bolstered the pro-war faction in London and, so soon after the peace riots described in the book, served to quash any notion of surrender in the capital. Indeed, John Pym and his supporters in Parliament saw Gloucester’s heroic last stand as something of a propaganda coup, and quickly raised a relief force. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Gloucester was a major turning point in Parliamentarian fortunes, and I wonder if Pym, ever the strategist, had foreseen just such a conclusion.

One of the more noteworthy events of the siege was the introduction of Doctor Chillingworth’s engines, rather witheringly mentioned by one rebel as ‘
unperfect and troublesome engines . . . (that) ran upon wheels, with planks musket proof placed on the axle-tree, with holes for the musket show and a bridge before it, the end whereof (the wheels falling into the ditch) was to rest upon our breast works
’
.
As described in the book, these impressive machines were built at the fortified camp, or leaguer, amid the ruins of Llanthony Priory. But, rather like the Royalist ambitions as a whole, they proved something of a damp squib. They were eventually recovered by the victorious garrison in a marsh to the south side of the town, which suggests they were actually deployed, albeit unsuccessfully. Presumably, then, they reached the marsh (which Chillingworth would not necessarily have factored into his plans during the earlier rainless days of the siege) and floundered. The attempt, as featured in
Assassin’s Reign
, ended without even reaching the ditch over which the machines were designed to cross.

While in recent years the idea has been entirely discredited, it ought to be noted that the failure of the siege engines is often used as an explanation for the origin of the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, which, in its earliest form, reads thus:

Humpety Dumpety fell in a beck,

With all his sinews about his neck,

All the King’s surgeons and all the King’s knights,

Couldn’t put Humpety Dumpety to rights
.

The beck might be the marsh or one of the many ditches in the ravaged terrain, the sinews would be the ropes attached to the bridge, and the surgeon might be Chillingworth himself. Personally, I feel the link between siege and nursery rhyme is most certainly a modern invention, but it would be remiss of me to ignore it here.

As for the conclusion of the siege, it happened much as I have retold, with the exception of the king’s brush with an assassin’s crossbow bolt. The garrison was down to its last few barrels of powder, and Gloucester would surely have fallen within a matter of days had the Earl of Essex not arrived in the nick of time. What is perhaps as remarkable as the siege itself is the manner of Essex’s arrival. I chose not to focus on the relief force, feeling the story was better told around events at Gloucester, but it is no exaggeration to say that another entire novel could be dedicated to the story of how Essex’s army negotiated the march from London to Gloucester, all the while threatened by the formidable Royalist cavalry led first by Lord Wilmot and later Prince Rupert himself. Anyone wishing to learn more of how Essex successfully outmanoeuvred the hitherto invincible prince, or, indeed, about the battle fought soon after at Newbury, would do well to take a look at
Gloucester and Newbury 1643: The Turning Point of the Civil War
by Jon Day (2007).

Ultimately, though, the Royalists dithered. Too shaken by the carnage he had seen at Bristol, King Charles’ aversion to an all-out assault (as espoused by Rupert) meant that the siege just took too long. They needed to break into Gloucester before the Roundhead army arrived, and they simply ran out of time.

The other significant location in
Assassin’s Reign
is, of course, London. While Stryker is negotiating his way through the Parliamentarian stronghold in the west, Lisette Gaillard and Cecily Cade must extricate themselves from the very heart of the rebellion. I must confess that the story arc is entirely fictional in this case, but it is worth noting that the peace riots really did take place and were perceived as enough of a threat that troops were eventually ordered to open fire on the protesters.

As for the main characters in
Assassin’s Reign
, I am pleased to say that many were ‘real’ people, and I hope I have portrayed them as faithfully as possible. Aside from the senior commanders on the Royalist side – Rupert, Forth, Astley, Vavasour, Falkland and so on – all of whom existed, I would also note that Thomas Pury, James Harcus and Richard Backhouse were major players in the defence of Gloucester, though it should be noted that Harcus was indeed killed while he was ‘
too venterously looking what execution a granado had done
’. Other true-life figures include the bookseller, Tobias Jordan, and Major Marmaduke Pudsey. They were chosen to show how the city gave the rebellious rebuff to the king’s demand for surrender, and the audacious way in which they delivered the message is recorded thus by an anonymous Royalist: ‘
Their backs turned scarce thirty yards, on clap they their hats in the king’s presence, with orange ribbons in them.
’

Sadly, though, many of the characters in
Assassin’s Reign
are figments of my overactive imagination. Colonel Artemas Crow, Stryker’s nemesis from
Devil’s Charge
, is a work of fiction, as are Erasmus Collings, Cecily Cade, Henry Greetham, Christopher Quigg, Skaithlocke, Nobbs and Robbens. There was, however, a rebel deserter during the siege who swam the Severn to join the king’s army. His name is recorded as one Hatton, a gunner, and I have taken the liberty of using that man as Robbens’ alias.

For the men of Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot, the future is far from certain, for the tide has turned at Gloucester. Stryker, Skellen, Forrester and the rest will, I’m certain, be in the thick of the action, for as autumn gives way to winter, blood will be shed in the snow.

Captain Stryker will return.