Battle of Dunbar (1650)

"Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow

Date	3 September 1650
Location	Dunbar, Scotland
Result	Decisive English Parliamentarian victory

Belligerents

Scottish Covenanters

English Parliamentarians

Commanders and leaders

David Leslie

Oliver Cromwell

Strength

5,500 cavalry.
16,500 infantry.
9 guns.
Total - 22,000'

3,500 cavalry.
7,500 infantry.
Total - 11,000

Casualties and losses

800-3,000 killed.
10,000 prisoners.

20 killed
58 wounded

Coordinates: 56°00′00″N 2°30′50″W / 56.000°N 2.514°W / 56.000; -2.514

The Battle of Dunbar (3 September 1650) was a battle of the Third English Civil War. The English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell defeated a Scottish army commanded by David Leslie which was loyal to King Charles II, who had been proclaimed King of Scots and crowned at Scone. Charles was pronounced King of Great Britain, Ireland and France on 5 February 1649. The battlefield has been inventoried and protected by Historic Scotland under the Historic Environment (Amendment) Act 2011.

Although the Scottish and English parliaments were initially allies in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, they did not remain so for the entire conflict. Differences in approaches to religion eventually came to the fore with the rise in power and influence of an Independents faction in the English Parliament, in particular its dominance of the New Model Army which alarmed the still Presbyterian-dominated Scottish Parliament. This was not what Scotland's Presbyterian commissioners had envisioned when they signed the Solemn League and Covenant along with their English counterparts. Thus there came a gradual realisation among some Covenanting Scots that a rapprochement or engagement with the King was perhaps the only way to achieve the "true religion" throughout Britain. This idea was hotly contested in Scotland. Only a few were willing to act on such a proposal when the so-called Engagers, unable to persuade the whole Covenanting movement of the wisdom of their strategy, decided they would show their compatriots the way through action rather than words. They invaded England in 1648 without the approval of the Scottish Parliament or General Assembly. However, the Duke of Hamilton proved to be a poor general and was easily defeated by the English parliamentary forces at the Battle of Preston. After the defeat of the Engagers the opposing Kirk Party seized control of the government in Scotland, with the result that from this point on more power was held by Presbyterian ministers than by Presbyterian nobles such as the Earl of Argyll. Not surprisingly, with the declining power and influence of the moderately Royalist Presbyterians and the rise of the more militantly Covenanter Kirk Party, the Scottish government became even more overtly and rigidly Presbyterian. Those who had opposed engaging with the King in 1648 were now effectively governing Scotland. However, even the most militant of Covenanters realised that the English Parliament was never going to enact the Westminster Confession and that the only chance of their Presbyterianism being instituted throughout Britain was through its acceptance by the King. Thus it was that on 23 June 1650 that Charles II landed in Scotland at Garmouth in Moray and by prior agreement, despite his Anglican and Roman Catholic sympathies, signed on his arrival the 1638 National Covenant and 1643 Solemn League and Covenant before being proclaimed King of Scots. This infuriated the English Parliament's Council of State who decided on a pre-emptive invasion of Scotland. Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Army's commander, disagreed with this strategy against the Scots Covenanters, who he saw as Protestant brethren and resigned; his generalship being taken by Oliver Cromwell. John Lambert was made Sergeant Major General and appointed as the Army's second-in-command.

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