The Battle of Lansdowne was a battle of the First English Civil War which was fought on 5 July 1643 near Bath, Somerset, England. The battle was a pyrrhic victory for the royalist Cavaliers, who suffered heavy losses and ran low on ammunition as a result of the battle.
Background[]
By late May 1643, Ralph Hopton's Royalist army had captured most of South West England. Joined by the Earl of Hertford, he then advanced eastward into Parliamentarian-held territory. William Waller's Parliamentarian army obstructed the Royalist advance from Bath, and, on 2 July 1643, the Royalists seized the bridge at Bradford on Avon. On 3 July, Hopton and Waller's armies skirmished south and east of Bath, and Waller established a strong position atop Lansdowne Hill, northwest of Bath. On 4 July, Hopton's forces encountered Waller's position on Lansdowne Hill, only to withdraw after a brief skirmish.
Battle[]
Hopton's force returned to Lansdowne Hill a day later, by which time the Parliamentarians had built crude breastworks on the north end of the hill. Waller sent some of his cavalry against Hopton's outposts, routing some Royalist cavalry and luring the rest of Hopton's army into battle. The two armies skirmished indecisively for two hours until Hopton tried to withdraw, and, while Waller's cavalry routed the Royalist cavalry rearguard, the Royalist infantry stood firm, and Hopton's army turned about and defeated the Parliamentarian cavalry. Hopton's Cornish foot regiments then began to advance without orders, and Waller went along with the momentum and at last attacked Lansdowne Hill. His cavalry suffered heavy losses while charging uphill, and 1,400 of them fled, some as far as Oxford. Bevil Grenville personally led the Cornish pikemen in storming Waller's defensive works, while Royalist musketeers outflanked the Parliamentarian defenses. Grenville was mortally wounded in hand-to-hand combat, but the Parliamentarian cavalry were repelled during a failed counterattack. At night, Waller's army withdrew, leaving burning matches on the wall to deceive the Royalists into thinking that they still held the hill.
Aftermath[]
The day after the battle, a Royalist ammunition cart exploded, and Hopton was wounded and temporarily blinded. The Royalists' loss of gunpowder and most of their cavalry meant that the Royalists could not fight another action, while Waller withdrew to Bath and the Royalists to Devizes in Wiltshire.
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