History from the Field The Edgehill Battlefield Survey

General, and the army of Charles I clashed in the first major action of the Civil War in England. They fought in the open fields between the villages of Radway and Kineton in Warwickshire. The battle of Edgehill was intended to be the one great battle to decide the war. Although it is often viewed as indecisive, the king actually gained an important advantage. Essex failed to break through to the capital and had to retreat to the security of the parliamentarian garrison at Warwick, leaving Banbury and Oxford to fall to the royalists. More importantly it left the enemy in command of the road to London, and control of the capital was the key to the war. Had this advantage been exploited immediately, as Prince Rupert urged, then the Civil War might have been ended within a few days of Edgehill. Figure 1: The battlefield is seen here, just beyond Radway village in the Vale of the Red Horse, viewed from the Castle Inn on Edgehill. A brief narrative of the battle Essex deployed in the open fields of Kineton, forcing the royalists to descend from the heights of Edgehill, where the army had its rendezvous that morning. Essex placed hi