"For the Royalists the primary objectives were Bristol and Gloucester. Maurice was already moving forward with the Western Army to seize Bath, and Rupert very quickly got a substantial part of the Oxford Army moving in the same direction. On the 15th the three infantry brigades quartered at Culham, two cavalry brigades under Sir Arthur Aston and Charles Gerard, and nine companies of dragoons led by Colonel Washington were ordered to a concentration area at Fyfield. Two demi-cannon accompanied the Oxford contingent of this force, and on the 17th they were followed by the train proper. This included another six guns, two culverins, two 12-pounders, two 6-pounders, and a mortar. In addition to large quantities of artillery and entrenching stores the train also carried no fewer than eighteen barrels of coarse-grained powder for the guns and forty-two barrels of finer powder for musketeers.
Bristol had originally been sited on a strong position on what was effectively an island between the Frome and the Avon, but latterly its suburbs had spilled out beyond these natural boundaries. More seriously it was overlooked on the west and north by a range of hills along which it was necessary to extend the line of defences, not for the direct protection of the city but in order to deny the heights to any attacker. Essentially the defensive line was little more than a low earthen rampart and ditch linking a series of self-contained strongpoints. Afterwards de Gomme reckoned the walls to be no more than five or six feet high and the ditch sometimes shallower, except at the forts where it was generally eight or nine feet deep. Moreover, although the governor, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, had no fewer than ninety-seven guns and a mortar piece scattered along the line, he only had some 1,500 foot and 300 horse besides an unknown number of armed citizens to cover the five-mile circuit.
On the 23rd Prince Rupert conducted his reconnaissance and then summoned the city next day while his troops were moving into position. Fiennes very properly refused to surrender, and a Council of War agreed to storm the city at daybreak on the 26th. Although Maurice and the Western officers were in favour of digging in and conducting a proper siege, this was undoubtedly the correct decision. Except in their own sector, on the south bank of the Avon, the ground was generally too hard for digging, and while Fiennes might have been able to sit out a siege, he had far too few men to resist a general assault. Recognising this Rupert planned to increase his difficulties by directing each of the six infantry brigades to attack independently at a number of points scattered all the way round the perimeter…"
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Armand
looks at a multi-period building.
