cut off. The earl of Warwick attempted a sea rescue, but
Royalist forces at Polruan Castle headed this off. His-
torian George Bruce writes: “The Royalists, 16,000
[strong], took Beacon Hill, the key to Lostwithiel, in
the first battle, on 21 August. The remainder of the
Roundheads, at first 10,000 [strong], were surrounded
and forced to surrender on 2 September at Castle Dore,
near Fowey. Not long after this defeat the Roundheads
were organized as the New Model Army.”
On 1 September, prior to the battle of Lostwith-
iel, Essex abandoned his forces and escaped by a small
boat to the earl of Warwick’s ships. He handed the reins
of the army to Major General Phillip Skippon, who,
facing annihilation, surrendered his force the follow-
ing day on 2 September. Charles allowed the defeated
army to leave provided all of their weapons were relin-
quished. The 8,000 men marched from Lostwithiel to
Portsmouth; along the way, some 4,000 died of expo-
sure and starvation, leaving only 4,000 from the origi-
nal 10,000 Essex had under his command. Historian F.
A. Bates, in his 1927 work Graves Memoirs of the Civil
War, writes:
Having escaped with the cavalry at Lostwith-
iel, Colonel Graves joined up with Lord Essex
at Portsmouth, and, when the army was ready
to take the field again, moved with it to Basing-
stoke on the 17th October. Some four days later,
near Basingstoke, Essex was joined by [Edward
montagu, 2nd earl of ] Manchester and [Sir
William] Waller. The meeting cannot have been
a very pleasant one. To the one the disaster ap-
peared solely due to the failure of his friends; to
the others it appeared to be the failure of a rash
military adventure of which they claimed to have
always disapproved. The position as between
three independent co-operating generals was
clearly intolerable, and the indisposition which
had been gradually growing upon him compelled
Essex to leave the army and go to Reading, where,
on October 26th (the actual date of the battle of
Newbury), he is mentioned in a letter to be suf-
fering from fistula.The loss at Lostwithiel marked the end of Essex’s
service as commander of the Parliamentarian army.
Depressed by his failures, he resigned just before Par-
liament enacted the Self-Denying Ordinance (3 April
1645), which allowed that no member of Parliament
(Essex was in the House of Lords) could hold another
public office. Only a year later, on 14 September 1646,
Essex died in London and was buried in Westminster
Abbey. As he had no sons, the earldom of Essex died
with him.References: Bongard, David L., “Essex, Robert De-
vereux, 3d Earl of,” in The Encyclopedia of Military Bi-
ography, edited by Trevor N. Dupuy, Curt Johnson, and
David L. Bongard (London: I. B. Taurus & Co., Ltd.,
1992), 238–239; Devereux, Walter Bourchier, Lives and
Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex, 1540–1646, 2 vols.
(London: John Murray, 1853), II:3–9; Snow, Vernon F.,
Essex the Rebel: The Life of Robert Devereux, the Third Earl
of Essex, 1591–1646 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1970); Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, History of the
Great Civil War, 1642–1649, 4 vols. (London: Long-
mans, Green, and Co., 1893); Davies, Godfrey, “Docu-
ments Illustrating the First Civil War, 1642–45,” The
Journal of Modern History 3, no. 1 (March 1931): 64–71;
Davies, Godfrey, “The Parliamentary Army under the
Earl of Essex, 1642–5,” English Historical Review 49
(January 1934): 32–46; A Relation of the Battel fought
between Keynton and Edgehill, by His Majesty’s Army and
that of the Rebels... (Oxford: Leonard Lichfield, 1642);
Bruce, George, “Lostwithiel,” in Collins Dictionary of
Wars (Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins Publishers,
1995), 144–145; Bates, F. A., comp., Graves Memoirs of
the Civil War, Compiled from Seventeenth Century Records
(Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons,
1927); Codrington, Robert, The Life and Death of the Il-
lustrious Robert Earle of Essex, &c. Containing at large the
Wars he Managed, and the Commands he had in Holland,
the Palatinate, and in England (London: [Printed by] F.
Leach for L. Chapman, 1646).Eugène, prince de Savoie-Carignan (Prince
Eugene of Savoy) (1663–1736) Franco-Italian general
Born in Paris on 18 October 1663, François-Eugène,
prince de Savoie-Carignan, was the youngest son of
Prince Eugène-Maurice, the head of the House of
Savoie-Carignan, and his wife, Olympia Mancini, who
was a niece of Cardinal Jules Mazarin. Long time rumor
has held that François-Eugène was the illegitimate son
of the French king Louis XIV and that Louis’s shame
over this illicit offspring led him to frustrate his son’s0 eugène, pRince De SAvoie-cARignAn