The men on the right were not firing, but being raw
troops they were edging little by little towards the firing, in
which I do not doubt they longed to be, for the sake of the
noise. They say now that the Duke threw away this battle at
Axminster. He could have cut Albemarle's troops to pieces had he
chosen to do so. They made a pretty bold front till we were
within gunfire of them, when they all scattered off to the town
pell-mell. While they were in the town, we could have cut them
off from the Chard road, which would have penned them in while we
worked round to seize the bridges. After that, one brisk assault
would have made the whole batch of them surrender. Some of our
officers galloped from our right wing (where I was) to see how
the land lay, before leading off their men as I had brought them
word. A few of them fired their pistols, when they came to the
road, which was enough to make the right wing double forward to
support them without orders. In a minute about a thousand of us
were running fast after our officers, while the Duke's aides
charged down to stop us. He had decided not to fight, probably
thinking that it would do his cause no good by killing a lot of
his subjects so early in his reign. We know now that had he made
one bold attack that morning, the whole of Albemarle's force,
with the exception of a few officers, would have declared for
him. In other words we should have added to our army about a
thousand drilled armed men who knew the country through which we
were to pass.
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