king's presence were signally punished. He lost 709 men on that
occasion, and it infused new vigour into the Parliament's army. The
battle of Naseby was fought a few days after; the numbers of the
contending forces were nearly equal; the royal troops were veterans,
commanded by experienced officers; but the God of armies avenged
the innocent blood shed in Leicester, and the royal army was cut to
pieces; carriages, cannon, the king's cabinet, full of treasonable
correspondence, were taken, and from that day he made feeble fight,
and soon lost his crown and his life. The conquerors marched to
Leicester, which surrendered by capitulation. Heath, in his Chronicle,
asserts that 'no life was lost at the retaking of Leicester.' Many
of Bunyan's sayings and proverbs are strongly tinged with the spirit
of Rupert's dragoons--'as we say, blood up to the ears.'[38] 'What
can be the meaning of this (trumpeters), they neither sound boot
and saddle, nor horse and away, nor a charge?'[39] In his allegories
when he alludes to fighting, it is with the sword and not with the
musket;[40] 'rub up man, put on thy harness.'[41] 'The father's
sword in the hand of the sucking child is not able to conquer a
foe.'[42]

Considering his singular loyalty, which, during the French
Revolution, was exhibited as a pattern to Dissenters by an eminent
Baptist minister; [43] considering also his profligate character
and military sayings, it is very probable that Bunyan was in the
king's army in 1645, being about seventeen years of age. It was a
finishing school to the hardened sinner, which enabled him, in his
account of the Holy War, so well to describe every filthy lane and
dirty street in the town of Mansoul.

Whether Bunyan left the army when Charles was routed at the battle