only hope of the Commonwealth. It cannot too often be repeated that,
whether in the end Cromwell’s ambitions did or did not obscure the high
principles with which they certainly blended, yet he rose to supreme
power less by his own volition than by the irresistible march of events,
and because he was “a man of the mighty days, and equal to the days.” In
this world, in the long run, the job must necessarily fall to the man
who both can and will do it when it must be done, even though he does it
roughly or imperfectly. It is well enough to deplore and to strive
against the conditions which make it necessary to do the job; but when
once face to face with it, the man who fails either in power or will,
the man who is half-hearted, reluctant, or incompetent, must give way to
the actual doer, and he must not complain because the doer gets the
credit and reward. President Buchanan utterly disbelieved in the right
of secession, but he also felt doubts as to its being constitutional or
possible to “coerce a sovereign state,” and therefore he and those who
thought like him had to give place to men who felt no such doubts. It
may be the highest duty to oppose a war before it is brought on, but
once the country is at war, the man who fails to support it with all
possible heartiness comes perilously near being a traitor, and his
conduct can only be justified on grounds which in time of peace would
justify a revolution. The whole strength of the English Commonwealth was
in the Independents. Royalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, extreme
Levellers, were all against it. When the Scotch declared for Charles II.
as King, not only of Scotland but of England, they rendered it necessary
that either England or Scotland should be conquered. Fairfax declared
that he was willing to defend the English against the Scotch attack, but
not to attack Scotland. The position was puerile; a fact which should be
borne in mind by the excellent persons who at the present day believe
that a nation can be somehow armed for defence without being armed for
attack. No fight was ever yet won by parrying alone; hard hitting is the
best parry; the offensive is the only sure defensive. To refuse to
attack the Scotch was merely to give them a great initial advantage in
the inevitable struggle. Cromwell was far too clear-sighted and resolute
to suffer from oversentimental scruples in the matter. Accordingly he
undertook the task; did it with his accustomed thoroughness; and from
that moment became, not merely the first man in the Kingdom, but a man
without a second or a third, without a rival of any kind.
[Illustration:
Cromwell Leading the Assault on Drogheda.
After the batteries had made a breach in the walls an attempt was made
to take the town by storm. Cromwell, seeing his men driven back,
placed himself at the head of the column, and, rallying the troops,
soon had complete possession of the place. His soldiers were ordered
to give no quarter to those carrying arms, and it is said that more
than two thousand of the defenders were put to the sword.
]
Charles had landed in Scotland and been proclaimed King, but was forced
not merely to take the Covenant but to make degrading professions of
abandonment and renunciation of his father’s acts and principles. He
was, after all, to be a King only in name, if the dominant party in
Scotland could have its way. Dour as Dopper Boers, the Covenanters were
determined that the government should be, though in form royal, in
essence a democratic theocracy, where the men of the strictest
Calvinistic sect should all have their say in an administration marked
by the most bitter intolerance of every religious belief which differed
by even a shade from their own. To get real religious liberty in those
days one had to go to Rhode Island or Maryland; but at least the English
Puritans were, in this respect, far in advance of the men against whom
they were pitted.
There was also a Royalist party in Scotland, which had scant sympathy
with the Covenanters, but was only allowed to exist at all by their
sufferance. When at this time Montrose landed to help the King, the
Presbyterian friends of the King promptly overcame and slew him. The
Kirk was supreme, and in the army which it gathered to meet Cromwell it
made zeal for the Covenant the all-important requirement for a
commission. It would not even permit places of command to be given to
the officers who had marched with Hamilton’s army. The Royalists around
the King complained bitterly that the commissions were most apt to go to
sons of ministers, and if not, then to men whose godliness and religious
enthusiasm were but poor substitutes for training and skill in arms.
Cromwell’s soldiers possessed all of these qualities. Devotion to
country or to religion adds immensely to the efficiency of a soldier,
but is a broken reed by itself. Officers whose only qualifications are
religious or patriotic zeal, are better than officers who seek service
to gratify their vanity, or who are appointed through political favor;
but until they have really learned their business, and unless they are
eager and able to learn it, this is all that can be said of them.
Cromwell marched north to the walls of Edinburgh, where David Leslie lay
with the Covenanting army of the Kirk. Leslie had fought under Gustavus
Adolphus, and beside Cromwell at Marston Moor, where the Scotch insisted
that they had saved the Cromwellians from defeat. Now the two sides were
decisively to test the question of supremacy. But the contest was really
utterly unequal. Cromwell had a veteran army, one which had been kept
under arms for years. Leslie had an army which had been brought together
for this particular war. He was, therefore, under the terrible
disadvantage which rests on any man who, with raw volunteers, confronts
well-trained, well-led veterans. There were under him plenty of officers
and men with previous military experience—though, as the Royalist above
quoted remarked, too many of the officers were “sanctified creatures who
hardly ever saw or heard of any sword but that of the Spirit”—yet the
regiments were all new, and the men had no regimental pride or
confidence, no knowledge of how to act together, no trust in one another
or in their commanders; while Cromwell’s regiments were old, and the
recruits in each at once took their tone from the veterans around them.
Although Leslie’s force was twice that of Cromwell’s, he knew his trade
too well to risk a stricken field on equal terms, when the soldiers were
of such unequal quality. He accordingly intrenched in a strong position
covering Edinburgh, and there awaited the English attack. Cromwell was a
born fighter, always anxious for the trial of the sword; a man who
habitually took castles and walled towns by storm, himself at need
heading the stormers, and who won his pitched battles by the shock of
his terrible cavalry, which he often led in person, and which invariably
ruined any foe whom he had overthrown. He now advanced with too much
confidence and found himself in a very ugly situation; his men sickening
rapidly, while Leslie’s army increased in numbers and discipline. Like
every great commander, Cromwell realized that the end of all manœuvring
is to fight—that the end of strategy should be the crushing overthrow in
battle of the enemy’s forces. On this occasion his eagerness made him
forget his caution; and all his masterly skill was needed to extricate
him from the position into which he had been plunged by his own
overbearing courage and the wariness of his opponent.
For some time he lay before Edinburgh, unable to get Leslie to fight,
and of course unwilling to attack him in his intrenchments. Sickness and
lack of provisions finally forced him to retreat. He believed that this
would draw Leslie out of his works, and his belief was justified by the
event. The English now mustered some 11,000 men; the Scotch, 22,000.
Leslie was still cautious about fighting, but the ministers of the Kirk,
who were with him in great numbers, hurried him on. He followed Cromwell
to Dunbar, where he cut off the English retreat to England. But his army
was on the hills and was suffering from the weather. He thought that the
discouraged English were about to embark on their ships. The ministers
fiercely urged him to destroy the “sectaries” whom they so hated, and in
the afternoon of December 2d he crowded down toward the lower ground,
near the sea.
Cromwell saw with stern joy that at last the Scotch had given him the
longed-for chance, and true to his instincts he at once decided to
attack, instead of waiting to be attacked. Leslie’s troops had come down
the steep slopes, and at their foot were crowded together so that their
freedom of movement was much impaired. Cromwell believed that if their
right wing were smashed, the left could not come in time to its support.
He pointed this out to Lambert, who commanded his horse, and to Monk,
the saturnine tobacco-chewing colonel, now a devoted and trusted
Cromwellian. Both agreed with Cromwell, and before dawn the English army
was formed for the onslaught, the officers and troopers praying and
exhorting loudly. Their cry was: “The Lord of Hosts!” that of their
Presbyterian foes: “The Covenant!” It was a strange fight, this between
the Puritan and the Covenanter, whose likeness in the intensity of their
religious zeal and in the great features of their creeds but embittered
their antagonism over the smaller points upon which they differed.
Day dawned, while driving gusts of rain swept across the field, and the
soldiers on both sides stood motionless. Then the trumpets sounded the
charge, and the English horse, followed by the English foot, spurred
against the stubborn Scottish infantry of Leslie’s right wing. The
masses of Scotch cavalry, with their lancers at the head, fell on the
English horse—disordered by the contest with the infantry—and pushed
them back into the brook; but they rallied in a moment, as the reserves
came up, and horse and foot again rushed forward to the attack. At this
moment the sun flamed red over the North Sea, and Cromwell shouted
aloud, with stern exultation: “Let God arise and let His enemies be
scattered,” and a few moments later—“They run! I profess they run!” for
now the Scottish army broke in wild confusion, though one brigade of
foot held their ground, fighting the English infantry at push of pike
and butt-end of musket, until a troop of the victorious horse charged
from one end to the other, through and through them.
Cromwell was as terrible in pursuit as in battle. He never left a
victory half-won, and always followed the fleeing foe, as Sheridan
followed the Confederates before Appomattox. The English horse pressed
the fleeing Scotch, and their defeat became the wildest rout, their
cavalry riding through their infantry. Cromwell himself rallied and
reformed his troopers, who sang as a song of praise the hundred and
seventeenth Psalm; and then he again loosed his squadrons on the foe.
The fight had not lasted an hour, and Cromwell’s victory cost him very
little; but of the Scotch, 3,000 were put to the sword, chiefly in the
pursuit, and 10,000 were captured, with 30 guns and 200 colors. Leslie
escaped by the speed of his horse. Never had Cromwell won a greater
triumph. Like Jackson in his Valley Campaigns, though he was greatly
outnumbered, he struck the foe at the decisive point with the numbers
all in his own favor, and by taking advantage of their error he ruined
them at a blow. Like most great generals, Cromwell’s strategy was
simple, and in the last resort consisted in forcing the enemy to fight
on terms that rendered it possible thoroughly to defeat him; and like
all great generals, he had an eye which enabled him to take advantage of
the fleeting opportunities which occur in almost every battle, but which
if not instantly grasped vanish forever.
The ruin of the Kirk brought to the front the Cavaliers, who still
surrounded Charles and were resolute to continue the fight. Both before
and after Dunbar, Cromwell carried on a very curious series of
theological disputations with the leaders of the Kirk party. The letters
and addresses of the two sides remind one of the times when Byzantine
Emperors exchanged obscure theological taunts with the factions of the
Circus. Yet this correspondence reveals no little of the secret of
Cromwell’s power; of his intense religious enthusiasm—which was both a
strength and a weakness—his longing for orderly liberty, and his
half-stifled aspirations for religious freedom.
He was on sound ground in his controversy with the Scottish Kirk. He put
the argument for religious freedom well when he wrote to the Governor of
Edinburgh Castle, concerning his ecclesiastical opponents:[1] “They
assume to be the infallible expositors of the Covenant (and of the
Scriptures), counting a different sense and judgment from theirs Breach
of Covenant and Heresy—no marvel they judge of others so authoritatively
and severely. But we have not so learned Christ. We look at Ministers as
helpers of, not Lords over, God’s people. I appeal to their consciences
whether any ‘man’ trying their doctrines and dissenting shall not incur
the censure of Sectary? And what is this but to deny Christians their
liberty and assume the Infallible Chair? What doth (the Pope) do more
than this?“
Footnote 1:
Slightly condensed.
[Illustration:
The Battle-field of Dunbar.
The view is taken from the point occupied by Cromwell’s troops,
looking up the glen which separated the two armies. Beyond are the
fields which the Scots occupied, and on the left in the distance is
Doon Hill, on which the Scots first took their stand.
]
There is profitable study for many people of to-day in the following:
“Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man who would
keep all the wine out of the country, lest men should be drunk. It will
be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural
liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it,
judge. If a man speak foolishly, ye suffer him gladly, because ye are
wise. Stop such a man’s mouth by sound words which cannot be gainsayed.
If he speak to the disturbance of the public peace, let the civil
magistrate punish him.”
After Dunbar, Cromwell could afford to indulge in such disputations,
for, as he said: “The Kirk had done their do.” All that remained was to
deal with the Cavaliers. There is, by the way, a delightful touch of the
“Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry!” type in one of his
letters of this time, when he desired the Commander at Newcastle to ship
him three or four score masons, “for we expect that God will suddenly
put some places into our hands which we shall have occasion to fortify.”
The fate of the prisoners taken at Dunbar was dreadful. War had not
learned any of its modern mercifulness. Cromwell was in this, as in
other respects, ahead, and not behind, the times. He released half of
the prisoners—for the most part half-starved, sick, and wounded—and sent
the rest under convoy southward, praying that humanity might be
exercised toward them; but no care was taken of them, and four-fifths
died from starvation and pestilence.
Meanwhile, a new Scotch army was assembling at Stirling, consisting for
the most part of the Lowland Cavaliers, with their retainers, and the
Royalist chiefs from the Highlands, with their clansmen. Before acting
against them, Cromwell broke up the remaining Kirk forces, put down the
moss-troopers and plunderers, and secured the surrender of Edinburgh.
Winter came on, and operations ceased during the severe weather.
In the spring of 1651, he resumed his work, and by the end of summer he
had the Royalists in such plight that it was evident that their only
chance was to abide the hazard of a great effort. Early in August
Charles led his army across the border into England, to see if he could
not retrieve his cause there, while Cromwell was in Scotland; but
Cromwell himself promptly followed him, while Cromwell’s lieutenants in
England opposed and hampered the march of the Royalists. There was need
of resolute action, for Charles had the best Scotch army that had yet
been gathered together. There was no general rising of the English to
join him, but, when he reached Worcester, the town received him with
open arms. This was the end of his successes. Cromwell came up, and
after careful preparation, delivered his attack, on September 3d.
Charles had only some 15,000 men; Cromwell, nearly 30,000, half of whom,
however, were the militia of the neighboring counties, who were not to
be compared either with Cromwell’s own veterans, or with their Royalist
opponents. The fight was fierce, Cromwell’s left wing gradually driving
back the enemy, in spite of stubborn resistance; while, on his right,
the Cavaliers and Highlanders themselves vigorously attacked the troops
to which they were opposed. It was “as stiff a contest for four or five
hours as ever I have seen,” wrote Cromwell that evening; but at last he
overthrew his foes, and, following them with his usual vigor, frightful
carnage ensued. The victory was overwhelming. Charles himself escaped
after various remarkable adventures, but all the nobles and generals of
note were killed or taken. Nearly 11,000 men were captured, and
practically all the remainder were slain.
This was, as Cromwell said, “the crowning mercy.” It was the last fight
of the Civil War; the last time that Cromwell had to lead an army in the
field. From now till his death there never appeared in England a foe it
was necessary for him to meet in person.
[Illustration:
The Sword used by Cromwell in his Irish Campaign.
]
V
THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE
After the battle of Worcester, the authority of the Commonwealth was
supreme throughout the British Islands. This authority as yet reposed,
wholly in form, largely in substance, with the remnant of the Long
Parliament. This remnant, derisively called the “rump,” differed as
widely in power and capacity from the Parliament led by Pym and Hampden,
as the Continental Congress that saw the outgoing of the Revolutionary
War differed from that which saw its incoming. Defections and purgings,
exclusions first of whole-hearted Episcopalian Royalists and then of
half-hearted Presbyterian Royalists, had reduced it to being but the
representative of a faction. It had submitted to the supremacy of the
army by submitting to the exclusion of those members to whom the army
objected. Then it had worked for some time hand in hand with the army;
but, now that war was over, the Parliamentary representatives or the
Independents feared more and more the supremacy of the military, or
Cromwellian, wing of their party. It was the army, and not the
Parliament, that had won the fight; that had killed one king, and driven
another, his son, into exile; that had subdued Scotland and Ireland, and
stamped out the last vestige of Royalist resistance in England. Yet it
was the Parliament, and not the army, which in theory was to fall heir
to the royal power.
Moreover, Parliament, thanks to its past history, had become as little
as the army the legal embodiment of the power of England; and what was
more important, there was even less general acceptance of it as the
proper representative of power, than there was general acceptance of the
army. The army, even where hated, was feared and respected; the
Parliament was beginning to excite no emotion save an angry contempt.
There were men of honor, of note, and of ability still left in the
Parliament; but its vital force was dying.
Conscious of its own weakness before the people, the Parliament was most
reluctant to face a dissolution; most eager to devise means by which its
rule could be perpetuated. The army, no less conscious of the hostility
felt for it by the Parliament, was just as determined that there should
be a dissolution and an election of a new Parliament. In the approaching
conflict the army had an immense advantage, for, while the Parliament
was losing its grip upon the Independents, without in any way attracting
strength from the Royalists, the great mass of the Independents still
firmly regarded Cromwell as their especial champion.
[Illustration:
Obverse—arms of Cromwell. Reverse—representation of Oliver
Cromwell on horseback.
Seal of the Protectorate.
From an impression in wax in the British Museum.
]
This was the case, not only in England, but elsewhere. One of Cromwell’s
letters of about this time is to the New England clergyman, John Cotton,
in answer to one which showed the keen interest taken in Cromwell’s
triumph by his fellow-Puritans, who, across the Atlantic, had begun the
upbuilding of what is now the giant republic of the New World. The
letter is marked by the continuous use of scriptural phrases and
protestations of humility, so ostentatious and overstrained as to convey
an uncomfortable feeling of hypocrisy; yet, without doubt, there was a
base of genuineness for these expressions. Beyond question, Cromwell
felt that he was doing the Lord’s work; and was sustained through the
tremendous hours of labor and peril by the sense of battling for justice
on this earth, and in accordance with the Eternal Will of Heaven.
In dealing with Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution it must ever be kept
in mind, before judging too harshly the actors, that the era saw the
overlapping of two systems, both in religion and in politics; and many
incongruities resulted. It was the first great stride toward the
practical achievement of civil rights and individual liberty as we now
understand them. It was also the era in which the old theological theory
of the all-importance of dogma came into sharp conflict with the now
healthily general religious belief in the superior importance of
conduct. Of course, as is invariably the case in real life, the issues
were not sharply drawn at all points, and at some they were wholly
obscured by the strong passions and ambitions which belong, not to any
particular age, but to all time.
After Worcester, when Cromwell had returned to London, he one day
summoned a conference, at Speaker Lenthall’s house, of the leaders of
the Parliamentary army to decide how the national destiny was to be
settled. He hoped that they would be able to form a policy among
themselves; but the hope proved fruitless. Some of the members wished an
absolute republic; some wished a setting-up of what we would now call a
limited monarchy, with one of the late king’s sons recalled and put at
the head.
Nothing came of the conference, and Parliament went its way. It had at
last waked to the fact that it must do something positive in the way of
reform, or else that its days were numbered. It began with great
reluctance to make a pretence of preparing for its own dissolution, and
strove to accomplish some kind of reform in the laws. At that time the
law of England had been for generations little more than a mass of
ingenious technicalities, and the Court of Chancery had become the
synonym for a system of interminable delay, which worked as much
injustice as outright spoliation. Even now there is a tendency in the
law toward the deification of technicalities, the substitution of the
letter for the spirit; a tendency which can only be offset by a Bench,
and, indeed, a Bar, possessing both courage and common-sense. At that
time, the condition of affairs was much worse, and the best men in
England shared the popular feeling of extreme dislike for lawyers, as
men whose trade was not to secure justice, but to weave a great web of
technicalities which completely defeated justice. However, reform in the
methods of legal procedure proved as difficult then as it ever has
proved, and all that even Cromwell could do was to make a beginning in
the right direction. The Rump was quite unable so much as to make this
beginning.
The Parliament obtained a momentary respite by creating a diversion in
foreign affairs, and bringing on a war with the Dutch. Throughout the
first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the leading
mercantile and naval power of Europe, surpassing the English in trade
and in colonial possessions. Unfortunately for them, their home
authorities did not believe in preparedness for war; and the crushing
defeats which the boldness and skill of their sailors had enabled them
to inflict on the Spaniards, lulled them into the unwholesome
faith—shared at times by great modern mercantile communities—that, by
simple desire for peace, they could avert war; and that if war came,
they could trust to their riches and reserve strength to win.
Accordingly, in time of peace they laid up their warships and never
built a fighting navy in advance, trusting to the use of armed
merchant-vessels and improvised war-craft to meet the need of the hour.
England, on the contrary, had a large regular navy, the ships being
superior in size and armament to the Dutch, and the personnel of the
navy being better disciplined, although none of the English Admirals,
save Blake, ranked with Tromp and De Ruyter.