The insurrectionary war was over; but far the most bloody part of the
whole tragedy was about to begin. There is certainly a degree of
madness in the vices and crimes of the human race--a something beyond
a mere spirit of evil--a something that hurries us out of the pale of
reason, and teaches mankind to commit, even deliberately, acts which
the right use of intellect would utterly forbid. We are all fond of
the idea of glory. We feel our hearts glow at the recital of gallant
actions. The splendor of great victories the sounds of triumph, and
the shouts of military success excite our imagination, and warm the
hellish part of the blood in our veins. But what becomes of reason?
No one has been fonder of such illusions than myself. No one has felt
a deeper thrill in reading of feats of chivalrous daring, or listening
to tales of great renown. But let the reader put such achievements to
the same test to which I put them a few days ago. Let him take a
picture of a great battle, where the fancy and skill of an
accomplished painter have done the best that could be done to heighten
the interest, and conceal the horrible details of the scene--where the
dust, and the grime, and the convulsions are omitted altogether--where
the languor of the dying and the prostration of the dead are made to
group in fair, flowing lines around the feet of the trampling horses
and the charging corps--where the blood is used sparingly in contrast
with the pallor of the faces, to produce an harmonious effect of
coloring, and the fiery bursting of a shell is kept in tone by a
stream of gore lighted by the flash. Let him not strip it of any of
the painter's adjuncts; let him leave it embellished as far as
the pencil could embellish; but let him strip it of all that his own
fancy has added, and let him take it and dissect it under the
microscope-glass of reason. Let him look at the combatants, one by
one, and ask what they are fighting for. The one for a name in
history, which very likely he may never attain, and which, if he does,
will benefit him in nothing. Another, because he is commanded to fight
by some king or some leader, spilling his life's blood and taking the
life of others at the nod of a man in whose face he would spit if he
told him to black his shoes. Another is fighting for pure principles
of patriotism, without ever asking himself if the same, or even higher
ends, could not be obtained by any other than the butchering means
with which he soils his hands. Others, and by far the greater part,
are fighting for--from four-pence to a shilling a day; and they fight
just as bravely, just as gallantly as the others! The whole, each and
every one, are engaged in debasing God's image, breaking God's law,
and taking from others the etherial essence they can never restore--the
great, the mighty, the inestimable boon of life--for objects and
purposes which two hundred years after, if not utterly forgotten, will
be found to have changed but very little the course of events, or
influenced the world's history. But take each of those figures
separately--those dark, livid things lying on the ground, and think
what has befallen him by this great achievement. That fair-haired
youth, lying there, was the hope of a mother's heart, the only one
dear to a widowed bosom, the support of her age and of her sickness.
His last thought, as he felt the life-blood welling away from his
side, was his "Poor mother!" and he saw before her, with the prophetic
eye of death, years of wasting grief, neglect, and gnawing penury; and
then, the workhouse. Then, again, that stout fellow, somewhat older,
with the broad-sword still grasped in his dead hand; his fine open
brow, his powerful limbs, all show a man who might have served his
country, and the best interests of humanity, well in other fields than
this--ay, in better, nobler fields. The last thought of his heart,
when he felt the shot, was of his calm cottage in the country, and of
the wife and babes he never shall see again. He thought of their
future fate--of all the hard chances of life for them, deprived of a
husband and a father; and a cloud of doubt came between his parting
spirit and his God. Close beside him, slain probably at the same
moment, lies the hardened reprobate, unchastised and unreclaimed,
loaded with wickedness, and sent, without a moment's warning or a
moment's thought, into the presence of offended Deity; and there,
hard by, the young and unconfirmed waverer, with much matter for
self-reproach in his heart--with a sense of wrong doing--with
aspirations for better things--with resolutions for amendment not yet
commenced; and he, too, is sent to his account, without real penitence
or heart-breathed prayer, before purpose can become act.
There is a burning village in the back-ground, and doubtless there are
many others round--homes destroyed--families left destitute--sons,
fathers, husbands, brothers slain--weeping in all eyes--agony in all
hearts. But this is only one circle beyond the immediate spot; for
from that point of glory flow far away on every side deep streams of
misery, and sorrow, and calamity, to which the transient joy and
evanescent brightness of a great victory is but as a falling star in a
dark night.
It may be said--nay, it has been said--that we must not look at these
things too closely. Believe me, reader, that the act or the passion,
which we dare not look at too closely, is evil. It needs no such close
examination; for the judgment of the reason is pronounced upon it as
it vails itself from inspection.
If such, however, be any true picture of the insane sin of war, what
must we think of laws, and customs, and acts, and of the men who
committed or made them, by which oceans of blood, shed deliberately on
the scaffold, after fierce passion had subsided, have flowed over the
page of history, making it little else than one scarlet crime? If it
be doubtful--nay, more than doubtful--whether it be a less crime than
murder to shed the blood of man for any thing but murder, what must we
think of death, ay, and torture, being inflicted by one human being
upon another, not only for acts, but for words, and even thoughts?
Society must be a bad thing, and a weak one, if it requires to be
defended by such crimes as these.
Of all periods known in English history, the time of which I write was
perhaps the one most foully stained by such abominations. The scene
was just opening--the tragedy had merely begun when the battle of
Sedgemoor ended; law, and all its forms, were set at naught; prisoners
were slaughtered without trial, as without mercy; the suspected had
imposed upon them tasks more terrible than death; and the simple
well-wishers of an unsuccessful cause were forced to quarter the
victims of tyranny, and imbrue their hands in the warm blood of
friends, companions, and, we are assured, even relations. The fiend
Kirke was busy in his brutal office all day long, and his ferocious
soldiery drank deep of blood, and reveled amid the carnage in
unbridled licentiousness. None escaped him or them upon whom the
jealous eye of power fell, who could not pay enormously for life from
some store unattainable by his death; for where there was a choice,
Kirke always preferred blood.
Had Ralph Woodhall been given up at once by Churchill to any inferior
officer, or even to Lord Feversham himself, it is more than probable
his fate would have been instantly sealed. His presence on the field
after the battle might have been judged enough. No investigation--no
examination of witnesses would have been deemed necessary; and he
might have been condemned and died ere he quitted the verge of
Sedgemoor. But Churchill remembered his promise to Hortensia, and
fulfilled it honorably. There was also something in Ralph's demeanor
which he liked; for--gold and ambition apart--that great general was
not insensible to high qualities in others. He was a keen judge of
human nature too; and there was a straightforward frankness in Ralph's
dealings with him, from which he argued so favorably that he stretched
lenity toward him to the utmost. He conversed with him on his return
to his quarters for some time, treated him with every sort of polite
attention, and said to him in the end, "It may be some days before I
see Lord Feversham, or have an opportunity of delivering you into the
hands of those who will insure you a fair and impartial trial. You
have answered me straightforwardly in every thing, Mr. Woodhall, and I
have not the slightest doubt you are a man of your word. If,
therefore, you will give me your parole of honor to consider yourself
a prisoner, and not to absent yourself more than half a mile from my
quarters, I will free you from the unpleasant attendance of a guard."
Ralph's parole was, of course, immediately given, and Churchill
continued this liberal course of conduct as far as possible, from the
knowledge that, the longer a trial is delayed, the more likely is a
just if not a more lenient one to be obtained. He little knew at the
time that the arch-fiend--compared with whom Kirke was indeed a
lamb--was coming down with all speed to crush those whom military
vengeance could not reach. Rumor, indeed, said that the well-known
Jeffries would be sent into the West; but Churchill fancied wrongly
that common decency would impel the court to withhold or restrain this
unscrupulous perverter of the law.
The general's head-quarters had been moved to a considerable distance
from East Zoyland; and he had invited Ralph and some of his own
officers to a very plain and homely dinner, when, toward the close of
the meal, a paper was presented to him, which he read attentively. No
change of countenance took place; and he merely said to his trooper
who brought in the paper, "Tell them to wait without."
When the dinner was over, however, and the guests were retiring, he
beckoned Ralph to a window, and put the paper he had received into the
young gentleman's hand. It was an order to deliver him up to a
messenger who was charged to lodge him, without delay, in Dorchester
jail.
"I fear I must obey it," said Churchill; "and now I will only add as a
hint, that as soon as I have given you up, your parole to me is at an
end. More than one man," he added, with a meaning smile, and no very
unpleasant recollection, "has found safety and fortune by jumping out
of window."
Ralph thanked him gravely; and the messenger and his two followers
having been called in, the young gentleman was delivered into their
hands.
I will not pretend that, had opportunity presented itself, Ralph would
have neglected the hint which Lord Churchill had given him; but the
messenger was shrewd and keen, the two officers watchful and severe,
and, at the end of three days, Ralph Woodhall was lodged in Dorchester
jail, and experienced for the first time the taste of real
imprisonment. A low, miserable, damp cell was assigned to him; no food
but bread and water, except what he paid for at enormous prices, was
afforded to him by the jailer, and a light was refused him when night
fell. It was not, indeed, intended that this course of treatment
should be continued, as he had the means of paying for better
accommodations; but it was what a jailer technically termed in those
days "the taming of a bird," or, in other words, the preparation
necessary to make him submit quietly to every imposition, however
gross. Thus, in darkness, discomfort, and gloom, with memories and
expectations equally painful, he passed his first night in the prison
at Dorchester, where, for the present, we must leave him.