_With glory he gilt_; Yet to readers, (if such readers there be) who can
look with an undazzled eye on military success, or hear the still small
voice of truth through the tempest of rhetoric, Cromwell's foreign
policy, (excepting the isolated case of his interference with the then
comparatively feeble powers of Savoy and the Papacy on behalf of the
persecuted Waldenses), will be far from supporting the credit with which
politico-theological partisanship has invested it.
Holland was beyond question the natural ally on political and religious
grounds of puritan England. But a mischievous war against her in 1652-3
was caused by the arrogant restrictions of the Navigation Act of 1651.
The successful English demand in 1653 that the Orange family, as
connected closely with that of Stuart, should be excluded from the
Stadtholdership, was in a high degree to the prejudice of the United
Provinces.
In 1654 Cromwell was negotiating with France and Spain. From the latter
he arrogantly asked wholly unreasonable terms, whilst Mazarin, on the
part of France, offered Dunkirk as a bribe. News opportunely arriving
that certain Spanish possessions in America were feebly armed, Cromwell
at once declared war: and now, supplementing unscrupulous policy by false
theology, announced 'the Spaniards to be the natural and ordained enemies
of England, whom to fight was a duty both to country and to religion:'
(Ranke: xii. 6).
The piratical war which followed, in many ways similar to that which the
'wise Walpole' tried to avert in 1739, was hardly less impolitic than
immoral. It alienated Holland, it sanctioned French aggression on
Flanders (xii. 7), it ended by giving Mazarin and Lewis XIV that
supremacy in Western Europe for which England had to pay in the wars of
William III and Anne; whilst, as soon as it was over, France naturally
allied herself with Spain, on a basis which might have caused the union
of the two crowns (xii. 8) and which allowed Spain at once to support
Charles II. As the result of the Protector's 'spirited policy' England
thus figured as the catspaw of France, and the enemy of European liberty.
It is satisfactory, however, to find that, in Ranke's judgment, the
common modern opinion that Cromwell's despotism was favourably regarded
in England because of his foreign enterprize, is exaggerated. Even
against the conquest of Jamaica,--his single signal gain,--unanswerable
arguments were popularly urged at the time: (xii. 4, 8)--But the
Protectorate, in the light of modern research,--like the reign of
Elizabeth,--still awaits its historian.