Part 10

When Cromwell saw his men driven down the breach, he placed himself at the head of the reserve, and in person led it with the rallied men of the broken regiments, back to the breach. This time the stormers would not be denied. They carried the breach, the church—which was strongly held by the Irish—and finally the palisaded intrenchments of Mill Mount, in which Sir Arthur Aston had taken refuge. The horse followed close behind the foot, and speedily cleared the streets of the hostile cavalry and infantry. The victorious Puritans pressed on and a terrible slaughter followed. Cromwell forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and they put to the sword over 2,000 men. Nearly 1,000 were killed in the great Church of St. Peter’s. “All the priests found,” says Cromwell, “were knocked on the head promiscuously but two, both of whom were killed next day.” Sir Arthur Aston, Verney, the son of the King’s standard-bearer at Edgehill, and all the officers were put to the sword. Two towers held out until next day, when they submitted; their officers were “knocked on the head,” says Cromwell. One tower fought hard; there every tenth man of the soldiers was killed; the rest, and all the soldiers in the other tower, were shipped to the white slavery of the Barbadoes. Of the assailants, about a hundred were slain and several hundred wounded.

Said Cromwell: “We put to the sword the whole number of the defendants.... This hath been a marvellous great mercy. I wish that all honest hearts may give glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.... I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret. The officers and soldiers of this garrison were the flower of their army.”

Cromwell’s defenders say simply that he acted from a fervent belief in the righteousness of what he was doing, and, further, that the terrible vengeance he took here and at Wexford upon all who withstood him in arms cowed the Irish and prevented further resistance. Neither defence is tenable. If on the ground of their sincerity the deeds of Cromwell and his soldiers at Drogheda and Wexford can be defended, then we cannot refuse the same defence to Philip and Alva and their soldiers in the Netherlands. Of course, we must always remember that under Cromwell there was no burning at the stake, no dreadful torture in cold blood; and, therefore, at his worst, he rises in degree above Philip and Alva. But in kind, his deeds in Ireland were the same as theirs in the Netherlands; and though the Puritan soldiers were guiltless of the hideous licentiousness shown by the Spaniards, or by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein, yet the merciless butchery of the entire garrisons and of all the priests—accompanied by the slaughter of other non-combatants, in at least some cases—leave Drogheda and Wexford as black and terrible stains on Cromwell’s character. Nor is there any justification for them on the ground that they put a stop to resistance. The war lingered on for two or three years in spite of them; and in any event the outcome was inevitable. It does not seem to have been hastened in any way by this display of savagery. There had been many such butcheries during the war, before Cromwell came to Ireland, without in any way hastening the end. Cromwell and his lieutenants put down the insurrection and established order because they gained such sweeping victories, not because Cromwell made merciless use of his first victories. It was the fighting of the Puritan troops in the battle itself which won, and not their ferocity after the battle; and it was Cromwell who not merely gave free rein to this ferocity, but inspired it. Seemingly quarter would have been freely given had it not been for his commands. Neither in morals nor in policy were these slaughters justifiable. Moreover, it must be remembered that the men slaughtered were entirely guiltless of the original massacres in Ulster.

Immediately after Drogheda, Cromwell sent forces to Dundalk, which was held by the Irish, and to Trim, which was held by the Scotch; but the garrisons deserted both places at the approach of the Cromwellians. In October, Cromwell himself advanced on Wexford and stormed the town. Very little resistance was made, but some 2,000 of the defenders were put to the sword. This time the soldiers needed no order with reference to refusing quarter; they acted of their own accord, and many of the townspeople suffered with the garrison. Practically, the town was depopulated, not one in twenty of the inhabitants being left.

Then Cromwell moved to Ross. In spite of the slaughter which he made in the towns he stormed, he exercised such strict discipline over his army in the field, and paid with such rigid punctuality for all supplies which the country people brought in, that they flocked to him as they feared to do to their own armies, and in consequence his troops were better fed and able to march more rapidly than was the case with the Irish. He soon took Ross, allowing the garrison to march out with the honors of war, and gave protection to the inhabitants. When asked to guarantee freedom of religion he responded: “For that which you mention concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man’s conscience. But, if by liberty of conscience, you mean liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of.”

Three months after he landed, Cromwell had possession of almost all the eastern coast. One of the remarkable features of his campaign had been the way in which he had used the army and the fleet in combination. He used his admirals just as he had used his generals and colonels, and they played a very important part in the operations against Wexford and Ross, and in securing the surrender of both. When he moved away from the coast his task was very difficult; there were no roads, the country had been harried into a wilderness, and was studded with castles and fortified towns, every one held by an Irish garrison. Ormond and O’Neil were in the field with a more numerous force than his; and though they dared not fight a pitched battle, they threatened his detachments. The service was very wearing, and in December Cromwell went into winter quarters, the weather being bad, and his men decimated by fever. The triumphs won by his terrible soldiership rendered the conquest of the whole island only a question of time.

Having now a little leisure, Cromwell published, for the benefit of the Irish, a “Declaration,” as an answer to a polemic issued in form of a manifesto at Kilkenny by the high Irish ecclesiastics. In this Declaration, which is very curious reading, he exhorted the Irish to submit, and answered at great length the arguments of their religious leaders, with all the zeal, ingenuity, and acrimony of an eager theological disputant, and with an evident and burning sincerity to which many theological disputants do not attain. The religious side of his campaigns was always very strong in his mind, and no Puritan preacher more dearly loved setting forth the justification of his religious views, or answering the arguments of his religious opponents, whether Catholics or Covenanters.

So far as Puritanism was based upon a literal following of the example set in the Old Testament, it had a very dark, as well as a very exalted side. To take the inhuman butcheries of the early Jews as grateful to Jehovah, and therefore as justification for similar conduct by Christians, could lead only to deeds of horror. When Cromwell wrote from Cork, justifying the Puritan zeal which he admitted could not be justified by “reason if called before a jury,” he appealed to the case of Phineas, who was held to have done the work of the Lord, because he thrust through the belly with his javelin the wretched Midianitish woman. No such plea can be admitted on behalf of peoples who have passed the stage of mere barbarism.

Drogheda and Wexford could not be excused by pointing out that the priests of the Jews of old had held it grateful to the Lord to kill without mercy the miserable women and children of the tribes whom the Israelites drove from the land. Such a position was in accord with the mediæval side of Cromwell’s character, but was utterly out of touch with his thoroughly modern belief in justice and freedom for all men. Queer contradictions appear in the above-mentioned “Declaration,” written, as he phrased it, “For the undeceiving of deluded and seduced people.” He showed that he was a leader in the modern movement for social, political, and religious liberty, when he wrote: “Arbitrary power men begin to grow weary of, in Kings and Churchmen; their juggle between them mutually to uphold civil and ecclesiastical tyranny begins to be transparent. Some have cast off _both_; and hope by the Grace of God to keep so. Others are at it.” But when he came to reconcile his own declarations for religious liberty with his previous refusal to permit the celebration of the mass, he was forced into a purely technical justification of his position. He announced that he would punish, with all the severity of the law, priests “seducing the people, or, by any overt act, violating the laws established,” but added: “As for the people what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts, I cannot reach; but shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same.” In other words, Catholics could believe what they wished, but were not allowed to profess their beliefs in the form that they desired, or to have their teachers among them. To our American eyes such a position is so wholly untenable, so shocking to the moral sense, that it requires an effort to remember that it was in advance of the position taken in the next century by the English toward the Irish through their Penal Laws, and of the position taken in France toward the Protestants during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. and all the reign of Louis XV., while of course it was infinitely beyond the theory upon which the temporal and spiritual authorities of Spain acted.

While the Irish campaign was at its height, the Scotch, who had declared for Charles II., made ready for war, and the English Parliament demanded Cromwell’s return. For some months, however, he remained in Ireland, capturing Kilkenny and various other towns and castles and constantly extending the area of English sway, driving the Irish westward. His campaign was a model for all military operations undertaken in a difficult country, covered by a network of fortified places, and held by masses of guerillas or irregular levies, backed by the whole population. After Clonmel was taken he handed over the command to Ireton; the heavy work had been done, and what remained to do was tedious and harassing rather than formidable, while the Scotch business could no longer wait.

In May, 1650, Cromwell landed in England, took his seat in the House of Commons, and was made Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the forces, Fairfax having refused to take part in any offensive campaign against the Covenanters. It is recorded that when Cromwell entered London, greeted by surging multitudes, someone called his attention to the way the people turned out to do him honor for his triumph; whereupon he dryly answered that it was nothing to the way they would turn out to see him hanged.

The refusal of Fairfax to march against the Scotch left Cromwell the 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.

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.