Part 9

Cromwell still strove to save the King’s life. Through the exertions of Ireton a small majority of the army council resolved for mercy, and made a last effort to conclude a treaty with the King; but the King would not listen to them, and he thus put it out of their power any longer to delay his fate. On January 1, 1649, the House of Commons resolved to try him for treason to the kingdom. The Lords refused to pass the ordinance, whereupon the House of Commons decided to disregard them and to act on its own authority. On January 6th it erected a High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, on the ground that he had wickedly endeavored to subvert the people’s rights, had levied war against them, and when he had been spared had again raised new commotions in order to enslave and destroy the nation. Cromwell had finally thrown his doubts to the winds, and he supported the resolution with all his vigor. When the legality of the action was questioned, he retorted: “I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it!” The grim Puritan leaders were at last to have their will on “the man of blood.” On the 27th, sentence of death was passed upon the King, and on January 30, 1649, he was beheaded on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, meeting his death with firm dignity.

Justice was certainly done, and until the death-penalty is abolished for all malefactors, we need waste scant sympathy on the man who so hated the upholders of freedom that his vengeance against Eliot could be satisfied only with Eliot’s death; who so utterly lacked loyalty that he signed the death-warrant of Strafford when Strafford had merely done his bidding; who had made the blood of Englishmen flow like water, to establish his right to rule as he saw best over their lives and property; and who, with incurable duplicity, incurable double-dealing, had sought to turn the generosity of his victorious foes to their own hurt.

Any man who has ever had anything to do with the infliction of the death-penalty, or indeed with any form of punishment, knows that there are sentimental beings so constituted that their sympathies are always most keenly aroused on behalf of the offender who pays the penalty for a deed of peculiar atrocity. The explanation probably is that the more conspicuous the crime, the more their attention is arrested, and the more acute their manifestations of sympathy become. At the time when the great bulk even of civilized mankind believed in the right of a king, not merely to rule, but to oppress, the action of the Puritans struck horror throughout Europe. Even Republican Holland was stirred to condemnation, and as the King was the symbol of the State, and as custom dies hard, generations passed during which the great majority of good and loyal, but not particularly far-sighted or deep-thinking men, spoke with intense sympathy of Charles, and with the most sincere horror of the regicides, especially Cromwell. This feeling was most natural then. It may be admitted to be natural in certain Englishmen, even at the present day. But what shall we say of Americans who now take the same view; who erect stained-glass windows in a Philadelphia church to the memory of the “Royal Martyr,” or in New York or Boston hold absurd festivals in his praise?

The best men in England approved the execution of the King, not only as a work of necessity, but as right on moral grounds. Two weeks after the execution, Milton—perhaps the loftiest soul in the whole Puritan party, full though it was of lofty souls—wrote his pamphlet justifying the right of the nation to depose, or, if need be, execute, tyrants and wicked kings. His arguments never have been, and never can be, successfully controverted on grounds of justice and morality. There is room for greater question on the ground of expediency. Some of the ablest historians and politicians have argued that the execution was a mistake, as making the King a martyr, and as transferring to his son, Charles II., all the loyalty that had been his, while the hatred and distrust could not be transferred. Yet, it certainly seems that even on the score of expediency, Cromwell and the regicides were right and that the event justified their judgment. While Charles was alive there could have been no peace in any event; and during Cromwell’s lifetime Charles II. could gain no foothold in England—for there was never a member of the House of Stuart that could stand in battle or in council before the stern Lord of the English Commonwealth. If in later years great Oliver could only have managed to agree with the bulk of liberty-loving Englishmen on some system of government by law, it is not probable that the memory of the King’s death would have prevented the perpetuation of such a government.

Carlyle’s mind is often warped; his vision often dim; but there are times when he speaks like an inspired seer, and never more so than when dealing with the execution of the Stuart King: “This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of Flunkyism universally in this world. Whereof Flunkyism, Cant, Cloth-Worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again.... Thus ends the Second Civil War. In Regicide; in a Commonwealth, and Keepers of the Liberties of England. In punishment of delinquents; in abolition of Cobwebs—if it be possible in a Government of Heroism and Veracity; at lowest of Anti-Flunkyism, Anti-Cant, and the _endeavor_ after Heroism and Veracity.”

IV THE IRISH AND SCOTCH WARS

The successful Revolutionary party now enacted that the people of England and of all the dominions and territories thereunto belonging were constituted and established as a Commonwealth, or Free State, to be governed by the representatives of the people in Parliament and by whomsoever the Parliament should appoint as officers and ministers; the King and the House of Lords being both abolished. No provision was at first made by which any man should lawfully be recognized as chief in the new Commonwealth; but, as a matter of fact, there was one man, and one man only, who had to be acknowledged, however unwillingly, as master and leader. There were many upright and able civil servants; many high-minded and fervent reformers; many grim and good captains: but waist-high above them all rose the mighty and strenuous figure of Oliver Cromwell. It may well be that, hitherto, personal ambition had played an entirely subordinate part in all his actions. Now, in the turmoil of the Revolution, in the whirlpool of currents which none but the strongest man could breast, he became ever more and more conscious of his own great powers—powers which he knew were shared by no other man. With the sense of power came the overmastering desire to seize and wield it.

The first thing he had to do was to stop the Revolution where it was. In every such Revolution some of the original adherents of the movement drop off at each stage, feeling that it has gone too far; and at every halt the extremists insist on further progress. As stage succeeds stage, these extremists become a constantly diminishing body, and the irritation and alarm of the growing remainder increase. If the movement is not checked at the right moment by the good sense and moderation of the people themselves, or if some master-spirit does not appear, the extremists carry it ever farther forward until it provokes the most violent reaction; and when the master-spirit does stop it, he has to guard against both the men who think it has gone too far, and the men who think it has not gone far enough.

The extreme Levellers, the extreme Republicans, and, above all, the fierce and moody fanatics who sought after an impossible, and for the matter of that a highly undesirable, realization of their ideal of God’s kingdom on this earth—all these, together with the mere men of unsettled minds and the believers in what we now call communism, socialism, and nihilism, were darkly threatening the new government.

Men arose who called themselves prophets of new social and religious dispensations; and every wild theory found its fanatic advocates, ready at any moment to turn from advocacy to action. In the name of political and social liberty, some demanded that all men should be made free and equal by abolishing money and houses, living in tents, and dividing all food and clothing alike. In the name of religious reform others took to riding naked in the market-place, “for a sign”; to shouting for the advent of King Jesus; or to breaking up church services by noisy controversies with the preachers. The extreme Anabaptist and Quaker agitators were overshadowed by fantastic figures whose followers hailed them as incarnations of the Most High.

Black trouble gloomed without. The Commonwealth had not a friend in Europe. In the British Isles Scotland declared for Charles II. as the King, not only of Scotland, but of Great Britain. In Ireland but a couple of towns were held for the Parliament.

It was to the reconquest of Ireland that the Commonwealth first addressed itself, and naturally Cromwell was chosen for the work. He was given the rank of Lieutenant-General; but before he started he had to deal with dangerous mutinies and uprisings in the army. The religious sectaries and political levellers, who had given to the army the fiery zeal that made it irresistible by Parliament or King, English Royalists or Scotch Covenanter, had also been infected with a spirit peculiarly liable to catch flame from such agitations as were going on roundabout. Here and there, in regiment after regiment, were sudden upliftings of the banner of revolt in the name of every kind of human freedom, and often of some fierce religious doctrine quite incompatible with human freedom. Cromwell acted with his usual terrible energy, scattered the mutineers, shot the ringleaders, and reduced army and kingdom alike to obedience and order. Then he made ready for the invasion of Ireland.

The predominant motives for the various mutinies in the army, offer sufficient proof of its utter unlikeness to any other army. At the outset of the civil wars the Ironsides were simply volunteers of the very highest type; not wholly unlike, at least in moral qualities, some of those belated Cromwellians—the Boers of to-day. They did not take up soldiering as a profession, but primarily to achieve certain definite moral objects. Of course, as the force gradually grew into a permanent body, it changed in some respects; but the old spirit remained strong. The soldiers became in a sense regulars; but they bore no resemblance to regulars of the ordinary type—to regulars such as served under Turenne or Marlborough, Frederick the Great or Wellington. If in Grant’s army a very large number of the men, including almost all the forceful, natural leaders, had been of the stamp of Ossawatomie Brown, we should have had an army much like Cromwell’s. Such an army might usually be a power for good and sometimes a power for evil; but under all circumstances, when controlled by a master hand, it was certain to show itself one of the most formidable weapons ever forged in the workshop of human passion and purpose.

Matters in Ireland were in a perfect welter of confusion. Eight years had elapsed since the original rising of the native Irish. A murderous and butcherly warfare had been carried on throughout these years, but not along the lines of original division. On the contrary, when Cromwell landed, there had been a complete shifting of the parties to the contest, every faction having in turn fought every other faction, and, more extraordinary still, having at some time or other joined its religious foes in attacking a rival faction of its own creed. The original rising was in Ulster, and was aimed at the English and Scotch settlers who had been planted under James in the lands from which the Irish had been evicted. These “plantations” under James, not to speak of the scourge of Wentworth under Charles, were on a par with the whole conduct of the English toward Ireland for generations, and gave as ample a justification for the uprising as in the Netherlands the Spaniards had given the Dutch. From the stand-point of the Irish, the war was simply the most righteous of wars—for hearthstone, for Church, and for country.

This first uprising was one of Celtic Catholics. In the Pale and elsewhere, here and there throughout Ireland, were large numbers of Old-English Catholics; these, unlike the Celts, did not wish separation from England, but did wish complete religious liberty for themselves, and, if possible, Catholic supremacy. The Episcopalian and Royalist English throughout Ireland, under the lead of the Earl of Ormond, favored the King. The Puritan oligarchy of Dublin favored the Parliament, and were in touch with the Scotch Presbyterians of Ulster. The rising began to spread from Ulster southward. The Catholics of the Pale were at first loyal to the King, but the Protestant leaders, in striking back at the insurgents, harried friend and foe alike, until the Pale joined with Ulster. After this, all Ireland revolted. Only a few fortified and garrisoned towns were held for the English.

Violent alterations of policy and of fortune followed. Under the lead of the Roman Catholic clergy the revolt was consolidated. Unswerving loyalty to the King was proclaimed, war was denounced against the Puritans, and the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism as the State religion of Ireland was demanded. On the Puritan side the lords justices in Dublin nominally acknowledged the King’s authority, but really stood for the Parliament and hampered Ormond, who, while a stanch Protestant, was an ardent Royalist. Ormond gained one or two victories over the insurgents in spite of the way in which the lords justices interfered with him. Charles created him marquis, and he took command of the English interest, drove out the lords justices, and concluded a truce for one year with the Catholic party, in September, 1643. They gave Charles a free contribution of £30,000, and sent over some Irish troops to aid Montrose and the other Royalist leaders in Scotland, besides setting Ormond free to transfer part of his forces to the King in England. But Munro and the Ulster Scotch refused to recognize the armistice, took the Covenant, and declared against the King; while, in the south, certain Protestant sea-coast towns, under the lead of Lord Inchiquin, followed suit and acknowledged the Parliament. Months of tortuous negotiations followed, King Charles showing the same readiness in promise, and utter indifference in performance, while dealing with the Irish as while dealing with the English. The treachery of the King was made manifest by the discovery of his secret treaty with the Irish, when Sligo was captured.

Meanwhile, the Papal nuncio, an Italian, had arrived, and exhorted the Irish to refuse any peace with the King except on the basis of the complete reinstatement of the Catholic Church. He roused what would now be called the ultramontanes against the moderate Catholic party which was acting with Ormond. Their wrangles caused a fatal delay, for by the time the moderates triumphed the King had been made a prisoner. Their treaty of peace with the King was not signed till September, 1645, and it amounted to nothing, for the adherents of the Parliament rejected it on the one side, and the extreme Catholic party, the utterly intolerant and fanatical Catholics, under the nuncio, refused to be bound by it on the other. In the north the Irish were led by Owen O’Neil, a member of the great Ulster house of that name, and under him they had beaten Munro and the Scotch. He now hurried to the support of the nuncio. The moderate Catholic leaders and Ormond fled to Dublin at his approach, and he was joined, after some hesitation, by Preston, the leader of the Irish forces in the south. In 1647, Ormond, at his wits’ end, handed over Dublin to the agents of the Parliament, and joined the Royalist refugees in France.

This for a moment eliminated the Royalists, and left the party of the nuncio, the party of the bigots and intolerant extremists, supreme among the Irish. But when Jones, the Puritan leader, marched out of Dublin and defeated Preston, while in the south Lord Inchiquin won some butchering victories, the party of the moderates again raised its head. Then there was a new and bewildering turn of the kaleidoscope. Inchiquin suddenly became offended with the Parliament, made overtures to Preston, and then to Ormond. A coalition was formed between the Royalist Protestants in Munster and the moderate Catholics. The nuncio threatened the moderates with excommunication and interdict, and fled to O’Neil’s camp. Preston and Inchiquin joined forces and marched against O’Neil, so that civil war broke out among the insurgents themselves.

Colonel Jones, the victor over Preston, felt doubtful of his own troops, who included a number of Royalists, and, extraordinary to relate, he actually made terms with the nuncio and O’Neil as against the Protestant Royalists and moderate Catholics—the Ultramontanes so hating the moderate Catholics that they preferred to come to terms with the Puritans. Ormond now came over from France to head the moderates, the party of the Royalist Catholics and Protestants. Peace was declared between Ormond and the Supreme Council of Dublin in the King’s name.

But hardly had peace been declared when news arrived of the King’s execution. Ormond proclaimed Charles II., at Cork; most of the Irish outside of Ulster united under him, and Munro and the Scotch Presbyterians joined him. The nuncio fled the country in despair. The rupture between the Presbyterians and Independents was complete, and the Scotch became the open enemies of the English. They began the siege of Derry, which Coote held for the Parliament. At the same time they confronted O’Neil and the Ulster Irish, who were acting in alliance with Monk, who held Dundalk for the Parliament by order of Colonel Jones. Inchiquin captured Drogheda for the Confederates. Monk’s garrison mutinied, and he had to surrender Dundalk. Ormond began the siege of Dublin, but was routed by Jones, one of the sturdiest of the many sturdy Puritan fighters. Meanwhile, the Puritan Parliament had disavowed the alliance with O’Neil and the Ulster Irish, and the latter were thus forced into the arms of Ormond, who found himself at the head of all the Irish and English Catholics, of the Scotch Presbyterians in Ulster, and of the Royalist Protestants elsewhere in Ireland. It was at this time that Cromwell landed.

The exact condition of affairs in Ireland should be carefully borne in mind, because it is often alleged, in excuse of Cromwell’s merciless massacres, that he was acting with the same justification that the English had when they put down the Indian Mutiny with righteous and proper severity. Without a doubt, Cromwell and most Englishmen felt this way; and in the case of the average Englishman, who could not be expected to understand the faction-fighting, the feeling was justifiable. But it was Cromwell’s business to know what the parties had been doing. As a matter of fact, the wrong of the original Ulster massacre, which itself avenged prior wrongs by the invaders, had been overlaid by countless other massacres committed by English and Irish alike, during the intervening years; and the very men against whom this original wrong had been committed were now fighting side by side with the wrong-doers, against Cromwell and the Puritans. Moreover, for some time the Parliamentarians had been in close alliance with these same wrong-doers against the moderate Irish, who were not implicated in the massacres in question, and against the Royalist Protestants, some of whom had suffered from the massacres and others of whom had helped avenge them. The troops against whom Cromwell was to fight were in part Protestant and English, these being mixed in with the Catholics and Irish; and at the moment the chief Royalist leaders in Ireland included quite as many English, Scotch, and Irish Protestants, as they did Irish Catholics.

Cromwell recked but little of nice distinctions between the different stripes of Royalists and Catholics when, in August, 1649, he landed in Dublin, the only place in Ireland, save Derry, which still held out for the Parliament. He brought with him the pick of his troops and soon had at Dublin some 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse. They were excellently disciplined; they included the Ironsides, the veterans of the New Model—grim Puritans for the most part, inflamed with the most bitter hatred against Catholics, Irish, and Royalists. They had been welded into one formidable mass by Cromwell’s rigid discipline, and yet were all aflame with religious and political enthusiasm. There could not be gathered in all Ireland an army capable of meeting in the open field that iron soldiery, under such a leader as Cromwell; and this the Irish chiefs well knew.

Cromwell, therefore, had to deal with a numerous and individually brave but badly disciplined enemy, formidable in guerilla warfare, because theirs was a wild country of mountain and bog, and resolute in defence of their walled towns, but not otherwise to be feared by such troops as the Ironsides. His first care was to put an end to the plundering and licentiousness which had hitherto marked the English no less than the Irish armies. He completely stopped outrages upon the peasantry and non-combatants generally, besides protecting all who lived quietly in their homes.

In September he marched against Drogheda, into which Ormond had thrown 3,000 picked men, largely English, under Sir Arthur Aston. Cromwell had with him some 8,000 men when he sat down to attack it. He brought up a siege-train, beating back the sallies of the garrison with ease, and meanwhile maintaining his strict discipline, and putting down pillage by the summary process of hanging the plunderers.

When his batteries were ready he summoned the Governor to surrender, but the summons was refused. For two days the guns kept up their fire, and then in the afternoon the assault was delivered. The defenders met the stormers in the breaches; the fight was hot and stiff; the English were once repulsed, but came forward again and carried the breach only to be once more driven out by a fierce rally.