eers, the fag end (the rump) of the Long Parliament were eleven years of trouble and uncertainty. But whether fighting with the Scots against the King, or beleaguering Edinburgh with his little army; whether quelling insurrection in different parts of the kingdom, or bending his vast energies against his monarch in a pitched battle, Cromwell rises before us as the same determined, self-collected and resolute man. Whether bowed in fasting and prayer before God, or trampling down the ranks of the enemy under the hoofs of his cavalry-whether lost in a strange enthusiasm over a psalm of David, or standing alone, the rock around which the waves of the revolution finally calmed themselves to rest, or sunk in fruitless rage he exhibits the same lofty purpose and steadfast heart. Dismayed by no obstacle, disheartened by no reverses, he leans in solemn faith on the arm of the God of battles and of truth. Without the feverish anxiety which belongs to ambition, or the dread of defeat, which accompanies love of glory, he is impelled onward by a feeling of duty, and loses himself in the noble cause for which he struggles. Acting under the eye of Heaven, with his thoughts fixed on that dread judgment where he must render up a faithful record of his deeds, he vacillates only when he doubts what is right, and fears only when a pure God rises before him.

Nothing but lofty motives could have drawn him, at his age, into the career he followed. The fervor and enthusiasm of youth had fled, and he had reached an age when the call of ambition begins to sound faint and doubtful. A sober, religious farmer, he girded on the sword when forty-three years of age, and taking his oldest son, who bore his name, entered the field where anything but glory seemed to be the promised reward. That beloved son he saw fall before the blow of the foeman; and though he had a wife and family to bind him to life, he seemed to be unconscious he had a life to lose. By his bold and decided action, his rapid movements, his rigid discipline, and boiling courage, he triumphed over the most overwhelming obstacles, performed prodigies of valor, and filled the world with the renown of his deeds and yet he refused all praise to himself, referring everything to the goodness of God. Yet there was no blind credulity in this reliance on Heaven, no sluggish dependence, for he strained every energy and

employed every means, as if all rested on himself. That he carried his ideas of special Providence too far, few of the present day will doubt. He thought the glorious era, when the Israelites marched behind the pillar of fire and of cloud, and were guided in every step by the direct interposition of Heaven, might be restored. No one who has studied Cromwell's character deeply, can doubt that he contemplated establishing a kind of Theocracy, in which the nation should be a pure church and God its Head. His mind had got into this channel, and hence he was prevented from having those broad and expansive views of constitutional liberty which one is led to expect of him. That so thorough a political man should have nourished so visionary a theory seems strange enough; but the truth is, notwithstanding his stern, rugged and unpoetic nature, Cromwell had a touch of superstition about him, which his matter-of-fact character and practical life could not remove. This did not turn him into a fanatic, or drive him into monkish habits or gloom, nor even fetter the free action of his mental powers; it only gave them a religious direction. He did not possess what is commonly termed genius, though he had something very nearly akin to it. He never startled men by those sudden inspirations that sometimes flash forth from the soul of genius like foreshadowings of future events, yet he saw farther than the other great men of his time, and alone was capable of conducting the revolution to the goal it reached. As a military man, he showed no depth of combination, adopted no new tactics of his own, and introduced no improvements in military science.

Yet he beat the best generals of the kingdom, fought successfully against the most overwhelming numbers, and gained every battle he fought. It is idle to speak of such a man as a mere creature of circumstances. Facts are better than theories-and the power Cromwell obtained, the success that attended every effort, and the steady hand with which he held all the raging elements of the revolution in check, show him to have possessed a character of amazing strength, even though it exhibited no single extraordinary quality. Sudden and great success may attend a weak mind in certain favorable circumstances, but in a long, protracted, and complicated struggle the strong man alone wins. The plebeian who, in England under any circum

stances, can bring successively to his feet, king, parliament and people-quietly and firmly seat himself down on the throne of the British empire-wield its vast destinies, control its amazing energies, and after years of experience die in peace and power, leaving a flourishing commonwealth to his successor must possess a grasp of thought and power seldom found in a single soul.

There is no difficulty in analyzing the career of Cromwell. His life divided into two parts, military and civil, is exhibited clear as noonday in these letters. He commenced his military career as captain of a troop and gradually fought his way up to commander-in-chief of the army. With a tenacity of will that nothing could shake, and courage that nothing could resist; simple and austere in his manners, given to no excesses and claiming no share of the plunder; he soon gained such influence over the soldiers that they would follow him into any danger. In short, the success which attended all his efforts made him necessary to the army, so that we find, after the self-denying ordinance was passed, by which members of Parliament are forbidden to hold command in the army, Cromwell is retained by special permission month after month, till finally no one thinks of removing him.

The battle of Edgehill was fought in 1642; the next year Cromwell was busy subduing the country, fighting bravely at Gainsborough and Winceby, killing Cavendish at the former place. In 1644 the famous battle of Marston Moor took place. The king's army, of nearly 30,000 men, was utterly routed, and almost entirely by Cromwell and his Ironsides. The Scots fought bravely, and "delivered their fire with such constancy and swiftness, it was as if the whole air had become an element of fire in the summer gloaming there" but Prince Rupert's cavalry rode down everything in their passage, and the whole right wing of the Parliamentary Army was routed. The royalists continued the pursuit, sabering down the fugitives, till weary with the work of death they returned to the victorious battle-field. But to their surprise, on coming up, they found Cromwell in possession of it with his brave Ironsides. Letting the routed army take care of itself, he fell with his cavalry on the enemy, riding straight through their divided ranks, and sweeping the field like a hurricane. His allies, the Scotch cav

alry had all been dispersed, yet he and his Ironsides dashed on Prince Rupert's horse that had hitherto never been beaten, and rode them down with terrible slaughter.

The joy of the people was immensethe royalist cavalry had been broken for the first time, and Cromwell had done it.

The next year he is appointed commander-in-chief of the cavalry, and prostrates forever the King's cause at the battle of Naseby. A few hours before it began Cromwell arrived on the field, and the welcome the army gave him shows with what enthusiasm he was loved by the soldiers. As they saw him ride along their lines they sent up a universal shout like the cry of "vive l'empereur," with which the French army was wont to greet the appearance of Napoleon. Many a deed of personal prowess had been performed, and many an exhibition of high chivalric courage made, before his presence could send such exultation through the army.

The

Cromwell commanded the cavalry at the battle, and new confidence visited every heart as they saw the favored child of victory casting his stern eye over the ranks of his Ironsides. It was on a cold January morning that the battle was fought, and the war-cry of the Puritans that day was, 66 God is with us." It rolled along their lines in one majestic shout as they moved to the attack. battle was the fiercest that had been fought. Prince Rupert, with his usual success, dashed down on the left wing of the Parliament Army and overthrew it. Cromwell did the same thing on the right, and broke the left wing of the royalists; but Rupert followed after the fugitives, while Cromwell leaving a small company to prevent those he had routed from rallying, retired to the field to finish the victory. Here, as at Marston Moor, he exhibited the perfect command he had over himself and his followers in the heat of battle. Carried away by no success-beguiled into no pursuit, he stopped at the right point, and with wonderful self-possession and skill rallied his men, and poured them afresh on the dense masses of infantry. The severe discipline to which he subjected his soldiers, placed them at his control in the midst of the wildest confusion. This, doubtless, was one great cause of his

success.

This battle finished the King, and he tried to make peace with his Parliament.

Cromwell, in the mean time, overrun England, subduing the towns that still adhered to the royal cause. Now scat tering the clubmen, and now storming Bristol, he marched from point to point with a celerity that astonished his enemies, and soon reduced the whole country. Civil war, then, for awhile ceased; and from 1646 to 1648 political and religious affairs were in inextricable confusion. Between the King and Parliament, and Army, and Presbyterians, and Independents, everything got reduced to chaos. In Parliament the Presbyterians and Independents struggled against each other like the Girondists and Mountain in the French Convention. The army was on the side of the Independents, and hence the Presbyterians undertook to crush Cromwell. The King in the mean time rejoiced in the divisions, hoping by them to benefit himself. But Cromwell, though frequently on the verge of ruin, maintained his position, nay, increased his power. The army, notwithstanding some defections, still clung to him. The confusion, however, into which it had fallen by tampering, now with the King, and now with the Parliament, has furnished us with a curious piece of history illustrative of those times. The officers, and among them Cromwell, seeing the divided state the army was in, and scarcely knowing which way to turn, concluded to call a prayer meeting and pray over the subject. The prayer-meeting met at Windsor Castle, and the day was passed in fasting and supplication but without bringing any answer from Heaven. It met again the next day, and ended with the same success. The third morning these stern warriors assembled for the last time to ask the Lord for his guidance. At length according to Adjutant-General Allen, light broke in upon their darkness, and the cause of their troubles was revealed. Which," says the Adjutant-General, "we found to be those cursed carnal conferences, our own conceited wisdom, fears and want of faith had prompted us the year before to entertain with the King and his party." These honest-hearted men had hit the truth without doubt. It was "those cursed, carnal conferences" with the King, and nothing else, that had well-nigh ruined the cause of English liberty. But one would think that they might have stumbled on this plain fact without fasting and praying three days over it—especially Cromwell,

we should suppose, might have understood it, for he well-nigh wrecked his vessel on that truthless monarch, whose fate it was to ruin all who attached themselves to his fortune. At all events, the "cursed carnal conferences" were broken up, and hence the three days of fasting and prayer had been well spent.

A short time after, in the beginning of 1648, the second civil war broke out. Royalist Presbyterians leaguing with Scotch Presbyterians, becoming alarmed at the disorders and dissensions that increased on every side, determined to place Charles, now a prisoner, again on the throne. The insurrection first showed itself in Wales, and thither Cromwell, glad to escape from the quarrels with Parliament, hastened with his army. Succeeding in restoring peace, he hurried to the North to meet the Scotch army that had invaded England, and utterly routed them at Preston. The next year he invaded Ireland to quell the insurrection there. Previous to his Irish campaign, however, he sits in judgment on Charles Stuart, and his name stands third in the list of those that signed his death-warrant.

In 1650 he again invaded Scotland, which was still intent on placing the Stuart line on the throne; and after reducing it to subjection, returns to England, fights the battle of Worcester, and after having subdued all his enemies reënters Parliament. Finding this rump of the Long Parliament to be utterly inadequate to the wants of England, he breaks it up, as Bonaparte did the imbecile Directory, and passes the governing power into his own hands.

During these years of toil and victory Cromwell moves before us like some resistless power, crushing everything that would stay its progress. Simple, austere and decided, he maintains his ascendency over the army; and with the Psalms of David on his lips, and the sword of war in his hand, sweeps over his victorious battle-fields like some leader of the host of Israel.

Like Bonaparte, never cast down by reverses, or dismayed by danger, he meets every crisis with the coolness and self-possession of a great mind. We love to contemplate him in those trying circumstances which test so terribly the strongest characters.

Thus, at the battle of Dunbar, does he appear in the simplicity and grandeur of his character. There fortune, at last, seemed about to desert him. His little army of

twelve thousand men was compelled to retire before the superior forces of the Scotch, and finally encamped on a small, barren tongue of land projecting out into the Frith of Forth. On this bleak and narrow peninsula, only a mile and a-half wide, behold the white tents of Cromwell's army. In front of him, landward, is a desolate, impassable moor, with a low ridge of hills beyond, on which stands the Scotch army twentythree thousand strong. At the base of these hills runs a small streamlet, furnishing only two passes over which an army can march. Cromwell's ships are in the offing, his now last remaining reThe lion is at last caught, and

source.

the prey is deemed secure.

On the 24 of September Cromwell looks forth from the desolate heath on which his army is drawn up in order of battle, and lo! what a sight meets his gaze. Behind him is the sea, swept by a strong wind; and before him, blocking him in from shore to shore, a chosen army outnumbering his own two to one. The white tents that are sprinkled over this low peninsula, rock to and fro in the storm of sleet and hail, and darkness and gloom hang over the Puritan host. This strip of land is all that Cromwell has left him in Scotland, while a powerful enemy stands ready to sweep him into the Sea. But it is in such circumstances as these that his character shines out in its greatest splendor. Though his overthrow seems certain, he evinces no discouragement or fear, for, he was a strong man in the dark perils of war; in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all others." A letter he writes to the governor of Newcastle, on the eve of this battle, is so characteristic, and withal so sublime that we give it entire :

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cerneth all Good People. If your forces had been in readiness to have fallen on the back of Copperspath, it might have ocBut casioned supplies to have come to us. the only wise God, knows what is best. All shall work for good. Our spirits are comfortable, praised be the Lord-though our present condition be as it is. And, indeed, we have much hope in the Lord; of whose mercy we have had large experience.

Indeed do you get together what force you can against them. Send to friends in the South to help with more. Let H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public lest danger should accrue thereby. You know what use to make

thereof. Let me hear from you. I rest

your servant,

OLIVER CROMWELL.

Nobly said. Indeed it will be a miracle if he escapes; yet calm and selfsustained, he waits the issue. "Whatever becomes of him," he is still anxious for the cause for which he is struggling. Forgetting himself, in the nobleness of his great heart he says: "Let me fall in silence-let not the news of my dan-: ger bring discouragement on our friends God's will be done."

At four o'clock that evening, as Cromwell was watching the enemy's movements, he saw that Lesley, the Scotch Commander, was bringing down his whole army from the hill to the brook at its base, to be ready next day to commence this assault.

In this movement the quick eye of Cromwell detected an error, which, like Bonaparte, he determined to avail himself of. Lesley, in executing his manœuvre, had packed his main body into a narrow space, where it could not easily deploy, while the entire right wing stretched out into the plain. Cromwell saw that if he could rout this wing, and roll it back in disorder, on the unwieldy mass, before it could draw up in order of

DEAR SIR-We are upon an engagement very difficult. The Enemy hath blocked up our way at the Pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without a miracle. He lieth so upon the Hills that we know not how to come that way with out great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination. I perceive your forces are not in a capacity for present relief. Wherefore, whatever becomes of us, it will be well for you to get what forces you can together; and the South to help what they can. The business nearly con

That night, therefore, his twelve thousand men were placed in battle array, with orders, as soon as the morning dawned, to fall on the enemy. All night long the drenched army stood without a tent to cover them in the cold storm, while the moan of the sea, as it rolled heavily on the shore, seemed chanting requiem beforehand, for the dead that should cumber the field. But amid the shriek of the blast and the steady roar of the waves, the voice of prayer was heard along the lines; and many a brave heart, that before another night, should beat no

more, poured forth its earnest supplications to the God of battle.

not only refuses to condemn the bloody massacres of Cromwell in Ireland, but stigmatizes those who have some objections to this uncivilized mode of warfare, as "rose-water surgeons." The prejudice and cruelty that can make light of those atrocities, which to this day are remembered as the "Curse of Cromwell," ren

So did the sun rise on Napoleon at Austerlitz, as he stood and surveyed the field of battle, and the sublime expression burst from his lips, "Behold the Sun of Austerlitz!" But Cromwell, carried away by a higher sentiment than glory, gave vent to his emotions in sublimer language. As the blazing fire-ball rolled slowly into view and poured its light over the scene, he burst forth, "LET GOD ARISE, and let his enemies be scattered" Aye, and they were scattered. The right wing, broken and disordered, was rolled in a confused mass upon the main body of the army-and the panic spreading, those twenty thousand men became a cloud of fugitives, sweeping hither and thither over the field. At the base of Doon Hill, on which the enemy had been encamped, Cromwell ordered a general halt, and while the horse could be rallied for the chase, sung the hundred and seventeenth psalm. "Hundred and Seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of Doon Hill; there we uplift it to the tune of Bangor, or some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky." As the mighty anthem died away on the field, the shout of battle was again heard, and the fierce cavalry drove amid the broken ranks, riding down the fugitives and sabering them without mercy, till the ground was covered with the dead.

But there is one stain upon Cromwell's character, which Carlyle has failed to remove-the barbarous manner in which he conducted the Irish campaign. Indeed, the way Carlyle has treated this whole subject, has destroyed all our confidence in him as a historian. He carries his hero-worship a little too far, when he

could unfold a tale of horror and cruelty-depict sufferings and cold-blooded massacres connected with this Irish war which would make the stern face of Cromwell ever after appear streaked with blood. But his own letters shall condemn him.

He made his first attack on the town of Drogheda, and put the entire garrison to the sword. In writing to the government an account of it, he says, after speaking of carrying the intrenchments,

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Being thus entered, we refused them quarter, having the day before summoned the town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for the Barbadoes." He winds up this precious declaration with "I wish that all honest men may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." What miserable cant this is to wind up a massacre with. The Lord, we opine, did not thank him for this compliment, and would much rather prefer the unworthy instruments" should take all "the glory" to themselves.

He marches on Wexford, and enacts the same murderous scene over again. He will not even grant an armistice for a day, but sweeps over the walls of the town, putting all to the sword. The cry of helpless suffering, and the prayer for mercy, are of no avail. With Mexican ferocity he bids his men hew the defenceless wretches down without pity. And this Carlyle defends, by calling those who denounce it "rose-water surgeons," and the plan they would adopt “rose-water surgery."

According to Cromwell's own letters, he opened his campaign by announcing the following conditions-those who surrender without fighting shall be treated as prisoners of war, but those who resist shall be refused quarter and slain without mercy. After the massacre of Drogheda and Wexford he improved a little, it is true, on this Christian-like plan. He spared the soldiers, but put all the officers