every other uneasiness was sunk in fear of the Puritans; Ormond found himself at the head of an army of sixteen thousand men, and again in possession of most of the strong places which he had recently yielded; and he prepared to lay siege to the city of Dublin, in which the officer commanding for the Parliament had concentrated his forces. to command in Ireland. It was determined at Westminster to send twelve thousand men to the relief of the capital of Ireland. The Presbyterians would have intrusted Waller with the command of the expedition. Lambert was at first mentioned in the Council, as the candidate of the Independents. But, unexpectedly to most persons, Cromwell was nomiAppointment nated, at a session from which he was absent; of Cromwell and Parliament readily acquiesced, some of its members from a disposition to advance him, othMarch. ers from a desire to remove him from the political scene. With two officers of each regiment he offered prayers for the Divine guidance, and then undertook the service, Ireton, his son-in-law, being appointed his second in command. His dilatory preparations for departure, so foreign from his well-known habits, led to a suspicion of his entertaining designs that disinclined him to withdraw himself from the centre of intrigues. But the course of events permitted no longer indecision. Ormond invested Dublin, which, alone of all the towns of Ireland, except Londonderry, was now held for the Commons. And though Colonel Jones, in a successful sally, broke up the lines of the besiegers, and compelled them to withdraw, his situation was still critical, in the face of a greatly superior force. Sack of Cromwell crossed the Channel to Dublin, whence, having given sixteen days to rest and preparations, he marched with ten thousand men to lay siege to Drogheda, which town Ormond, on retiring from before Dublin, had garrisoned with three thousand men. Cromwell took it by storm, and put its defenders to Sept. 11. Sack of Oct. 11. 1650. May. the sword.1 Wexford, a month later, made a similar resistance, and underwent the same horrible fate. Cromwell professed that his seeming barbarity was real Wexford. mercy; and he thought that the event justified his course, when other garrisons, intimidated by it, abstained from resistance, and were admitted to capitulation on indulgent terms. Combining discretion with valor, he published a permission to royalist soldiers in Ireland to depart without molestation; and twenty-five thousand Irish took service in the armies of Spain, and twenty thousand in those of France. Devolving his command on Ireton, he returned to England after nine months' absence, having well-nigh completed the conquest of the sister island. His star was high in the ascendant. A yet more important business was awaiting him. A war with Scotland was impending. Immediately on the reception of intelligence of the execution of Charles the First, his eldest son had by the Scottish Parliament been proclaimed King of Scotland, Eng- tion of King land, France, and Ireland, on the condition that, Second. before assuming the government, he should subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. This he consented to do, after a long delay, and when the utter discomfiture of the Marquis of Montrose, his lieutenant in Scotland, seemed to leave him no other alternative. With a small squadron, furnished by his brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange, he crossed from Brabant to the kingdom of his ancestors, and placed himself in the hands of the Covenanters. They removed from about his person most of the companions of his 1 "In the heat of action, I forbade our men to spare any that were in arms in the town, and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men. ..... 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 Proclama Charles the 1649. Feb. 5. 1650. May 13. 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." (Cromwell's Letter to Speaker Lenthall, in Whitelocke, 424.) The number of slain specified by him in a postscript amounts to nearly three thousand. exile; wearied him with the long sermons of their ministers; extorted from him a declaration, in which he was made to condemn the proceedings of his father, and bewail his own delusions; and, by daily annoyances and mortifications, made him pay dear for his faint prospect of a throne. But he had made up his mind to be submissive till times should alter; and it remained for his new friends to attempt the performance of their part of the engagement. June 14. Accordingly they raised an army of thirty thousand men, which they intrusted to the conduct of the Earl of Leven, with his kinsman, David Leslie, for his lieutenant. It was time for England to move. Cromwell, just arrived from Ireland, was appointed to be second in command of an army, raised for service in the North, of which Fairfax was made commander-in-chief. Fairfax had floated on the sweeping current of events as far as his scruples would allow. Though placed at the head of the High Court for the trial of the King, he had not appeared at any session of that tribunal; and he could not now prevail upon himself to serve against loyal Scotch Presbyterians, so long as they kept themselves within their own border. A deputation from the Council, consisting of Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, Whitelocke, and St. John, reasoned with him, and the three military messengers prayed with him, without effect. He said that, under existing circumstances, he could not direct an invasion of Scotland, without violating his oath to support the Solemn League and of Cromwell Covenant.1 He surrendered his commission, and in Scotland. retired to private life; and the command-in-chief June 26. of the forces was conferred upon Cromwell. With accustomed promptness he led a perfectly disciplined force of sixteen thousand men to the North, Appointment to command 1 Whitelocke (Memorials, 460-462) records minutely the conversation that took place. Comp. Ludlow (Memoirs, 121, 122), who "really thought the Lieutenant-General in earnest,” — he "acted his part so to the life." where Leslie had made ready for his reception by dispersing the inhabitants, and causing all sorts of stores July. and supplies to be conveyed to a distance from the border. Cromwell advanced almost as far as Edinburgh, where his wary antagonists were securely posted. 14 After fruitlessly endeavoring for several weeks to provoke them to an engagement, he found himself compelled, by want of provisions and by sickness spreading among his troops, to retreat. He was cautiously followed by the Scots as far as Dunbar, whence he was preparing to take the painful step of withdrawing his troops by sea, when an unexpected revolution of affairs took place. The tactics of the skilful Scottish commander were defeated by the impatience of the devotees in his camp. They cried out against his inaction, and said that God had given them assurance of an answer of peace to their prayers for victory. Overcome by these importunities, or disabled by the faction which they bred, he consented to abandon the advantage of his position, and meet the hazard of a battle.1 After prayers with some of their fellow-officers, Cromwell and Lambert had ridden out to watch the dispositions of the enemy, when to their gratified surprise they saw a movement of cavalry and artillery from the heights, which they had occupied, towards the plain; Monk came up, and agreed with them that now was the accepted time; and all things were arranged for an attack the next morning. At first a thick fog, after a stormy night, gave the Scots the advantage. They beat back the republican cavalry, and continued to maintain an obstinate contest. At seven o'clock, as Cromwell's own Dunbar. regiment of foot was moving towards the field, Battle of Sept. 3. source of many such" But Burnet was nephew of Johnstone of Waristoun, and had access to the best information respecting what had passed in the Scottish camp. a bright sun broke through the mist. "Let God arise," said the exulting leader, "and let his enemies be scattered." Steady as a flood-tide, the excited soldiers, singing the hundred and seventeenth Psalm, poured on to the charge. Superiority of numbers was of no avail against such an onset. At nine o'clock, the English had slain three thousand of the enemy, and taken ten thousand prisoners, with all the artillery and equipage, and two hundred standards. The remnant of the Scots retreated westward to Stirling, and within a week Cromwell was in Edinburgh. The young king took advantage of the confusion of the time to escape from his disagreeable friends, with a view to placing himself in the hands of some loyalists in the Highlands, whose tastes better suited with his own. But a party immediately pursued him, and by entreaties, which, it was manifest, might easily be changed to compulsion, he was prevailed upon to return to the army. The obvious expediency of a course suitable to combine the various interests concurred with this evidence of his discontent, to secure him more respectful treatment for the future. The moderate. Presbyterians, whose chief was the Duke of Hamilton, recovered no little of their influence. The party of the Earl of Argyll, which had been in the ascendant, abated something of its rigor; and, in a great assembly of the peers and people, King Charles that nobleman placed the crown on the young prince's head at Scone, the ancient scene of the coronation of the monarchs of Scotland. Coronation of the Second. 1651. Jan. 1. After a winter passed at Edinburgh, not without successful endeavors to conciliate and to divide the Scots, Cromwell took the field against a new army which the Scottish rulers had enrolled. In the sequel of some indecisive operations, he succeeded in placing himself in the rear of that force, and besieged and took Perth, the new seat of government. The way southward being thus cleared, the young King adopted Aug. 2. |