Passing over this insult, the Scots in March despatched the Earl of Cassilis to the Hague, attended by four commissioners, to wait on Charles and invite him to Scotland. They found there the Earl of Lanark, now Duke of Hamilton by the execution of his brother, the Earls of Lauderdale, Callander, Montrose, Kinnoul, and Seaforth. Some of these were old Royalists, some of whom were called "Engagers," or of the party of Hamilton. The Court of Charles, small as it was, was rent by dissensions, and both the Engagers and the Commissioners under Cassilis joined in protesting against any junction with Montrose, whose cruelties to the Covenanters, they said, had been so great, that to unite with him would turn all Scotland against the king. They insisted on Charles taking the Covenant, but this Montrose and the old Royalists vehemently opposed, declaring that to do that would alienate both Catholics and Episcopalians, and exasperate the Independents to tenfold bitterness.

Whilst matters were in this unsatisfactory state, Dr. Dorislaus arrived as Ambassador from the English Parliament to the States of Holland. He was a native of that country, but had lived some time in England, had been a professor of Gresham College, and drew up the charge for Parliament against the king. That very evening, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the inn where he was at supper, and desiring those present not to alarm themselves, as they had no intention of hurting any one but the agent of the English rebels who had lately murdered their king, they dragged Dorislaus from the table, and one of them stabbed him with a dagger. Seeing him dead, they sheathed their swords, and walked quietly out of the house. They were known to be all Scotsmen and followers of Montrose; and Charles, seeing the mischief this base assassination would do his cause, and especially in Holland, prepared to quit the country. It was first proposed that he should go to Ireland, where Ormond was labouring in his favour, and where Rupert was off the coast with a fleet; but he changed his mind and went to Paris, to the queen, his mother. Before doing that, he sent Chancellor Hyde and Lord Cottington as envoys to Spain, to endeavour to move the king in his favour, and he returned an answer to the Scottish Commissioners, that though he was and always had been ready to grant them the freedom of their religion, he could not consent to bind himself to the Covenant. They admitted that he was their king, and therefore they ought to obey him, and not he them, and this obedience he must expect from the Committee of Estates, the Assembly of the Kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. With this resolute reply they departed in no very satisfied mood.

ASSASSINATION OF DR. DORISLAUS. (See p. [96].)

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The war in Ireland being now undertaken by Cromwell, we must give a brief retrospective glance at what had been passing there. Perhaps no country was ever so torn to pieces by different factions. The Catholics were divided amongst themselves: there were the Catholics of the Pale, and the Old Irish Catholics, part of whom followed the faction of Rinuccini, the Pope's Nuncio, who was at the head of the Council of Kilkenny, while others followed General Preston and Viscount Taaffe. The Irish Royalists—who consisted chiefly of Episcopalians—ranged themselves under the banner of Ormond. The approach of Cromwell warned them to suppress their various feuds and unite against the Parliament. To strengthen the Parliament force, Jones, the Governor of Dublin, and Monk, who commanded in Ulster, made overtures to Owen Roe O'Neil, the head of the Old Irish in Ulster. Ormond had arrived in Ireland, and Inchiquin and Preston, the leaders of the forces of the Irish Council, which had now repudiated the Pope's Nuncio, joined him; but O'Neil held back, not trusting Ormond, and he sent a messenger to Charles in France, offering to treat directly with him. But Ormond ordered the Earl of Castlehaven to attack O'Neil, which he did, and speedily reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy. Enraged at this whilst he was offering his services to the king, O'Neil listened to the proposals of Monk, who was himself hard pressed by the Scottish Royalists, and had been compelled to retire from Belfast to Dundalk. Monk supplied O'Neil with ammunition, and O'Neil undertook to cut off the communication between the Royalists in the north and Ormond in the south. Monk sent word of this arrangement, and the "grandees," as they were called, or members of the Great Council, entertained the plan in secret—publicly they dared not, for the followers of O'Neil were those Ulster Irish who had committed the horrible massacres of 1641. No sooner, however, did the rumour of this coalition become known, than the greatest excitement prevailed. The army and the people were filled with horror and indignation. They appealed to the solemn engagement of the army to avenge the blood of their fellow Protestants slaughtered by these savages; they reminded the Council and the Parliament of the invectives heaped by them on the late king for making peace with these blood-stained natives; and now they were expected to become the allies and associates of these very men. The Parliament saw how vain it was to strive against the feeling, and annulled the agreement. Hugh Peters harangued the public from the pulpit, excusing the Council on account of the real facts of the case having been concealed from them, and the whole weight of the transaction fell on Monk, who was just then in London, and who was assured that nothing but his past services saved him from the punishment of his indiscretion.

Whilst matters were in this position, and the Parliament was compelled to reject a very useful ally, Ormond marched to besiege Jones in Dublin. He advanced on both sides of the Liffey, and cast up works at Bogotrath, to cut off the pasturage of the horses of the Parliamentary force in Dublin. Jones, however, made a sally an hour before sunrise, and threw the enemy into such confusion that the whole army on the right bank of the river fled in headlong panic, leaving their artillery, ammunition, tents, and baggage. In vain did Ormond hasten to check the rout; his men followed the example. Two thousand prisoners were taken by Jones, of whom three hundred are said to have been slaughtered in cold blood. Such was the defeat, and such the inequality of the forces, that it cast great disgrace on the generalship of Ormond, and the Royalists made much talk about treason; but Charles himself would not listen to any such surmises: he hastened to send Ormond the Order of the Garter, and to assure him of his unshaken favour. The most exaggerated assertions were made of the forces of Ormond, and of the number of his men killed and taken. Ormond says that he had only eight thousand men; but Cromwell, no doubt from the assertions of Jones, states that the number was nineteen thousand against five thousand two hundred of Jones's, and that Jones killed four thousand on the spot, and took two thousand five hundred and seventeen prisoners, of whom three hundred were officers. The battle was fought at Rathmines on the 2nd of August, 1649, and contributed to quicken the movements of Cromwell, who was collecting forces for the passage at Milford Haven.

Cromwell, with twelve thousand veterans, sailed on the 13th of August, and arrived in Dublin with the first division on the 15th, Ireton following with the main body. He was received with acclamations by the people of Dublin, and made them a speech in the streets, which greatly pleased them. He then allowed his army a fortnight to refresh themselves after the voyage, before leading them to action. At this period, the only places left to the Parliament in Ireland were Dublin and Derry. On the 9th of September he bombarded Drogheda, and summoned it to surrender. The governor of the place was Sir Arthur Aston, who had about three thousand troops, foot and horse, commanded by Sir Edmund Varney, whose father was killed at Edge Hill. Aston, who had acquired the reputation of a brave and experienced officer, refused to surrender, and the storm commenced, and on the second day a breach was made. A thousand men entered by the breach, but were driven back by the garrison. On this Cromwell placed himself at the head of his men, and made a second assault. This time, after some hard fighting, they succeeded in getting possession of the entrenchments and of a church. According to Ormond, Carte, and others, Cromwell's officers then promised quarter to all who would surrender. "All his officers and soldiers," says Carte, "promising quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performing it as long as any place held out, which encouraged others to yield. But when they had done all in their power, and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word 'No quarter' went round, and the soldiers were, many of them, forced against their wills to kill their prisoners."

This has always been regarded as a great reproach to Cromwell. He himself, of course, does not confess that he broke his word, or forced his officers to break theirs; but he does something very like it. He asserts plainly, in his letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, that "our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men." Some of them escaping to the church, he had it set fire to, and so burnt them in it; and he records the exclamations of one of them in the fire. The rest of the fugitives, as they were compelled to surrender, were either slaughtered, or, to use his own words, "their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes." He says that one thousand people were destroyed in the church that he fired. He adds that they "put to the sword the whole of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives; those that did are in safe custody for Barbadoes." This is, perhaps, the most awful confession that ever was made in cool blood, for these letters were written about a week after the assault, and by a man of such a thoroughly religious mind that he attributes the whole "to the Spirit of God;" says "this hath been a marvellous great mercy;" and prays that "all honest hearts may give the glory to God alone, to Whom, indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." Cromwell endeavoured to justify this horrible massacre by the plea "that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future."

The butchery of Cromwell had not frightened men into surrendering their towns at his summons, and thereby preventing shedding of blood. In fact, great as were the merits of Cromwell, his barbarous mode of warfare in Ireland cannot be defended on any principles of reason, much less of Christianity or humanity. In England he had been noted for his merciful conduct in war, but in Ireland a deplorable fanaticism carried away both him and his army. They were now fighting against a Papist population, and deemed it a merit to destroy them. They confounded all Irishmen with the wild savages of Ulster, who had massacred the Protestants in 1641; and Cromwell, in his letters from Drogheda, plainly expresses this idea, calling the wholesale slaughter "a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood."