“For neither didst thou from the first apply
Thy sober spirit unto things too high;
But in thine own fields exercisedst long
A healthful mind within a body strong.”
Elsewhere he pictures the ascent of the future general of the Republic:
“From his private gardens, where
He lived reservèd and austere,
As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot.”
Yet even to these private gardens and sequestered fields the echo of the German drums must have penetrated, and the Thirty Years’ War must have stirred Cromwell as it stirred D’Ewes and Eliot. His later life suffices to prove it. In 1647, when the English Civil War seemed over, Cromwell thought of taking service in Germany himself. When he became Protector, his European policy was inspired by the passions of the Thirty Years’ War. Its memories governed his attitude towards Austria and Sweden; he thought that Leopold I. would be a second Ferdinand II., and dreamt of finding a new Gustavus in Charles X. But to the Puritan farmer, prescient of a future struggle, the war was not merely a spectacle but a military education. Some of the best accounts of the battles and the mode of fighting of Gustavus were published in England, and between 1630 and 1640 few books were more popular than The Swedish Intelligencer and The Swedish Soldier. It cannot be doubted that Cromwell read these narratives, and absorbed from them that knowledge of military principles and military tactics which supplied for him the place of personal experience.