Oliver Cromwell

by Theodore Roosevelt

Cromwell, like the rest, was drifting; he seriously thought of leaving England and going to Germany to fight for the Protestant cause, as the Thirty Years’ War had not yet come quite to an end. To the French ambassador, who sounded him on the object of his ambition, he answered: “No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.” He was certainly at this time making the most honest efforts to come to an agreement, either with the King, or the Parliament, or with both, provided only liberty of conscience should be granted, the power of Parliament guaranteed against the despotism of the King, and the rights of the people guaranteed as against the despotism of Parliament. But, when Parliament began to negotiate with the Scots on its account, and Charles secretly sought to enter into a separate agreement with the Scots on his account, to bring about an invasion of England, while the city mob, which was rabidly Presbyterian, forced the hand of the House of Commons and compelled its members to defy the army, it became evident that Oliver had to choose his course. Reluctantly he was pushed along the road of military revolution. The speaker and the Independent members of Parliament, in fear of the London mob, took refuge with the army, whither Cromwell himself had already gone. On June 10th the army issued a manifesto, demanding a settlement of the difficulties upon terms which it approved. Early in August it marched in formidable and orderly parade through the city, overawing resistance by its mere appearance, and Parliament submitted. This was the real beginning of the military interference which terminated in the military dictatorship of one man. If Cromwell is to be blamed for what he did to the Long Parliament, this is the step for which he is to be blamed most; yet it was a step approved by Milton, Fairfax, Ireton, and the great majority of the best and most high-minded believers in English liberty who were then alive. The conduct of the King and the Parliament had been such that it is difficult to see how any other course was possible.

Cromwell did his best to stop the Revolution at the point it had now reached. For months he endeavored to make terms with the King on the conditions outlined above; and he not only put a stop to the extreme democratic agitation of the Levellers and refused to further the plan for a republican commonwealth, but, with prompt severity, repressed a mutiny that broke out under the cry of “England’s Freedom and Soldiers’ Rights.” He disregarded the grumbling of the army until he became convinced that Charles was incurably false, incurably treacherous and untrustworthy, and was fomenting a counter-revolution. Then Cromwell turned from him with loathing, and made up his mind to trust to the sword, and to strike down anyone, even the King himself, if the need warranted it.

It was high time for action. In Ireland the Royalists, the Catholics, and even the Presbyterians, were uniting against the Parliament. The Scotch, under the lead of Hamilton and the Presbyterian Royalists, declared for the King; the English Presbyterians were for him to the extent that they were against the army; and throughout England the Cavaliers were arming for an uprising. Dark indeed seemed the peril. It had taken four years for the English Presbyterians, the Scotch, and the New Model, the army of the Independents, to conquer the Royalists, and now the New Model was pitted single-handed against the Scotch and the Royalists, while the Presbyterians were at best lukewarm. Nevertheless, exactly as in the French Revolution, the victory lay with the Mountain when it was brought face to face not only with hostile parties in France but with the rest of armed Europe, so now the fierce energy of the New Model, with the greatest of Englishmen at its head, was destined to prove too much for its foes. The grim Ironsides rallied to their cause with the devotion of fanatics, and the well-ordered discipline of splendid soldiers. With fierce exhortations and sermons, with internal searchings of spirit, with outpourings of prayer, they made ready for battle, and in each dark Puritan heart welled the determination not only to put down armed resistance, but to take the last great vengeance upon the King, the cause of the blood-guiltiness.

John Milton.
From the drawing in crayon by Faithorne at Bayfordbury.
By permission of William Clinton-Baker, Esq., J.P.

In April, 1648, the Second Civil War broke out. The gentry of Wales were a unit for the King, and the commonalty followed them. The Cavaliers rose in force in the North, and the Scotch prepared to send a formidable army across the border to their aid; and there were Royalist outbreaks everywhere, even in the southern and eastern counties. Berwick, Carlyle, Chester, Pembroke, Colchester, were seized and held for the King. The Presbyterians of London were in commotion; the Presbyterians in Parliament itself were half-hearted and divided; but the Independents and the army had no doubts. Fairfax marched into Kent and Essex, and, after some hard fighting, trampled under foot the insurrection. One Parliamentary Colonel whipped the Welsh at St. Fagan’s; another crushed out a Royalist rising in Lancashire; General Lambert was sent to the North, where Sir Marmaduke Langdale—Oliver’s old foe at Naseby—had raised Yorkshire for the King. Oliver himself marched to the siege of Pembroke, which, owing to lack of cannon, he could not take until July 11th. This ended the Welsh War. The risings in the south and centre had been thoroughly stamped out; the fleet, which had partially revolted, was for the most part brought back to loyalty; and there remained only to deal with the Northern Royalists and the Scotch army under the Duke of Hamilton, which had by this time crossed the border.

The composition of Hamilton’s army and the history of events in both Scotland and Ireland at this moment, are alike sufficient to show the tangle in which politics then were—the kaleidoscopic changes in the relations of factions and parties, and the seeming minuteness of the points of difference over which these same parties waged ferocious and resolute war. Hamilton’s cavalry was commanded by Munro, who had come over from Ulster to take part in the invasion of England. Munro and the Scotch Presbyterians of Ulster had, during the years immediately succeeding the great Irish uprising, been the formidable and merciless opponents of the Irish of the North. But when the English Civil War was fairly on, the English Royalists in Ireland—Episcopalians and Catholics alike—gradually lost their animosity toward their Irish foes, in their greater animosity toward the Puritans, and finally the Presbyterians followed suit. This resulted in the release of Munro and a large part of the Presbyterian force in Ulster, who went to the aid of Hamilton. Hamilton’s own government was Presbyterian and ostentatiously devoted to the Covenant. It is very difficult for a modern observer to see any essential point of difference, either in their attitude toward the Covenant, toward the King, or toward England; between the party that at the moment controlled Scotland, and the party which was soon to drive it out of power. Yet the bitterness between them was intense. The bulk of the Presbyterian ministers, and the fiercest and most intense Presbyterian zealots, hated Hamilton and his fellows with mortal hatred, and were only waiting their chance to rise against them.

Cromwell advanced to the encounter with entire confidence, and sternly anxious to get at his foes. He was a thorough Englishman at a time when, to the thorough Englishman, the Scotch were classed with other aliens. Bitterly though he hated the Royalists, he yet acknowledged them as fellow-countrymen; but he made no such acknowledgment in the case of the Scots. He explained that he preferred the Cavalier interest to the Scottish interest, just as he preferred the Scottish to the Irish; and he now moved against enemies whom he regarded not merely as enemies to his cause, but as enemies to his country.

There seemed every reason for the Scots to be confident. Even with their help the Parliamentarians had been able to put down the Royalists only at the cost of four years of hard fighting; and now the Scotch and the Royalists were to act together. They were to be pitted against Cromwell, the best Parliamentary commander, to be sure; but the Scotch had done at least as well as the average of the allies at the victory of Marston Moor, and still had in mind the memory of their easy successes against their English foes in the two Bishops’ Wars.

The great victories of the Parliamentary army had hitherto been won when the odds in numbers were in their favor; now, they were about to fight with the odds over two to one against them. Hamilton’s army was about 21,000 strong, including 3,000 Yorkshire Royalists under Langdale. Cromwell had only some 9,000 men; but the great bulk of them were veterans, who under his leadership had become the finest soldiers of the age.