The fate of the prisoners taken at Dunbar was dreadful. War had not learned any of its modern mercifulness. Cromwell was in this, as in other respects, ahead, and not behind, the times. He released half of the prisoners—for the most part half-starved, sick, and wounded—and sent the rest under convoy southward, praying that humanity might be exercised toward them; but no care was taken of them, and four-fifths died from starvation and pestilence.

Meanwhile, a new Scotch army was assembling at Stirling, consisting for the most part of the Lowland Cavaliers, with their retainers, and the Royalist chiefs from the Highlands, with their clansmen. Before acting against them, Cromwell broke up the remaining Kirk forces, put down the moss-troopers and plunderers, and secured the surrender of Edinburgh. Winter came on, and operations ceased during the severe weather.

In the spring of 1651, he resumed his work, and by the end of summer he had the Royalists in such plight that it was evident that their only chance was to abide the hazard of a great effort. Early in August Charles led his army across the border into England, to see if he could not retrieve his cause there, while Cromwell was in Scotland; but Cromwell himself promptly followed him, while Cromwell’s lieutenants in England opposed and hampered the march of the Royalists. There was need of resolute action, for Charles had the best Scotch army that had yet been gathered together. There was no general rising of the English to join him, but, when he reached Worcester, the town received him with open arms. This was the end of his successes. Cromwell came up, and after careful preparation, delivered his attack, on September 3d. Charles had only some 15,000 men; Cromwell, nearly 30,000, half of whom, however, were the militia of the neighboring counties, who were not to be compared either with Cromwell’s own veterans, or with their Royalist opponents. The fight was fierce, Cromwell’s left wing gradually driving back the enemy, in spite of stubborn resistance; while, on his right, the Cavaliers and Highlanders themselves vigorously attacked the troops to which they were opposed. It was “as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever I have seen,” wrote Cromwell that evening; but at last he overthrew his foes, and, following them with his usual vigor, frightful carnage ensued. The victory was overwhelming. Charles himself escaped after various remarkable adventures, but all the nobles and generals of note were killed or taken. Nearly 11,000 men were captured, and practically all the remainder were slain.

This was, as Cromwell said, “the crowning mercy.” It was the last fight of the Civil War; the last time that Cromwell had to lead an army in the field. From now till his death there never appeared in England a foe it was necessary for him to meet in person.

The Sword used by Cromwell in his Irish Campaign.

V
THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE

After the battle of Worcester, the authority of the Commonwealth was supreme throughout the British Islands. This authority as yet reposed, wholly in form, largely in substance, with the remnant of the Long Parliament. This remnant, derisively called the “rump,” differed as widely in power and capacity from the Parliament led by Pym and Hampden, as the Continental Congress that saw the outgoing of the Revolutionary War differed from that which saw its incoming. Defections and purgings, exclusions first of whole-hearted Episcopalian Royalists and then of half-hearted Presbyterian Royalists, had reduced it to being but the representative of a faction. It had submitted to the supremacy of the army by submitting to the exclusion of those members to whom the army objected. Then it had worked for some time hand in hand with the army; but, now that war was over, the Parliamentary representatives or the Independents feared more and more the supremacy of the military, or Cromwellian, wing of their party. It was the army, and not the Parliament, that had won the fight; that had killed one king, and driven another, his son, into exile; that had subdued Scotland and Ireland, and stamped out the last vestige of Royalist resistance in England. Yet it was the Parliament, and not the army, which in theory was to fall heir to the royal power.

Moreover, Parliament, thanks to its past history, had become as little as the army the legal embodiment of the power of England; and what was more important, there was even less general acceptance of it as the proper representative of power, than there was general acceptance of the army. The army, even where hated, was feared and respected; the Parliament was beginning to excite no emotion save an angry contempt. There were men of honor, of note, and of ability still left in the Parliament; but its vital force was dying.

Conscious of its own weakness before the people, the Parliament was most reluctant to face a dissolution; most eager to devise means by which its rule could be perpetuated. The army, no less conscious of the hostility felt for it by the Parliament, was just as determined that there should be a dissolution and an election of a new Parliament. In the approaching conflict the army had an immense advantage, for, while the Parliament was losing its grip upon the Independents, without in any way attracting strength from the Royalists, the great mass of the Independents still firmly regarded Cromwell as their especial champion.