On the whole, then, England and Scotland fared well under Oliver Cromwell—“Old Noll,” as he was affectionately called by his mainstay, the army. In Ireland, the case was different. Materially, even in Ireland, the conditions greatly improved during the Protectorate, because order was rigidly preserved and law enforced; and any system which secured order and law was bound to bring about a temporary bettering of conditions when contrasted with the frightful anarchy which had preceded it. Anarchy always serves simply as the handmaiden of despotism, as those who bring it about should know. But the religious element in the Irish problem rendered it insoluble by the means then adopted for its solution. Cromwell was not responsible for introducing the methods known by his name. They were the methods then universally in use by the representatives of every victorious nationality or religion, in dealing with a beaten foe. The only difference was that Cromwell’s immense energy and power enabled him to apply them with dreadful effectiveness.
In England, Cromwell stood for religious toleration, so far as he was able. Fanatics who thought themselves incarnations of the Saviour, or prophets of a new dispensation, or who indulged in indecent or seditious conduct, or who disturbed the public peace by breaking into regular churches, of course had to be suppressed. Nowadays, most offenders of this type would be ignored, and, if not, they would simply be arrested by the police, in the course of the ordinary exercise of the police power, just as any other disturbers of the peace are arrested. In those days, however, such offenders would have been punished with death in Spain, Italy, or Austria; and, indeed, in most continental countries. In the England of Cromwell, they were merely temporarily imprisoned. The attitude of mind, both of the public generally and of the best and most religious people, toward Unitarians, Socinians, and those who would nowadays be called Free-Thinkers, was purely mediæval; and even Cromwell could only moderate the persecution to which they were subjected. But these were minor exceptions. For the majority of the people in England, there was religious liberty; and for the bulk of the minority, though there was not complete religious liberty, there was a nearer approach to it than obtained in Continental Europe.
In Ireland, on the other hand, the public exercise of the faith of the enormous majority was prohibited, and their religious teachers expelled. There is a popular belief that under Cromwell all Irishmen were expelled from three-fourths of the island, and driven into Connaught, their places being taken by English and Scotch immigrants. While exceedingly cruel, this would have been an understandable policy, and would have resulted in the substitution of one race and one creed for another race and another creed throughout the major part of the island. What was actually done, however, combined cruelty with ultimate inefficiency; it caused great immediate suffering, while perpetuating exactly the conditions against which it was supposed to provide. The Catholic landholders were, speaking generally, driven into Connaught, and the priests expelled, while the peasants, laborers, and artisans were left as they were, but of course deprived of all the leadership which could give them a lift upward. In Ulster there had been a considerable substitution of one race for the other, among the actual tillers and occupiers of the soil. Under Cromwell, the change elsewhere consisted in the bringing in of alien landlords. In other words, to the already existing antagonism of race, creed, and speech, was added the antagonism of caste. The property-holder, the landlord, the man of means, was an Englishman by race and speech, and a Protestant by faith; while the mass of the laborers roundabout him were Catholic Celts who spoke Erse. Ultra admirers of Cromwell and the Puritans have actually spoken as if this plan, provided only that it had been allowed to work long enough, would have produced a Puritan Ireland. There was never the remotest chance of its producing such an effect. The mass of the Irish, when all their native teachers were removed, did gradually tend to adopt English as their tongue, but their devotion to their own faith, and their hatred of English rule, were merely intensified; while the course of the governing race was such as absolutely to insure the land troubles which have riven Ireland up to the present day. The very unedifying intolerance of the Protestant sects toward one another was manifested as strongly in Cromwell’s time as later. It must be said for him that he did not, like his successors for generations, shape English policy toward Ireland on the lines of Spain’s policy toward her own colonies, and oppress the Protestant descendants of the English in Ireland only less than the native Irish themselves; but the great central fact remains that his Irish policy was one of bitter oppression, and that the abhorrence with which the Irish, to this day, speak of “the curse o’ Crummle,” is historically justifiable.
It is a relief to turn from the Cromwellian policy in Ireland to the Cromwellian policy in foreign affairs. England never stood higher in her relations with the outside world than she stood under Cromwell; a height all the more noteworthy because it lay between the two abysses marked by the policy of the earlier and the later Stuart kings. The French biographer of the great Turenne, du Buisson, Major of the Regiment de Verdelin, writing in the days of Charles II., when England was despised rather than hated on the Continent, spoke with a mixture of horror and fear of Cromwell, as the man who “après l’attentat le plus énorme dont on a jamais ouï parler, avoit trouvé le secret de se faire craindre, non seulement des Anglois, mais encore des Princes voisins.” This was written as expressing the attitude of the power with which he was in alliance, and from it may be gathered how those felt who were opposed to him.
Cromwell’s strong religious feelings and military instincts, alike bade him meddle in the policy of the Continent. The era of the great religious wars was closed. More than a century was to pass before the era of religious persecution was to cease, but the time had gone by when one Christian country would try, by force of arms, to conquer another for the purpose of stamping out its religious belief. Cromwell, however, did not see this, and he naturally chose as his special opponent the power which itself was equally blind to the fact—that is, Spain. Beyond a question, he was influenced partly by the commercial and material interests of England in the policy he pursued, but the religious motive was uppermost in his own mind, and he never could get over the feeling that it ought to be uppermost in the minds of everyone else. The very able Swedish King, Charles X., was then pursuing the fatal policy of the Swedish kings of that century, and was endeavoring to conquer territory at the expense of the Danes and North Germans, instead of establishing, to the east and southeast of the Baltic, a dominion which could hold its own against Russia. Cromwell selected the Swede as the natural enemy of Antichrist, and wished to back him in a general religious war. He was amusingly irritated with the English, because they would not feel as he did, and even more with the Dutch, Danes, and Brandenburgers for declining to let themselves be made the tools of the northern king’s ambition.
The Last Charge of the Ironsides.
At the Battle of Dunkirk the Ironsides—as usual singing psalms—charged the Spanish Cavalry (who were in retreat) and literally cut them to pieces.
The great European struggle of the day, however, was that between Spain and France, and for some time Cromwell hesitated which side to take. He has often been blamed for not striking against France, the rising power, whose then youthful king was at a later day to threaten all Europe, and only to be held in check by coalitions in which England was the chief figure. But, though France persecuted the Huguenots more or less, just as England did the Irish Catholics, she was far more advanced than Spain, which was the most bigoted and reactionary power of Europe, both in religion and in politics. The Spanish empire was still very great. Though her power on sea had gone, on land she had on the whole held her own against the French armies, and, with England as her ally, she might for the time being have remained the leading power of the Continent. This would have been a frightful calamity, and Cromwell was right in throwing the weight of his sword on the other side of the scale.
His decision enabled him to do one of the most righteous of his many righteous deeds. It was at this time that the Duke of Savoy, under ecclesiastical pressure, indulged in dreadful persecutions of the humble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys; persecutions which called forth the noblest of Milton’s sonnets. Oliver interfered, with fiery indignation, on behalf of the Vaudois, threatening that if the persecutions continued he would not only bring the pressure of the English arms to bear, but would hire a great force of mercenaries among the Protestant Swiss to invade the territory of the Duke of Savoy. Largely through the influence of Mazarin he succeeded in having the wrong partially undone; and later, in the middle of the operations against the Spanish armies, he again interfered, effectively, with the Cardinal-Statesman on behalf of his obscure and helpless co-religionists in the remote mountain valleys. This action was purely disinterested; and those who are loudest in their denunciation of Cromwell would do well to remember that, if the European rulers at the end of the nineteenth century had possessed his capacity for generous indignation on behalf of the oppressed, the Armenian massacres either would never have taken place, or would have been followed by the immediate expulsion of the Turk from Europe.
Oliver’s first contest with the Spaniards was carried on by sea, the great Puritan Admiral, Blake, winning renown by his victory over the forts at Santa Cruz, as he had already won renown by the way in which he crushed the forces of Tunis, and for the first time taught the Moors to respect English arms. An expedition against San Domingo by Penn and Venables failed, the English leaders being treacherous and inefficient, but it resulted in the capture of Jamaica and the founding of English power in the West Indies. On land, as the result of the convention with France, the English fleet deprived the Spaniards in the Netherlands of assistance from the sea, while an English force of 6,000 troops, clad in the red uniform which has since become distinctive of the British army, was sent to serve under Turenne. They overthrew the flower of the Spanish infantry, and won the heartiest praise from the great French leader. The help given by Cromwell was decisive; the Spaniards were beaten and forced to make peace. By this peace France became the first power on the Continent, but a power heartily afraid of England while Cromwell lived, and obliged to yield him Dunkirk as the price of his services. The possession of Dunkirk put a complete stop to the piracy which had ravaged British commerce, and gave to Cromwell a foothold on the Continent which rendered him able to enforce from his neighbors whatever consideration the honor and interest of England demanded.