صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

receive us and our men charging fiercely upon them, by God's Providence they were immediately routed, and ran all away; and we had the execution of them two or three miles. I believe some of our soldiers did kill two or three men apiece in the pursuit."

His next achievement was the relief of Gainsborough, which he effected after a sharp and bloody struggle, in which General Cavendish, second son of the Earl of Devonshire, and cousin of the Earl of Newcastle, then the great representative of, and the most successful commander for, the King in the north, was killed.* The action was close hand to hand, "horse to horse," "when we disputed it with our swords and pistols a pretty time." The steadiness of Cromwell's men, however, triumphed. "At last, they a little shrinking, our men perceived it, pressed on upon them, and immediately routed the whole body; and our men pursuing, had chase and execution about five or six miles." This engagement was the first in which Cromwell came into notice as a military leader. "It was the beginning of his great fortunes," says Whitelock; now he began

to appear in the world."

It was in the month of July that this achievement of Cromwell's took place. In the previous month Hampden had fallen wounded to death in a skirmish on Chalgrove Common, some miles from Oxford.

[ocr errors]

He

was seen to quit the field before the action was finished, contrary to his custom, with his head hanging down." Charles, at Oxford, was greatly excited by the news; and with a pathetic courtesy, which touches us even if we may doubt its sincerity, sent to inquire for his great opponent, and to offer to send him medi

My captain-lieutenant," says Cromwell, "slew him with a thrust under his short ribs."

cal assistance if he had none at hand. All assistance, however, was vain. Hampden felt from the first that his wound was mortal, and busied his last hours in writing letters to his friends, and earnestly counselling those active measures for the prosecution of the war that he had long had at heart. He was attended by an old friend, Dr Giles, Rector of Chinnor, and his dying words were words of prayer—“O Lord, save my country."

Hampden's death, and Waller's serious reverses, gave a very gloomy turn to the affairs of Parliament at this time. On all sides save in the east they wore a disastrous look. Here, notwithstanding the backwardness of Lord Willoughby, the Parliamentary general, the vigour of Cromwell's influence was everywhere apparent. Especially he held in check the forces of Newcastle, and proved a terror to the northern Papists. He had been appointed by the Parliament governor of the Isle of Ely, and this strengthened his influence throughout the district. In this capacity he is found making a speech in Ely Cathedral, which must have astonished his auditors. An Act of Parliament had abolished the ecclesiastical usages obnoxious to the Puritans. Cromwell counted it his business to see the Acts of Parliament in this as in other things strictly enforced; and one of the canons being so foolish as to disregard the new arrangements, and proceed in the old manner of surplice and ceremony, he was saluted with the cry, "Leave off your fooling, and come down, sir". a cry which doubtless startled the ecclesiastic in the midst of his elaborate sanctities.

In the autumn of 1643 he had a hard fight at Winceby, in which he nearly lost his life. "His horse was killed under him at the first charge, and fell down

upon him; and as he rose up he was knocked down again." Afterwards, however, he recovered a "poor horse in a soldier's hand, and bravely mounted himself again." It is evident that Cromwell had enough to do during the somewhat unhappy close of the first period of the war. There is no evidence, however, that he was for a moment desponding, or even embarrassed. His letters betray an invariable self-confidence - a steady faith.

The campaign of 1644 opened vigorously on both sides. Essex and Waller commanded for the Parliament in the midland and western counties; Manchester and Cromwell in the eastern counties; and Fairfax and his father in the north co-operated with the Scots, who had entered England to the number of 20,000, under the command of the Earl of Leven. Newcastle, who had gallantly maintained the royalist cause in the north, was now besieged in York by the combined forces of the Parliament and the Scots. Prince Rupert hastened from Lancashire at the head of 20,000 men to his relief. On his approach the Parliamentary forces raised the siege, and after an ineffectual attempt to intercept him withdrew towards Tadcaster. So far Rupert had accomplished his purpose; but, not content with this measure of success, he insisted on giving battle to the Parliamentary army. In spite of Newcastle's remonstrances, he carried his design into effect. The marquess felt himself insulted and overborne by the rude and impetuous prince. He evidently discredited the existence of a letter from the King, which the prince urged as his plea for fighting; yet he yielded, declaring that he had no other ambition than to live and die a royal subject. A somewhat * Narrative by John Vicars, 1646; quoted by Carlyle, p. 190, vol. i.

G

*

similar dissension distracted the councils of the Parliamentarians. The Scots were opposed to battle, and their timid counsels for a while prevailed, to the great disgust and indignation of Cromwell. A battle, however, was inevitable. Eagerness on the one side was responded to by hope on the other; and although the Scots were already within a mile of Tadcaster, and Manchester's foot were also on the march, they turned at a summons from Fairfax that Rupert had drawn out his forces to meet them on Long-Marston Moor; and there, on the evening of the 2d of July, the two armies met. After a severe and varying struggle, which at first seemed in favour of the Royalists, who broke and dispersed both Fairfax's men on the left, and the Scots in the centre under Leven, victory declared in favour of the Parliamentary army. The Royalists were driven from the field with great disaster, and chased within a mile of York; "so that their dead bodies lay three miles in length."

This decisive victory was, beyond doubt, mainly due to Cromwell, who retrieved the day with his horse, after it seemed nearly lost. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of his own account, that "the battle had all the evidence of an absolute victory, obtained by the Lord's blessing upon the godly party principally. We never charged, but we routed the enemy. The left wing which I commanded, being my own horse, saving a few Scots + on our rear, beat all the Prince's horse. God made them as stubble to our swords." And it was after he had thus done his own share of the work on the left that he swept round

"Hope of a battle moved our soldiers to return merrily," says a Parliamentary chronicler-ASH.

+ Commanded by General David Leslie.

with his victorious horse to the right, where Fairfax and Leven had yielded to the Royalists, and turned there also the tide of battle.

The event was a signal one for Cromwell and the army, and more than justified Prince Rupert's eager inquiry at a prisoner who was taken on the eve of the engagement" Is Cromwell there?" It was beginning to be felt now, on all hands, that he was the great hero on the Parliamentary side of the struggle. He and the "godly party" that he represented henceforth emerge into prominence as the genuine war-party. It was evident that they had aims beyond the Presbyterians, and that they were rapidly acquiring an influence in the army which would enable them to carry out these aims. The very extremity of their views gave them strength on the field. While Essex in the south and west, and Leven in the north, were distracted in their warlike efforts by their desires of peace, and Manchester shared in their anxieties, Cromwell and his party had no misgivings. Their minds were not set on peace. They saw the deeper turn that the revolution was taking, and they gladly gave themselves to the current. Cromwell himself more and more felt that war was his element-that his place of power was on the battle-field. It was there that his soul kindled into greatness, and that his marvellous energies for the first time had found adequate scope. The tone in which he writes, accordingly, shows how far all ideas of peace were from his mind at this period-how he was knitting himself up to a fiercer struggle than ever, and how his own side of the cause was becoming more intensely and dogmatically consecrated to his mind and imagination as the cause of God.

But this very determination on the part of Cromwell

« السابقةمتابعة »