Be the reasons what they may, liberty owes much to little lands and confined peoples. Go back to any age and continent, place side by side a little nation and a large one, and if the first has made for liberty and progress, the second has often made for bondage and superstition. For the beginnings of morals and religion we go back, not to that widely extended state named Babylon, but to little Palestine, shut in between the desert and the deep sea. For the beginnings of art and culture we go not to the vast, rich plains of Asia Minor, but to that little rocky land named Greece. For the beginnings of the republic we go not to the sunny plains of Italy, but to the narrow valleys between the Alpine Mountains. What great contribution to civilization has Russia made to the world? But the little Swiss Republic has given us the international postal system, international arbitration and the referendum. Commerce owes a great debt to little Venice. Modern banking owes a great debt to little Scotland. Asia and Africa owe a great debt to little England. And though Holland was a narrow strip of land but twenty miles wide and one hundred miles long, yet the world can never repay the debt it owes to this mother of republics.
For lovers of liberty the most sacred spot in modern Europe is the square of the Binnenhof at The Hague. A tablet there records the words with which William the Silent challenged Philip II—words that were first made the foundation of the Dutch Republic, words that our pilgrim fathers took as the basis of their New England institutions.
"We declare to you that you have no right to interfere with the conscience of any one so long as he has done nothing to work injury to another person or public scandal."
We can never forget that Holland gave the founders of our Republic their shelter, with safety and leisure for working out their dreams and visions of self-government. But a full century before the Pilgrim Fathers set foot in Leyden, Holland had become a shelter to foreign exiles, and her citizens had pledged themselves to a deathless hatred of all forms of tyranny. To the cities of Holland had fled those men who were denied liberty of thought in Paris and Nuremburg. To Holland had come the victims of oppression in Venice and Florence. It was in Holland that the great Humanist had lived and died, that scholar and philosopher Erasmus, who wrought as powerfully for reform in religion as Huss and Savonarola. It was Erasmus who forged the intellectual weapons used by Luther in Germany, and Calvin in Geneva. It was Erasmus who first made a correct text for the Greek Testament. It was Erasmus who put the Bible into the common languages of Europe. And it was a group of Dutchmen who first demanded the separation of Church and State. Two generations before William Bradford gathered his little band in Leyden, William the Silent stood forth to challenge the divine right of kings.
John Ruskin once called attention to the fact that as every great art-age has been a reaction from an era of unendurable ugliness, so every movement for liberty has been a reaction precipitated by unwonted tyranny. Certain it is that as Oliver Cromwell represented a rebound from feudalism, and Abraham Lincoln a reaction from the cruelty of slavery, so William the Silent represented a thrilling protest against the crime of a foreign usurper. His career is as romantic and many-coloured as the career of David, the fugitive, fleeing from Saul, or that of Robert Bruce, hiding in caves and dens from the pursuers who threatened his life. In youth he was the companion of kings, but he became the champion of the people against their king, the idol of his followers, and the hero of a lost cause. Like David, he knew the weariness and painfulness of the exile's lot. Like Lincoln, he had a face furrowed with anxiety, and fell a victim to the assassin's bullet. Reared in luxury, the heir to titles and vast estates, the head of a dynasty, whose blood still flows in the veins of Europe's rulers, for the cause of liberty he resigned his rank, that he might serve the poor and oppressed. He was a statesman, and had the foresight that organizes out of defeat, and is unconquerable because it never knows when it is defeated. He was a reformer, and attacked injustice and despotism in an era when of necessity his labours were fruitless. He was a soldier, and had the personal daring and the strong arm that count for more than strategic skill. He was a hero, and though daily the hired poisoners sought entrance to his palace, and assassins ever dogged his steps upon the streets, despite the six attempts upon his life, he maintained his courage and his boundless hope. In an age when society had not yet doubted the divine right of kings, William of Orange fronted Philip II with a denial of this citadel of tyranny and injustice, affirmed the principle that the creed of a nation and the creed of individuals is a matter of their own choice and their own conscience.
Our libraries hold no more instructive volumes than Motley's story of the Netherlands, their rise to material prosperity and their struggle for liberty under the leadership of this man known as William the Silent. The tale of their slow growth as a maritime nation is an epic of indomitable courage in the face of every conceivable form of obstacle. We see these people for the sake of liberty retreating from the rich plains of central Europe into the morass that the Roman historian said was "neither land nor water." With infinite labour they built barriers and dikes against the North Sea, developed a system of veins and arteries through which they compelled the ocean to fertilize their fields, and constructed watery highways for carrying their commerce into distant lands. At length a region outcast of earth and ocean alike "wrestled from both domains their richest treasure." Brave cities floated mermaid-like upon the bosom of the sea. Standing upon the canal boats, travellers looked down upon cattle grazing below the level of the ocean, beheld orchards and gardens whose tree-tops scarcely reached the level of the waves. Unconsciously this race that had struggled so long and victoriously over storms and seas was educating itself of the struggle with the still more savage despotism of man.
With intelligence and enterprise came the development of trade, and in the fifteenth century the Hollanders became the carriers of the world's commerce. Their ships and their sailors made their way around into the Baltic, to the ports of all northern Europe, to the ports of France and Spain, of Genoa and Naples and Venice, to Constantinople and Alexandria, and from thence south into all countries and continents. As bees flitting from orchard to orchard fertilize the fruit, so these ships passing from port to port and continent to continent fertilized the minds of men. Returning home they brought bulbs, roots and seeds that soon made Holland the gayest flower-garden in Europe and the home of modern floriculture and horticulture. From the Far East they brought the suggestion of movable types. The bleached linens, the tapestries and woollen goods of Holland won fame throughout the world. The homes of her burghers were models of comfort and even luxury. Small merchants of Amsterdam and Leyden and Rotterdam became merchant princes. Weavers and spinners of linen and silk, workers in iron, as well as silver and gold, left the other lands of Europe and settled in the Dutch seaports.
In that little strip of land were inclosed 208 walled cities and 6,300 villages guarded by a belt of sixty fortresses. Little wonder that Spain looked longingly toward this people and meditated plans for breaking down its fortresses, subjugating its peoples and transferring its accumulated treasure from the chests of the burghers to the vaults of the Spanish dons and cavaliers. And when at length it began to look as if the scepter of the sea might pass from Spain to Holland, King Philip and his soldiers, under Bloody Alva, resolved to draw a circle of fire around little Holland and rob her of the treasure she had so slowly earned.
Fully to understand the heroic struggle of the Hollanders under William of Orange, we must know the immediate cause of the controversy and the source of the tyranny they opposed. That cause was the Inquisition and the tyranny was that of Spain's ambitious rulers. At the moment of the outbreak, Spain was the richest and the most powerful nation in Europe. Victorious in Africa and Italy, her emperor had carried war into France and now reigned over Germany as well as those provinces now known as Belgium and Holland. If we ask from whence Spain derived the money for these wars of conquest the answer is found in the vast treasure she acquired in the New World. Prescott tells us that when the Spanish soldiers captured the capital of Peru, the soldiers spent days in melting down the golden vessels which they found in the vaults of temples and palaces. In that era, when the yellow metal was worth so much, a single ship carried to Spain $15,500,000 in gold, besides vast treasures of silver and jewels. When Cortez approached the palace of Montezuma the king's messengers met the general bearing gifts from their lord. These gifts included 200 pounds (avoirdupois) of gold for the leader and two pounds of gold for each soldier. The full value of the treasure that Spain carried from the cities and states of the New World will, doubtless, never be known.
But it must be remembered that the Spanish soldiers who went into Mexico and Peru turned those two countries into a wilderness. For a full half-century these brutal soldiers, burning with avarice, went everywhither, looting towns, pillaging cities, butchering the people, lifting the torch upon cottage and palace alike. The awful anguish and suffering that Spain wrought upon the helpless people of Mexico and Peru is one of the bloodiest chapters in history. The eagle pouncing upon the dove, the panther leaping upon the young fawn, but faintly interpret to us the savage cruelty of the Spaniard as he raged through the new world. And when the Spanish ships came home, laden with gold and silver the Emperor found means to prosecute his plans for military conquest. Spanish armies were soon marching into northern Italy, into Austria and Germany, into France and finally into Holland. Flushed with victory and greedy of Holland's treasures, Philip determined to punish these people for their refusal to vote supplies to his army, by establishing there the Inquisition by the sword.
The Inquisition, that mediæval instrument for the detection of punishment of disbelievers in the established Church, had existed in all its horrible malignity for two hundred and fifty years. But it remained for Philip of Spain to make its name forever a byword and a hissing in the mouth of history. He had begun by employing it against the wealthy Jews and Moors, who made up the richest, the most intelligent and prosperous classes in Spain. During the first few years after its institution the Spanish population fell from 10,000,000 to 7,000,000. In eighteen years Torquemada burned 10,220 persons and confiscated the property of 97,321 others. Primarily, the Inquisition was a machine to search men's secret thoughts. It arrested on suspicion, "tortured for confession and then punished with fire." One witness brought a victim to the rack, and two to the flames.
The trial took place at midnight in a gloomy dungeon dimly lighted by torches. Lea tells us "the Grand Inquisitor was enveloped in a black robe with eyes glaring at his victim through holes cut in the hood." Preparatory to examination, the victim, whether man, maiden or matron, was stripped and stretched upon a bench, after which all the weights, pulleys, and screws by which "tendons could be strained without cracking, bones crushed without breaking, body tortured without dying, were put into operation." When condemnation was pronounced the tongue was mutilated so that the victim could neither speak nor swallow. When the morning came, a breakfast with rare delicacies was placed before the sufferer and with ironical invitation he was urged to satisfy his hunger. Then a procession was formed, headed by the magistrates, prelates and nobility, and the prisoner was led to the public square, where an address was given, lauding the Inquisition, condemning heresy and warning the people against want of subjection to the Pope and the Emperor. Then while hymns were sung, blazing fagots were piled about the prisoner until his body was reduced to a heap of ashes.
Such was the devilish institution Philip of Spain determined to set up in Holland as a means of accomplishing his twofold aim, the punishment of "disbelievers" and the despoiling of the Dutch burghers' treasure-chests. Little wonder that even this sturdy folk drew back from the thought in horror. They were not a people to submit to such barbarities as they had already proved, by giving shelter to foreign exiles. When the Inquisition was first inaugurated in Spain, and men first stretched upon the rack as heretics, Holland had opened her doors to the fugitives, who fled alike from the wrath of kings and priests. All over the world, with its darkness and superstition, its cruelty, its flames, its racks and thumbscrews, men of independent minds had secretly turned their thoughts toward little Holland, and their steps toward the seaports where the Dutch merchants bought and sold the treasures of the sea. So, now, there developed in the Netherlands a united protest, representing tens of thousands of people, who deserted the churches ruled by the officials of the Inquisition. These protestors went into the open air beyond the city walls where they sang songs, and listened to the preaching of the reformed ministers. Soon the Roman Catholics under the guidance of the Spanish army, and the Protestants under William of Orange, stood over against one another like two castles with cannon shotted to the muzzle. And finally the storm broke, and the protestors went into the churches their own hands had built, and covered the floor with rubbish of broken statues, effigies, and images, cleansing the walls with axe and hammer and broom, and leaving only the pulpit for the teacher, and the plain pews for the worshippers.
The spark which finally set aflame the powder-magazine of men's hearts was the entrance into Holland, in 1567, of the Duke of Alva, at the head of twenty thousand of Spain's finest troops. Bloody Alva was the most accomplished and capable general in Europe. He had been victorious in campaigns in Africa, Italy, France and Germany. He has been called the most bloodthirsty man who ever led troops to battle, and he was sent to Holland to satiate his wolfish instincts. His army included 6,000 horsemen, notorious for the cruelty with which they had butchered their captives in the Italian campaigns. Alva promised to turn these human wolves loose upon the sheep of Holland. Having arrived in Antwerp and established himself in the citadel, his first act was to organize the "Bloody Council." This monster, whose cruelty was never equalled by any savage beast, announced that if in the Roman era the Emperor contented himself with the heads of a few leaders, leaving the multitude in safety, he would order the death of the multitude, naming a few who were to be permitted to live. Soon the streets were filled with dead bodies. Not content with hanging, burning, and beheading the leaders, Alva hung the corpses beside the road as a warning against free-thinking.
In seven brief years this man brought charges of heresy, treason and insubordination against 30,000 inhabitants. He boasted that he had executed 18,600, while the number of those who had perished by battle, siege, starvation and butchery defied all computation. And the more the people rebelled, the more cruel were the methods he devised to torment them. To the gallows he added the stake and the sword. Men were beheaded, roasted before slow fires, pitched to death with hot tongs, broken on the wheel, flayed alive. On one occasion the skins of leaders were stripped from the living bodies and stretched upon drums for beating at the funeral march of their brethren to the gallows. The barbarities committed during the sacking of starving villages, Motley tells us are beyond belief. "Unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by thousands; whole populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers, and every mode which cruelty in its wanton ingenuity could desire."
Such was the administration of the man of whom it was said: "He possessed no virtues, while the few vices he had were colossal." To Philip, Bloody Alva explained his failure to subdue the Hollanders by the statement that his "rule had been too merciful."
Over against this human monster, with his implacable hatreds and his bestial cruelties, stands William of Orange, the champion of liberty and the saviour of the Netherlands. By a strange coincidence, the first vivid picture we have of this prince who gave up a life of ease and luxury to defend the rights of his fellow men, is the scene at the abdication of Charles V, when, in the presence of a great multitude at Brussels, that ruler turned over the sovereignty of the Netherlands to his son, young Philip II of Spain. William of Orange was then a youth of twenty-two, a stadtholder, or imperial governor, of three rich provinces, and the commander of the official army on the French frontier.
"Arrayed in armour inlaid with gold," says the historian, "with a steel helmet under his left arm, he looked the picture of noble manhood." Beside him, as he fronted the assemblage, stood young Philip, a youth of twenty-eight, dressed in velvet and gold, but physically ill-shapen and already an object of dislike and distrust. Impressive indeed the contrast between these two young men, destined in a few short years to be pitted against each other like gladiators in the long struggle for liberty. "The one had a genius for government, the other possessed a talent for misgovernment. William of Orange had a passion for toleration; Philip II had a passion for crushing every form of toleration." Sovereign at twenty-eight, Philip was already a prey to that consuming ambition which, with his fierce bigotry, was soon to win him universal hatred.
How different this young prince William, with his godlike physique, his perfect balance of heart and intellect, his conscience that could not endure the thought of tyranny. Little wonder that men loved him. In person most elegant, in manners most accomplished, he had been educated by his mother, Juliana of Stolberg, a woman of rare abilities and deeply religious character. As a grand seigneur, with great estates and a brilliant retinue, he had known every temptation of wealth and luxury. But neither the flattery of his friends nor the adulation of his followers had sapped his manhood. He was already a seasoned soldier, and almost at once he was to win fame as a diplomatist. We see him serving at the head of his troops throughout one more campaign; then, at the age of twenty-six, acting as one of the three plenipotentiaries at the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Sent to France as hostage for the fulfillment of this treaty, we find him the cynosure of all men's eyes at the greatest and most brilliant court of the day. Little here to warn those arch-plotters, Henry of France and Philip of Spain, that he was soon to become their deadliest foe. Yet already he was meditating rebellion against the horrors they were planning. And soon he was to give up all thoughts of court distinction, and go forth to organize peasants and rebels into an army, besieging his own castle in the cause of liberty.
It was while he was still at the French court that the incident took place which gave him his title of William the Silent. The peace between Henry and Philip had just been concluded, with one purpose in view as advised by cardinals and priests. "Both sovereigns were to massacre the Protestants in their dominions, and in the Netherlands the Spanish troops were to be employed for this special purpose." The Duke of Alva was in the secret, and King Henry supposed that William of Orange was also. One day while hunting, with William riding at his side, Henry of France unfolded the horrible scheme. The young prince heard him without a word. He had not been told of the project, but he betrayed his ignorance by no sign of speech or gesture. Henry assumed that he approved of the awful butchery. No man was ever more grievously in error. From that moment William of Orange knew that his call had come, from that hour he meditated his withdrawal from the political parties of the guilty leaders. And when at length the martyr fires were kindled in Holland, and the Inquisition, under Bloody Alva, began its hellish tasks of "Church discipline" William of Orange sold his plate and jewels, abandoned the great estates he had inherited, and throwing in his lot with the common people, went to the defense of the Netherlands in the struggle for liberty of thought.
William had already intervened, at the risk of his life, on more than one occasion of strife and bloodshed. But the harshness with which the laws against heretics were now carried out, the presence of Spanish troops, the filling up of ministerial offices by Spaniards and other foreigners was stirring the whole country, and presently his own son, studying at the University of Louvain, was seized and carried off to Spain. William himself was outlawed and his property confiscated. Finding that he had been for years the real head of the movement for liberty, Alva, as Governor-General, now set a price upon his head. It was the darkest hour of the long struggle. In constant danger of assassination, in constant fear of betrayal, unable to convince his own people that the contest could never be won, William wandered from place to place, a fugitive and an exile.
But he never once lost heart or capitulated to despair. In that hour he seemed to have the strength of ten. He was at once general, statesman, diplomat, financier and saviour of his people. Like David, he went through the forest collecting outlaws and men who had grievances; he organized a score of bands to prey upon the Spanish army; he developed a system of secret service by which he kept spies in Alva's citadel and informed his people of the enemy plans. He raised a little army—saw it defeated—raised another, and saw the crafty Alva refuse to fight until he was forced to allow it to disband. In seven years he organized four such armies, only to be overwhelmed again and again by force of numbers. With peasants armed with pikes and pistols he fought veterans who had guns, cannons and 6,000 horses. Attempt after attempt was a failure, but he would not confess defeat. When all seemed lost, he wrote to his brother, "With God's help, I am determined to go on." And at length, in the face of defeat on land, he turned to the sea and, organizing his little fleet of "Beggars," became a terror to the Spanish galleons.
Fascinating the story of how this term, "the Beggars," came to be the watchword of the Hollanders' revolt. One day when the clouds were at their blackest, the nobles of Brussels rode in a body to the Duchess Margaret to beseech the withdrawal of the Spanish troops. They came plainly dressed and unarmed, and marching four abreast into the council chamber, petitioned her to suspend the Inquisition. While Margaret, deeply touched, shed tears over the piteous appeal, one of her counsellors, named Berlaymont, spoke scornfully of the petitioners as "a troop of beggars." The dropping of that single word was like the dropping of a spark into a powder-magazine. That night a banquet was held, with three hundred nobles present, and "Long live the Beggars!" rose on every side. Born of a jibe, the name "Beggars" caught the imagination of the people; the revolt spread like wild-fire, and henceforth the phrase became a battle-cry, which was to ring out on every bloody field of the long struggle.
But the battle was only begun. Though the spring of 1572 brought hope, the hope was quickly dashed by the news of the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew in France. Charles IX had aligned himself with Philip of Spain and was seeking to exterminate the Protestants. And Bloody Alva now redoubled his cruelties in Holland. With incredible ferocity, he attacked and captured the city of Naarden, butchering every man, woman, and child, and razing every building to the ground. Haarlem was next marked for destruction. The garrison, numbering less than two thousand men, was reinforced by Catherine van Hasselaar and her corps of three hundred women, who handled spade and pick, hot water and blazing hoops of tar during the assaults. Alkmaar came next. Sixteen thousand Spaniards under Don Frederic, Alva's son, began the siege, expecting the town to fall as Haarlem had. But the hated foreigners were met in the breaches by women, boys and girls, who fought with pick, stones, fire and hot water for a full month.
When the brutal Spanish troops threatened to beat the patriots down by sheer force of numbers, the peasants cut their dikes, flooded their own fields and homes and renewed the attack upon the Spaniards from the branches of their orchards and the tops of their houses. Clinging to the dikes by their finger-tips, these people fought their way back into the marshes, where the ground was more solid beneath their feet. No pen can describe and no brush can paint the scenes of this and the other sieges that followed. The history of heroism holds no more impressive spectacle than the sight of these patriots who, in the hour when the siege was suddenly lifted, left their dead in the streets and went staggering toward the church to give thanks to God and swear anew their hatred of tyranny before their lips had even tasted bread.
The struggle went on for a score of years. Driven out of their homes, with no shelter of tent or stable, fleeing constantly from the enemy, hiding under the slough grass and digging holes in the frozen sand, the patriots perished by the thousands. In winter, when the frost was bitter, and Alva looked out upon ice on every side, he ordered thousands of pairs of skates, that his men might the more easily hunt down the fugitives. At the climax of the struggle William the Silent, worn with excessive labours, his health undermined by weeks and months spent in the swamps and in the dikes, was stricken with fever and all but died. When the illness was at its height and he was only a skeleton, too weak to hold his pen in his hand, able only to whisper dispatches to his messengers, came the news that Leyden, already besieged for months, and now plague-stricken, was about to surrender.
The Spaniards were determined to win this defiant city, for it was the very heart of Holland and the most beautiful city in the Netherlands. It lay below the level of the ocean, protected by great dikes, and its canals, shaded on either side by lime trees, poplars, and willows, were crossed by one hundred and forty-five bridges. Its houses were beautiful, its public square spacious, its churches imposing. The Spanish commander had built sixty-six forts around the city and so severe was the blockade that no succour by land was possible. There were no troops in the town, save a small corps of freebooters and five companies of the burgher guards. "The sole reliance of the city was on the stout hearts of its inhabitants within the walls, and on the sleepless energy of William the Silent without." William, assuring them of deliverance, had implored them to hold out at least three months, and they had "relied on his calm and unflinching soul as on a rock of adamant." They were unaware of his illness, for he had said nothing of it in his messages, knowing that it would cast a deeper shadow on the city.
When the word reached him that the besieged could hold out no longer, he decided once more to call in the aid of the sea. Leyden lay fifteen miles from the ocean, but the ocean could be brought to Leyden, and though he had no army with which to overwhelm the besiegers he still had his veteran "Beggars" and a tiny fleet of vessels. He determined to sacrifice the neighbouring countryside, with its houses and villages, its fields and flocks, if only he might save the heroic city and its defenders. On a day in August, the great sluices were opened and the ocean began to pour in over the land. While he still lay desperately ill, waiting for the rising of the waters, his agents were busy assembling a fleet of flat-bottomed boats laden with herring and bread for the starving people.
Meanwhile, within the city all was silence and death. Pestilence stalked everywhere and the inhabitants fell like grass beneath the scythe. The only communication was by carrier pigeons, and only the messages from William kept up the hearts of the defenders. The scenes of tragedy within the walls are not to be described. And by a stroke of evil fate the wind, blowing steadily in the wrong direction, delayed the rising of the waters.
Even in its despair, the city was sublime. At the climax of its sufferings, a committee waited on the burgomaster to advise surrender. He was a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and commanding eyes. He waved his broad-leafed hat for silence, and then, to use Motley's words, gave answer, "What would ye, my friends, why do ye murmur, that we do not break our vows, and surrender the city to the Spaniards—a fate more terrible than the agony which she now endures? I tell you I have made an oath before the city, and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me; not so that of the city entrusted to my care. I know that I shall starve, if not soon relieved, but starvation is preferable to the dishonourable death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal; here is my sword, plunge it into my breast; and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive."
Then came a gale from the northwest, and when the waters were piled up in huge waves, the ocean swept across the ruined dikes. The flotilla of the "Beggars," that had waited outside, unable to advance, a painted fleet upon a painted ocean, now surged forward in a wild rush to save the city. Spaniards by the hundreds sank beneath the deepening and treacherous flood. The fortress of Alva was destroyed. At midnight the enemy deserted their redoubts and fled, and at daybreak the ships of William the Silent came through the canals. Soldiers threw bread to the starving citizens, and two hours later every living person who could walk made his way to the church to sing a hymn of deliverance, during which the multitude broke down and wept like children. The day following, the wind shifted to the east, and blew a tempest. "It was," says the historian, "as if the waters having done their work of redemption, had been rolled back by an omnipotent hand, and when four days had passed the land was bare again, and the reconstruction of the dikes well advanced."
Such was the spirit of William the Silent, and his followers. The eventual outcome was inevitable. At length the Spaniards came to see that victory could be bought at one price and one price alone—extermination. From Spain came overtures to William of Orange. His reply is historic: "Peace only upon three conditions: (1) Freedom of worship, (2) A land dedicated to liberty, (3) All Spaniards in civil and military employment to be withdrawn forever." In April, 1576, an act of Union was agreed and signed at Delft, by which supreme authority was conferred upon him. In September of that year William entered Brussels in triumph, as the acknowledged leader of all the Netherlands, Catholic and Protestant alike. And at length, at Utrecht, a federal republic was established, with a written constitution—that republic which was to exist for two hundred years under the motto "by concord little things become great." William's struggle was over and the battle won.
But, all unconsciously, the architect of the new republic was moving toward his end. Like Moses, if he had led the people out of the wilderness it was not given him to see the promised land. For years his steps had been dogged by hired assassins. There had scarcely been an hour during his long warfare when bribes and gold were not offered for his death. It was a miracle that he had escaped the dagger, the club and the cup of poison. He was now fifty-one years of age. His portraits exhibit him as a man whose lips were locked with iron, whose face was furrowed with care, his look alert and strained, his air that "of a man at bay, having staked his life and life's work." And yet he was one of the most charming of companions, brilliant of address, of so winning a manner that it was said "every time he took off his hat he won a subject from the King of Spain."
One morning, while writing at his desk, a young Spaniard who had forged the seals obtained access to the Prince's writing room. Because he had been searched by the guard the visitor was without weapon. But having delivered his forged letter, he asked the Prince for a Bible and the loan of a few crowns. He received a gift of twelve pieces of silver, and went into the courtyard, where, with the Prince's own money, he purchased a pistol from the guard. Thence he returned to find a hiding place in the dark passageway, and to empty three shots into the Prince's breast.
With the death of William the Silent the Netherlands lost their noblest hero, their most sublime patriot, and one of the greatest leaders of all time. Few are the names worthy to be ranked with that of this Prince of the blood who gave his wealth, his strength and finally his life for the cause of liberty. Ruling with a strong hand, he was not a despot; brave, he was not reckless; giant, he was also gentle; warring against the Inquisition, with its thumbscrews and fagots, he held himself back from bloodthirstiness and revenge. The victim of every kind of attack that hate could devise or malignity invent, he never degraded himself by meeting hate with hate or crime with crime. When the long struggle for liberty which he began was brought to an issue, Spain had buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions for the destroying of freedom, and sunk from the ranks of the first power in Europe to the level of a fourth-rate country—stagnant in ideas, cruel in government, superstitious in religion. But brave little Holland had emerged to serve forever as a rock against tyranny and a refuge from oppression.
Society's ingratitude to its heroes and leaders is proverbial. Earth's bravest souls have been misunderstood in youth, maligned in manhood and neglected in old age. The fathers slay the prophets, the children build the sepulchres, and the grandchildren wear deeply the path the heroes trod. History teems with illustrations of this principle. Socrates is the wisest prophet, the noblest teacher, the truest citizen and patriot that Athens ever had, and Athens rewards him with a cup of poison. In a critical hour Savonarola saves the liberty of his city, and Florence burns him in the market-place. Cervantes writes the only world-wide thing in Spanish literature, and for an abiding place Spain rewards him, not with a mansion, but with a blanket in a dungeon, feeds him, not upon the apples of Paradise, but on the apples of Sodom, and gives him to drink, not the nectar of the gods, but vinegar mingled with gall.
Next to the Bible in influence upon English literature comes the Pilgrim's Progress. England kept John Bunyan in jail at Bedford for twelve years, as his reward. For some reason, nations reserve their wreaths of recognition until the heart is broken, until hope is dead, and the ambitions are in heaven. The history of the other great leaders, therefore, leads us to expect that the greatest, because the most typical, Englishman of all time, shall be unique in his obloquy and shame, as he was signal in his supreme gifts. During his life the very skies rained lies and cruel taunts; in his death the mildewed lips of slander took up new falsehoods. In the grave the very dust of this hero furnished a sure foundation for the temple of liberty, but his grave was despoiled. With pomp and pageantry Charles the Second ordered his bones to be exhumed, and the skeleton hung between thieves at Tyburn to satisfy his hatred. For twelve years Cromwell's skull was elevated upon a pole above Westminster Hall, where it stood exposed to the rains of twelve summers and the snows of twelve winters.
And now that two hundred and fifty years have passed away, these centuries have not availed for extinguishing the fires of hatred and controversy, or for doing justice to the memory of this man, Oliver Cromwell, God's appointed king.
We would naturally expect that time would have availed to clear the name and fame of Cromwell and to secure for him the recognition that his achievements deserve. But it was hard for some royalists to forgive this man who turned his hand against the sacred person of the King. For nearly three centuries the conflict has raged. The royal historians count Cromwell the greatest hypocrite in history, the trickster, the regicide, the political Judas of all time. For a hundred years after his death, no man was found brave enough to mention the name of Oliver Cromwell in Windsor Castle or the House of Lords. England's Abbey has made a place for the statues of that one-talent general, Burgoyne, whose chief business was to surrender his troops to our colonial soldiers, but the Abbey has no niche for a bust of the only English general who ranks with the great soldiers of history—Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Grant, and now Foch—these six and no more.
The British Houses of Parliament are crowded with statues of politicians who gave the people what they wanted, and some statesmen who gave the people what they ought to have. And there, too, are found the busts of kings and queens, Bloody Mary, contemptible John, those little feeblings and parasites named the Georges. But low down and bespattered with mud she has written the name of her greatest monarch, and the most powerful ruler that ever sat upon a throne.
Not until Carlyle came forward did the cloud of slander begin to lift. When the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cromwell was celebrated, Great Britain awakened to the fact that too little recognition had been given to the great reformer whose career was one of the marvels of English history. The measure of a nation's greatness is the kind of man it admires. To-day, it is of little consequence what we think of Cromwell, but it is of the first importance that Cromwell should approve the leaders of our world-capitals. Only in the last generation has the tide turned, and the reaction begun to set in. John Morley, busied with his biography of Gladstone, took time to write a history of the man whom he calls the maker of English history. Professor Gardiner asserts that England has done injustice to Cromwell and that the time has come for her to right a great wrong. All the world has at last begun to recognise the fact that the farmer of Huntingdon was an uncrowned king, ruling of his own natural right.
The world's ingratitude to Cromwell becomes the more striking when we remember what he did for Great Britain, for her people, to right the wrongs of her poor, to found her free institutions and to give her a place among the nations of the earth. Oliver Cromwell found England almost next to nothing in the scale of European politics. France pitied poor little England, and Spain, the one world-wide force of the time, despised her. He found her people a group of quarrelling sects, divided, hostile and full of hate. Her soil was scored with countless insurrections; her commerce was dead; her navy was so miserably weak that pirates sailed up the Thames, dropped anchor in the night in front of Westminster Hall, and flung defiance to the frightened merchants. In a single year, three thousand Englishmen were impressed by these pirates and sold in the slave markets of Algiers, Constantinople and the West Indies. He found the king a tyrant, who one day made the boast that he had brought every man who had opposed his will to the Tower or the scaffold. He found Parliament saying, "We have struggled for twenty years, and every attempt has ended with a halter, and it is better to endure a present ill than flee to others that we know not of."
And in the very darkest hour of England's history, this farmer flung himself into the breach and besought his countrymen to unite in one supreme effort to achieve liberty for the common people. For forty years he had been a plain country gentleman, content with his farm; ten years later he was "the most famous military captain in Europe, the greatest man in England, and the wisest ruler England ever had." He lived to hold the destinies of his country in his hands, to enthrone justice and toleration over a great part of Europe, received overtures for alliances from many kings, and died in the royal palace at Whitehall, and was buried amid the lamentations of many who had been his bitter enemies.
Cromwell's greatness stirs our sense of wonder the more, because he accomplished what others had sought to achieve and failed. Balfour or Lloyd George trained for years to his task, is like one who stands in the midst of an arsenal, protected by walls and battlements, and served by cannon and machine guns. To employ Carlyle's expressive figure, a dwarf who stands with a match before a cannon can beat down a stronghold, but he must be a giant indeed who can capture an armed fortress with naked fists, as did Oliver Cromwell. He lived in an age of great men. The era of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, Jonson and Bacon was closing. It was the era of John Pym, called "The Old Man Eloquent." It was the era of Hampden, the patrician, the orator and hero. It was the time of Sir Harry Vane, the distinguished gentleman who came to Boston to be made ruler of that new city, and whom Wendell Phillips called the noblest patriot that ever walked the streets of the new capital. Coke was on the bench, meditating his decisions, while Lyttleton was perfecting his interpretations of the Constitution. John Milton was making his plea for the liberty of the press. Owen and Sherlock and Howe were in the pulpits.
These were among the bravest spirits that have ever stood upon our earth. All hated tyranny, and all loved liberty. All sought to overthrow the rule of the despot and yet, when all had done their best, England was sold like a slave in the market-place. It was the farmer of Huntingdon who, in that critical hour, came forward and showed himself equal to the emergency. It was this country gentleman, without political experience, this general who became a statesman without the discipline of statecraft, who became the shepherd of his people and overthrew that citadel of iniquity called the Divine Right of Kings; who rid England of her pirates, developed a great commerce, built up the most powerful navy that then sailed the sea—a possession England has never lost—corrected the code, rectified the Constitution, laid the foundation for the present Bill of Rights. This is why John Morley asks us to study carefully the lineaments of this man whose body England, to her undying shame, and in the days of her dishonour, hung in chains at Tyburn.
If we are to understand Cromwell's character and career and his place among the world's leaders, we must recall his age and time and the England of that far-off day, when he wrought his work and dipped his sword in heaven. What of the religious condition of England in the era of intolerance, when the prophet of God was anointed with the ointment of war, black and sulphurous? It is the year 1630, and Cromwell is still in his early manhood. One bright morning, with St. Paul's to his back, Cromwell entered Ludgate Circus. In the midst of the circus stood a scaffold and around it was a great throng, crowding and pressing toward the place of torture. At the foot of the scaffold was a venerable scholar, his white hair flowing upon his shoulders, a man of stainless character and spotless life, renowned for his devotion, eloquence and patriotism. When the executioner led the aged pastor up the steps, the soldiers tore off his garments. He was whipped until blood ran in streams down his back, both nostrils were slit and his ears cropped off, hot irons were brought and two letters, "S-S"—sower of sedition—were burned into his forehead.
What crime had this pastor committed? Perhaps he had lifted a firebrand upon the King's palace; perhaps he had organized some foul gunpowder plot to overthrow the throne itself. Perhaps he had been guilty of treason, or some foul and nameless sin against the State. Not so. The reading of the decision of the judge and the decree of the punishment made clear the truth. It seemed that a fortnight before, the aged pastor had been commanded to give up his extempore prayers and the singing of the Psalms, and had been commanded to read the written prayers and sing the hymns prescribed by the state Church. But the gentle scholar had disregarded the command, and on the following Sunday walked in the ways familiar and dear to him by reason of long association. He had dared to sing the same old Psalms and lift his heart to God in extempore prayer, after the manner of his fathers. And when the executioner announced that on the following Saturday at high noon the old scholar would be brought a second time into Ludgate Circus, and there scourged before the people, the cloud upon Oliver Cromwell's brow was black as the thunder-storm that stands upon the western sky, black and vociferous with thunder. Kings, the head of the Church of Jesus Christ!
Two hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln, standing in the market-place of New Orleans, was to see a coloured child torn from its mother's arms, held by the auctioneer upon the block and sold to the highest bidder. With a lump in his throat, Abraham Lincoln turned to his brother and said: "If the time ever comes when I can strike, I will hit slavery as hard a blow as I can." And when Cromwell turned away from that scene in Ludgate Circus he went home to dream about the era of toleration and liberty and charity, and registered a vow to strike, when the time came, the hardest blow he could against the citadel of intolerance and bigotry on the part of the Church.
But political England was as dark and troublesome as the religious world of that day. One of the noblest men of the time was Sir John Eliot. He was the child of wealth and opportunity. The university had lent him culture, travel had lent breadth, and leisure had given him the opportunity to grow wise and ripe. His nature was singularly lofty and devout, his temper ardent and chivalric. His one ambition was to serve his mother country. A vice-admiral, he was given power to defend the commerce of the country and overthrow the pirates. After many attempts, by a clever but dangerous maneuver he entrapped the king of the pirates, Nutt, who had taken one hundred and twenty English ships and sold the sailors in the slave market of Algiers and Tripoli. But King Charles freed the pirate, and punished the vice-admiral by four months' imprisonment, for he had taken bribes against his own sailors.
When Sir John Eliot had been released, he charged the King with complicity in a crime. For reply the King levied an illegal fine. Sir John Eliot was rich, and he might have bought immunity. In his home dwelt a beautiful wife and little children, and with flight he might have escaped his prison. His wealth would have enabled him to live abroad in ease, but he preferred to stay at home and die in London Tower for principle. And no martyr, going to his stake, no hero, falling at the head of a battle line, ever did a nobler thing than Sir John Eliot, when he refused to pay his fine and preferred death to enjoying the pleasures of expediency for a season. For three years the hero bore his imprisonment and endured the tortures of confinement. The rigours of the Tower could not break his dauntless spirit. One day he found blood upon his handkerchief. Fearing that death was near, he sent a request to the royal palace. "A little more air, your majesty, that I may gain strength to die in!" But John Eliot had thwarted the King's policy, and Charles carried his vindictiveness even to death. "Not humble enough," was the King's reply. Blows cannot break the will, waters cannot drown the will, flames cannot consume the will, and in the hour of Eliot's death, Charles knew that his opponent had conquered. One day John Eliot's son petitioned the King that he might carry his father's remains to Cornwall to lie with those of his ancestors. Charles wrote on the petition: "Let Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the parish where he died, and his ashes lie unmarked in the Chapel of the Tower."
But the social England of the era of Cromwell is a darker picture still. If our age is the era of the rise and reign of the common people, that was an age when the middle-class was as yet almost unknown. Feudalism still survived. There were the plebeians on the one hand, and the patrician class on the other. Theoretically the King owned the land, and the lords and gentlemen were agents under him. Kenilworth Castle and its lord stand for the social England of that day. My lord dwelt in a castle—the people dwelt in mud huts. He wore purple and fine linen—his people wore coats of sheepskin, slept on beds of straw, ate black bread, knew sorrow by day and misery by night. Did a farmer sow a field and reap the harvest? Every third shock belonged to the lord of the castle. Did the husbandman drive his flocks afield? In the autumn, every third sheep and bullock belonged to my lord. Was the grain ripe in the field? If the peasant owed twenty days' labour without return at the time of sowing to my lord, he had to give ten days more to the lord of the castle in the time of the harvest. Again without recompense. And so it generally came about that for want of proper time to plough and plant and for opportunity of reaping in the hour when his grain was ripe, the serf fronted the winter with an empty granary, and the cry of his children was exceeding bitter.
There were few bridges across the streams, there was no glass in the farmer's window, not one in a thousand owned a book, sanitation was almost unknown, every other babe died in infancy; if the upper classes came out of the Black Death almost unscathed, about a third of the peasant class was swept off by that scourge, which the physicians now know was caused by insufficient food and decayed grain. It was an era of ignorance and brutality among the poor, an era of snobs and of criminals. Cromwell found a hundred laws upon the English statute books that involve hanging for petty infringements against the rights of the King. He found woman a chattel and one day saw a man sell his wife in the market-place and beheld the purchaser lead the girl off in a halter. When the traveller rode up to London, he passed between a line of gibbets, where corpses hung rotting in chains. Highwaymen rode even into London, at nightfall, and tied their horses in Hyde Park, robbed people in the streets, broke into stores and rode away unmolested. One advertisement read thus: "For sale, a negro boy, aged eleven years. Inquire at the Coffee House, Threadneedle Street, behind the Royal Exchange."
Drunkenness and gambling were all but universal. One Secretary of State was notorious as the greatest drunkard and the most unlucky gambler of his era. A Prime Minister was allowed to appear at the opera house with his mistress, and was esteemed the finest public man of his century. We are face to face with corruption in politics, incompetence in council and paganism in religion. To-day a member of the Cabinet who would use his private information for purposes of gambling in Wall Street would be instantly ruined. But in that era, the King and his courtiers filled their coffers by such methods without any criticism.
In such an era, Cromwell saw that there was no hope for England until there was a middle class. He determined to destroy the castles that offered shelter to the princes who had spoiled and robbed and outraged the poor, who had no defense to which they could flee when they had outraged the law. It has often been said that he was an iconoclast; in razing the castles of England to the ground and overthrowing the strongholds he was the greatest criminal of his age; but if he loved the castles and architecture less, it was because he loved the poor more. He levelled stones down that he might have a foundation upon which the poor could climb up, and thereby he destroyed the strongholds of feudalism and laid the foundations of the Bill of Rights of 1832, and was the forerunner of our own Washington and Lincoln.
Who is this King Charles who stands for the old order, and who is the great representative of the doctrine of the divine right of kings? He was a grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, who, in fleeing from Scotland, seized the hand of Lord Lindsay, her foe, and holding it aloft in her grasp swore by it, "I will have your head for this, so I assure you." His father was James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland, who had some gifts and also virtues, but who after all was simply an animated stomach, carried far by a handful of intellectual faculties. That Charles the First had qualities denied to his father all must confess. He was gifted with a certain taste for pictures, he had some imagination, and loved good literature. During his imprisonment he read Tasso, Spenser's Faerie Queen, and, above all, Shakespeare. He was methodical and decorous, but his favourite essay was Bacon's "Essay on Simulation and Dissimulation." As a diplomat he believed that Machiavelli's Prince was the ideal to be followed, in that truth is so precious a quantity that it ought not to be wasted on the common people. He was not renowned for chivalry or a sense of gratitude. Witness his foul desertion of Strafford in the hour when Strafford exclaimed: "Put not your trust in princes!"
Again and again, through his selfishness, he spoiled his people. To obtain money he sold to one of his favourites the exclusive right to use sedan chairs in London, and put chains across the streets and made it a criminal offense for a gentleman to drive his coach into the limits of the city. He taxed the shoes the people wore, the salt they ate, the beds on which they slept, and the very windows through which the light came. He hired spies to make out a list of merchants who had an income of more than £2,000 a year and by indirect blackmail obtained money therefrom. When the Black Death broke out, and the streets of London were piled with corpses, and the committee of relief asked for public subscriptions, Charles the First fled to Hampton Court and made no subscription, large or small, to the relief fund.
And how did he amuse himself during those days when every house in London was left desolate? In his far-off palace, surrounded by guards, beyond whom no messenger could pass, Charles the First sat, surrounded by his court. He sent to Amsterdam for jewellers and paid £10,400 for a necklace. He paid £8,000 for a gold collar for himself, and £10,000 for a diamond ring for the Queen. On the ground that Parliament had not imposed taxes sufficient for his expenses, he made a tax proclamation for himself. Then Parliament, led by Pym and Hampden and Eliot, brought in a bill of remonstrance. They assumed that the King ruled under preëxisting laws. They declared that if Charles refused to call a Parliament and arrogated its power to himself, twelve peers might call a Parliament, and if this failed, the citizens might come together through a committee and elect their representatives.
But the King was consumed with egotism and vanity. He sent orders to Parliament to deliver to him the five leaders who stood for the liberties of the people, and with a mob of soldiers he entered the House of Commons to seize Hampden and Pym. But the House refused to give up its members, and helped them to escape through one of the windows, and the next day it brought them back in a triumphal procession. Returning to his palace, the King found the streets crowded with people, silent, sullen, dark with anger. He heard threats and growls from every side. One prophet of righteousness called out, "To your tents, O Israel!" Suddenly Charles the First realized that his people, driven to bay, had at last bestirred themselves, and, fearing he might be driven into a corner, his cheek went white as marble. That night, conscious of his danger, he fled to Hampton Court, while the whole city applauded the five leaders who had escaped the snare. He had furnished the dynamite to blow up his throne. The people, represented by Parliament, stood over against the peers, represented by the King, as enemies. It was "either your neck, or my neck," and when a few weeks passed, there began the era of civil war, with blazing towns and castles and strongholds. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
But who is the man who shall do for England what Savonarola did for Florence, and Luther for Germany, and William Tell for Switzerland, and Washington and Lincoln for our own country? Oliver Cromwell was of Celtic stock and noble family. It is a singular coincidence that he was a ninth cousin of that Charles whose death warrant he was to sign; that seventeen of his relatives were in Parliament to sign the Great Remonstrance, and that ten of his blood-relatives joined with him in signing the death warrant of the King. Cromwell was sixteen years of age, and enrolled himself as a student at Cambridge on the very day that great Shakespeare died in Stratford. The greatest thing England ever did in literature ended on the day when perhaps the greatest thing she did in action began. John Milton said that Cromwell nursed his great soul in silence and solitude. He was but a child when the news of the Gunpowder Plot filled his father's house with excitement. He was but a child when a dispatch was laid in his father's hands announcing the death of Henry of Navarre, the founder of Protestantism in France. From boyhood he loved the story of the brave and gallant Sir Walter Raleigh, and the announcement that he was to be executed to please the King of Spain filled him with tumultuous indignation.
In appearance he was above medium stature, built like Daniel Webster and Brougham and Beecher, with great, beautiful head, bronzed face, heavy, projecting eyebrows, large forehead, two eyes burning like flames of fire beneath the overhanging cliffs. He was of sandy complexion, like Alexander and Napoleon. But if he were thick set, he was of finely compacted fiber, and this man, who was to deal a crushing blow at Marston Moor, and sign the King's death warrant and "grasp the scepter of a throne" and raze to the ground the citadels of iniquity, the old strong castles of feudalism, was also strong enough to lift little England with her six millions to a level with the thirty millions of mighty Spain. Not until he was forty years of age did this farmer enter Parliament. One day, in the House of Commons, Sir Philip Warwick, while listening to a sharp voice, said to John Hampden, whose seat was near him: "Mr. Hampden, who is that sloven who spoke just now, for I see he is on our side, by his speaking so warmly?" "That sloven," replied Hampden, "whom you see before you—that sloven, I say—if we ever come to a breach with the King—God forbid—that sloven, I say, would, in that case, be the greatest man in England." But Hampden knew him also as gentle and lovable, tender toward his friends, loved by his rustic neighbours, though this vehement man, with sword stuck close to his side, had stern and uncompromising work, and the most difficult task ever set before an Englishman. "A larger soul, I think," writes Carlyle, "had seldom dwelt in a house of clay than was his."
Much of the criticism of Cromwell that has been so bitter, so rabid and so persistent would at once disappear if it were understood that the central element in Cromwell's life was religion. He was first of all a Puritan, essentially a religious reformer and incidentally a politician. This is the clue to the maze, this is the key to the problem, and the solution to this historical enigma. He was by nature a poet and a prophet, haunted by sublime vision, dreaming of heaven and hell, as did Dante and Bunyan. "Verily," said he, "I think the Lord is with me. I undertake strange things, yet do I go through them to great profit and gladness and furtherance of the Lord's great work. I do feel myself lifted on by a strange force. I cannot tell why. By night and by day I am urged forward in the great work."
Had he lived in the days of Jeremiah, he would have dreamed dreams and seen visions and foretold retribution upon the wrongdoers. Had he lived in the days of Socrates, he would have made much of the voice of God. Had he lived in the time of Bernard the Monk, or Francis of Assisi, he would have dwelt apart from men and fed his soul in solitude. Like John Bunyan, he was a melancholy, brooding, lonely figure, who sometimes fought with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, and sometimes was lifted to the heights of the Delectable Mountains. He was a man of singular sincerity, who confessed like Paul: "Oft have I been in hell, and sometimes have I been caught up into the seventh heaven and heard things not lawful to utter." Blackness of darkness on one day, blinding radiance of light on another—both experiences were his. "I think I am the poorest wretch that lives, but I love God, or rather I am beloved of God." There speaks the religious leader, and not the ambitious politician.
"In the whole history of Europe," writes Frederic Harrison, "Oliver Cromwell is the one ruler into whose presence no vicious man could ever come, into whose service no vicious man might ever enter." What an army was that which he collected! When one of his officers was guilty of profanity and vulgarity in his presence, he was immediately dismissed. Cromwell sought out men like John Milton to be associated with him in diplomatic work. "If I were to choose," he writes, "any servant—the meanest officers of the army of the Commonwealth—I would choose a godly man that hath principle, especially where a trust is to be committed, because I know where to find a man that hath principle." He believed, also, and practiced prayer, for more things are wrought by prayer than are dreamed of in man's philosophy. With Tennyson, he held that "with prayer men are bound as with chains of gold about the feet of God." One day, overpressed with work, he went into the country to spend the night with an old friend. After the Lord Protector had retired, the host heard words, as of one speaking. Standing by the door of Cromwell's room, in which he feared that some enemy might have found entrance, he heard Cromwell pouring out his heart to God, telling Him that this was not a work that he had taken up for himself; that it was God's work; that the people were God's children, and the world God's world. Little wonder that the modern politician cannot understand Oliver Cromwell, and finds his life full of contradictory elements.
Not all present-day politicians could stand the prayer test. Cromwell was a God-intoxicated man. He believed that the Sermon on the Mount and the law of Sinai were the basis of all political creeds. "We think," writes the historian, "that religion is a part of life; the Puritan thought it was the whole of life." That which was morally right could not be politically wrong, that which was politically right could not be morally wrong. The principles of justice and honesty that made the individual life worthy were one with the principles that made national life worthy. Between man and man you expected truth. Was it a matter of indifference for the King to lie to his ministers, his people, and his Parliament? Is a king to be excused who broke all pledges, and laid dishonest taxes on his people? These questions were incidentally political questions, but primarily moral problems. And they thrust Cromwell, the religious recluse, into the whirl and turmoil of politics, and made him a soldier and a statesman.
What a study in contrasts is the story of this farmer of Huntingdon! One day Parliament makes remonstrance; it sends the King word that he must call Parliament at regular intervals; that taxes must be voted by Parliament; that in the event of the King's refusing to call a Parliament for the correction of injustice, the peers may issue the call; that if the peers refuse, the judges may issue it, and if the judges play false, the people may come together for election. Hampden, Pym and Cromwell indict the King for wrong and tyranny. Charles gives orders that the five leaders of Parliament shall be delivered to the Keeper of the Tower. The King flees to Hampton Court, and sends the gold plate and the crown jewels to Paris, hires foreign troops, lands them upon English shores and England is plunged into civil war.
For the time being, Parliament is stunned, and the leaders seem paralyzed. But one man is equal to the emergency. This farmer, in rural England, assembles the gentlemen who live in his neighbourhood. They crowd under the trees in his orchard, he reads a psalm, kneels down and prays with them, then tells them that on the morrow a representative of the King is to be in Cambridge to call for troops. Cromwell announces that to-morrow he proposes to hang the King's representative at the crossroads, and to seize the gold plate of the university to hire troops. "I want no tapsters, or gamesters or cowards, but only gentlemen who fear God and keep His commandments." A few weeks later, Prince Rupert and Charles meet Lord Essex and the Parliamentary forces at Marston Moor, and at first are overwhelmingly successful. When the Puritans are defeated, Lord Essex orders Cromwell to bring up his regiment, and the stroke of Cromwell's Ironsides is the stroke of an earthquake. The farmer turns defeat into victory.
Then comes the overthrow of Charles at Naseby, and "God's crowning mercy" at Worcester. When Scotland tries to force the Presbytery upon England, Cromwell leads his troops north to Edinburgh. When the Irish rise up at Drogheda, he marches into Ireland. When Charles breaks all his pledges, and his private correspondence is discovered, exhibiting him in the light of traitor to the liberties of England, Oliver Cromwell becomes executioner, for he has to decide between the head of the King, or the neck of the Parliament. Offered the throne, with the right of descent passing over to his son, he refuses the crown, for he wishes to be the protector, to guard the precious seeds of liberty until such time as a worthy successor for the throne shall appear. If for a time he rules as military dictator, it grows out of the necessities of the times, for Parliament is weak, divided into hostile camps, refusing to correct the laws, investigate the abuses of judges, revise the principles of taxation, do anything for the navy, lighten the burdens of the common people. Divided into little cliques, Parliament wastes weeks and months, and at last Oliver Cromwell enters the House of Commons and dissolves Parliament, charging them with having thrown away a great opportunity. "May God choose between you and me!" exclaims the one man who understands the emergency. He is the true king who can do the thing that needs to be done!
What were the qualities that made Cromwell the great hero that he was? Lord Morley tells us that Cromwell was first of all a practical man, tactful, straightforward, and going straight to his object. With the instincts of the true general, for soldiers he selected sturdy farmers, country gentlemen, men of iron nerve, who did not drink nor gamble, but with whom war meant business. He gave to each of his soldiers a pocket-Bible, and when he hurled his regiments against the jaunty and dapper youths who made up the army of Prince Rupert, his troops swept through the royalist army "as a cannon ball goes through a heap of egg-shells." "Pray, but keep your powder dry," was his motto. He had also the genius of hard work, and the love of detail. He could toil terribly. Nothing escaped his vigilance.
One day he was asked whether he knew that Charles II, then living in Paris, had a representative in England? "Certainly," he replied. "He has one representative who sleeps in such a house, and another who sleeps near the palace. The correspondence of the first is in a trunk under his bed. The letters of the second are in a certain inn."
When he came at length to live in a palace, Oliver Cromwell was simple in his tastes, pure in his morals, tireless in his pursuit of duty. It is said that he was a Philistine, and the enemy of culture. But he loved music and encouraged the opera. He loved literature, and his warmest friend was John Milton, the greatest poet and author of the age. If he levelled the castles of England to the ground, that feudalism might have no stronghold to which it could flee, it cannot be said that he hated art, for Cromwell bought the cartoons of Raphael for England, and preserved the art treasures of Charles the First. It stirs our sense of wonder that men should think that Cromwell represents opposition to culture, and that Charles the Second stands for the refinements of life. Charles the Second, the royalist, was a king who endeavoured to sell the cartoons of Raphael that Cromwell had preserved, to the King of France, to obtain money for his court. He encouraged bull-baiting and cock-fighting and pleasures steeped in animalism and vulgarity. No one claims that Cromwell himself was a piece of granite, unhewn and unpolished. The fact is, neither the Puritan nor the royalist stood for full culture and refinement. But of the two men, a thousand times preferable is the Cromwell who maintained friendship with John Milton, who represented genius united to the noblest character.
But great as was Cromwell, the ruler, he was greater still as father, citizen and Christian. Alone, amid conspiracies and plots, the weary Titan staggered on. At last the burden broke his heart. He held the realm in order by his will, gave law to Europe, and defended the weak, crushed the bigot, so that far away in Rome the Pope trembled at his name, and the sons of the martyrs blessed him. Suddenly he realized that his great work was done. On his death-bed he lay with one hand upon the breast of Christ, and the other stretched out toward Washington and Lincoln. For hours he lay, speaking great and noble words. The storm that passed over London that day and uprooted the trees in Hyde Park was the fitting dirge for the passing of this noble soul. "God is good," he murmured. Urged to take a potion and find sleep, he answered: "It is not my design to drink and sleep, but my wish is to make what haste I can to be gone." An hour later he lay calm and speechless. His work was done. He had shattered that citadel of iniquity, the Divine Right of Kings, and secured for the people of England the rights of conscience and religion. When the King returned, he returned to reign in accordance with the people's will. When the Church was restored, it was restored upon the basis of the Act of Toleration, and the concession that no church can coerce the conscience of the people. Cromwell had compacted Scotland and England. He had outlined the movement of the reform bill of 1832. He had brought in an epoch when, for the first and only time in Europe, morality and religion were qualifications insisted upon in a court. Much of that which is best in the life and thought of America and England, the republic and the great monarchy alike owe to that stern workman of God, Oliver Cromwell.