When the stout old Royalist, Sir Jacob Astley, was overcome and surrendered, he exclaimed, as he gave up his sword: “Now you have done your work and may go play, unless you fall out among yourselves!” It very soon became evident that the victors would fall out among themselves. Any revolutionary movement must be carried through by parties whose aims are so different, or whose feelings and interests are so divergent, that there is great difficulty in the victors coming to a working agreement to conserve the fruits of their victory. Not only the leaders, but more especially their followers—that is, the mass of the people—must possess great moderation and good sense for this to be possible. Otherwise, after much warfare of factions, some strong man, a Cromwell or a Napoleon, is forced or forces himself to the front and saves the factions from destroying one another by laying his iron hand on all.

In the middle of the seventeenth century the English people, accustomed for many generations to look to the monarch as their real ruler, began to tumble into chaos when they wrenched themselves free from the ingrained hereditary habit which had made loyalty to the King and orderly government convertible terms. They were not yet fit to govern themselves unaided; such fitness is not a God-given, natural right, but comes to a race only through the slow growth of centuries, and then only to those races which possess an immense reserve fund of strength, common-sense, and morality. The English of the middle of the seventeenth century were very much farther advanced along the road than were the French at the end of the eighteenth. They had no such dreadful wrongs to avenge as had the French people, and they indulged in no such bloodthirsty antics among themselves. But they had by no means attained to that power of compromise which they showed forty years later in the Revolution of 1688, or which was displayed by their blood-kin and political heirs, the American victors in the struggles of 1776 and 1861. In the English Revolution that placed William on the throne, in the American Revolution, and in the American Civil War, the victors passed through periods of great danger when it seemed possible that the fruits of their victory might be thrown away. They did not suffer the fate of the victors of 1648, chiefly because of the growth of the spirit of tolerance, of the capacity for compromise, which enabled them in part to ignore their own differences, and in part to abide by a peaceful settlement of them.

In England, by 1688, the Cromwellian movement had itself educated even those who most sincerely believed that they abhorred it; and there was a far less servile spirit toward James II. than toward Charles I. There was less fanatical intolerance of one another among the elements that had combined to put William on the throne; and William, otherwise by no means as great a man as Cromwell, was yet far more willing to accept working compromises, and more content to let Parliament go its own way, even when that way was not the wisest. After the American Revolution Washington’s greatness of character, sound common-sense, and entirely disinterested patriotism, made him a bulwark both against anarchy and against despotism coming in the name of a safeguard against anarchy; and the people were fit for self-government, adding to their fierce jealousy of tyranny a reluctant and by no means whole-hearted, but genuine, admission that it could be averted only by coming to an agreement among themselves. Washington would not let his officers try to make him Dictator, nor allow the Continental Army to march against the weak Congress which distrusted it, was ungrateful to it, and refused to provide for it. Unlike Cromwell, he saw that the safety of the people lay in working out their own salvation, even though they showed much wrong-headedness and blindness, not merely to morality, but to their own interests; and, in the long run, the people justified this trust.

But Cromwell never wanted the people to decide for themselves, unless they decided in the way that he thought right; and, on the other hand, the difficulty with the people was even greater; for they had neither the desire for freedom, the moderation in using freedom, nor the toleration of differences of opinion, which the American colonists had developed by the end of the following century. At the close of, and after, the American Civil War the differences of opinion and belief among the victors were such as would inevitably have produced further fighting in Cromwell’s time. The Northern Democrats were anxious to combine politically with the defeated Southerners, and to reinstate, as nearly as might be, the old ante-bellum conditions—that is, to prepare for another Civil War. The Republican Party itself showed signs of a deep division between the Extremists and Moderates, while there were all sorts of violent little factions, just as there were Anabaptists and Fifth Monarchy men in Cromwell’s time. The Garrison or disunion Abolitionists, for instance, had formed just such a faction, and had seen their cause triumph, not through, but in spite of, their own efforts. If the Abolitionists of the Wendell Phillips type, instead of seeking to compass Lincoln’s defeat for the Presidency in 1864 by peaceful means, had threatened armed agitation; if, instead of trying to elect McClellan or Seymour at the polls, the Northern Democrats had taken the field with the former at their head; if the Republicans had first crushed them by force of arms, and then had fought among themselves until the extreme radical element got the upper hand, installed Grant as perpetual President and dissolved Congress when it became evident that the Democrats and moderate Republicans combined would outnumber the radicals—we should have had a very fair analogy to what happened in the Cromwellian era.

In such a case, moreover, be it remembered that the fault would have lain less with the perpetual President than with the people whose defects called him into being. Cromwell did not stand on the lofty plane of Washington; but, morally, he was infinitely and beyond all comparison above the class of utterly selfish and unscrupulous usurpers, of whom Napoleon is the greatest representative. At the close of the first Civil War there is no reason to suppose that he had any ambition inconsistent with the highest good of his country, or any thought of making himself paramount. To all outward seeming, his efforts were conscientiously directed to securing the fruits of the victory for liberty, while at the same time securing stability in the government. Unfortunately, in coming to an agreement among men, no moderation or wisdom on the part of any one man will suffice. Something of these qualities must be possessed by all parties to the agreement. The incurable treachery of King Charles rendered it hopeless to work with him; and the utter inability of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and indeed of all parties and all creeds to act on the live-and-let-live principle, rendered a really free government almost unworkable at the moment. How little Cromwell yet thought of striving for a kingly position is shown by his conduct in his social relations, notably by the marriages of his children, who at this time sought their mates in families of his own rank. The only one of these marriages with which we need concern ourselves is that of his daughter, Bridget, to Ireton, a good soldier and able politician, who was devoted to Cromwell, and was on very close and intimate terms with him.

The religious element entered into everything Cromwell did, mixing curiously with his hard common-sense and practical appreciation of worldly benefits. It appears in all his letters and speeches. Such a letter as he wrote to the Speaker of the House after the storming of Bristol, is in thought and manner more akin to the writings of some old Hebrew prophet than to those of any conqueror before or after Cromwell’s time. It is saturated, not merely with biblical phraseology, but with biblical feeling, all the glory being ascribed to God, and the army claiming as their sole honor that God had vouchsafed to use them in his service, and that by faith and prayer they had obtained the favor of the Most High. It is impossible for a fair-minded and earnest man to read Cromwell’s letters and reports after action, and the prayers he made and the psalms he chose to read and to give out before action, and to doubt the intensity of the man’s religious fervor. In our day such utterances would be hypocritical. Almost the only modern generals in whom they would have been the sincere expression of inward belief were Stonewall Jackson and Gordon; and the times had changed so utterly that even they could not possibly give utterance to them as Cromwell did. But in Cromwell’s time the most earnest Puritans thought as he did, and expressed their thoughts as he did. That such expression should lend itself very readily to hypocrisy was inevitable; indeed, it was perhaps inevitable that the habitual use of such expression should breed somewhat of hypocrisy in almost any user. The incessant employment by Cromwell and his comrades of the word “saints,” to distinguish themselves and those who thought like them, is particularly objectionable in its offensive self-consciousness.

In this letter about the taking of Bristol Cromwell touches upon the religious differences which were the great causes of division among the victors. He writes:

“Presbyterians, Independents, all have here the same spirit of faith and prayer; the same presence and answer; they agree here; have no names of difference; pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere.... And for brethren in things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason.”

Cromwell strove earnestly to bring about harmony between the Independents of the New Model army and the Presbyterians, who were dominant in Parliament. Even in that day there were in private life men of high character and great intellect who believed in true religious liberty, men who stood far ahead of Cromwell; but Cromwell was equally far ahead of all the men who then had any real control in public life; so far ahead, indeed, that he could not get any considerable body of public opinion abreast of him.

The Ironsides, the cavalry of Cromwell, stood as the extreme representatives of the spirit which actuated the army. The great bulk of them were men of intense political and religious convictions. However, many even of the cavalry, and a large majority of the rank and file of the infantry, were of the ordinary military type, men of no particular convictions, a considerable number, indeed, having been enlisted from among the captured armies and garrisons of the King himself. Under the ties of discipline and comradeship, such men were sure to follow with entire fidelity the masterful spirits among the officers and in their own ranks; and all these masterful spirits were devoted to Cromwell as the great leader who had given them victory. They were even more devoted to their conceptions of religious and political liberty, and were resolutely bent on striking down the King who embodied, in their minds, the principles of religious and political oppression. These men had broken entirely with the past, and were no longer overawed by the name of hereditary power. “What,” they asked, “were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror’s Colonels, or the Barons but his Majors, or the Knights but his Captains?”

They believed they were indeed the Lord’s chosen people, and that upon them, as conquerors, there devolved the duty of safeguarding the interests of religion and of the Commonwealth. They wished to strike down the Bishops as well as the King; and though most of them were Congregationalists or Baptists, they had already begun to develop plenty of men whose Christianity was of the most heterodox form, or who boldly announced that they had a right to profess any creed, Christian or otherwise, if they so desired. Together with their iron discipline as an army went wide liberty of thought and discussion on all outside matters—religious and political alike—when they were not in the ranks. There were preachers who served with sombre fidelity as privates, but who were fanatical inciters of Republican enthusiasm in every leisure hour, haranguing and exhorting their fellow-soldiers about every political or religious wrong.

Trouble was brewing between this army and Parliament. The Episcopalians—the Royalists—had left Parliament when the war broke out. The Presbyterians were in complete command. London, which held the purse-strings of the Parliamentary cause, was strongly Presbyterian. Now, the Presbyterians, as the war went on, had grown more and more afraid of their allies, and, indeed, of too decisive a victory over the King. They were just as much bent upon an intolerant uniformity in Church matters as was Laud, though they wished to substitute a different form of Church government, which should rest upon a broader and more popular basis. They wished to make Parliament supreme, but they had no idea of dispensing with the King, and they were exceedingly distrustful of a popular movement which would extend liberty beyond and beneath the classes from which they drew their strength. On the contrary, the army, which represented the Independent movement, was strongly democratic in its tendencies, and was filled with sullen wrath against the King.

Cromwell himself was no theorist; in fact, he was altogether too little of one. He wished to do away with concrete acts of oppression and injustice; he sought to make life easier for any who suffered tangible wrong. Though earnestly bent upon doing justice as he saw it, and desirous to secure the essentials of liberty for the people as a whole, he failed to see that questions of form—that is, of law—in securing liberty might be themselves essential instead of, as they seemed to him, non-essential. He was reluctant to enter into general schemes of betterment, especially if they seemed in any way visionary. But when his feelings were greatly roused over specific cases of wrong-doing or oppression, he sometimes became so wrought up as to advocate reform in language so sweeping that he seemed to commit himself, not only to absolute religious toleration, but to complete political equality. Thus when he broke with Lord Manchester he told him that he hoped “to live to see never a nobleman in England.” In open Parliament he denounced “monarchical government.” He advocated entire religious freedom. In dealing with the army he declared his readiness to maintain the doctrine that “the foundation and the supremacy is in the people—radically in them—and to be set down by them in their representations”—that is, by their representatives in Parliament.

Of course, to make his conduct square with these various utterances, Cromwell would have had to strive for precisely such a government as Washington was able to inaugurate a century and a half later; a government in which there should be complete religious toleration, in which all differences of rank and title should be abolished, and in which the basis of representation in Parliament would have to approach more or less closely to manhood suffrage. Doubtless, there were times when Cromwell ardently wished for such a Government; but it was wholly out of the question to realize it in the middle of the seventeenth century, even in England. Generations had to pass before men could grasp the true principles of religious toleration and political equality in all their bearings; and, like every other man who actually works out great reforms, who actually does signal service in the world, Cromwell had to face facts as they were, and not as bodies of extremists—no matter how good—thought they ought to be.

The best and most high-minded of the Puritan party were now growing to fear lest the Presbyterians should try to perpetuate the old religious oppression under a new name. Milton—with but one exception the greatest poet of the English tongue, a man whose political and social ideas were at least two centuries in advance of his time, but who had the good sense to accept, no matter with what heart-burning, the best possible when he could not get the best—Milton expressed the convictions of his whole party when he said that if “Presbyter was but Priest writ large” the people were no better off than before.

The army began to show openly its spirit of fierce unrest. A very considerable portion avowed extreme republican theories. The Levellers, as they were called, were looked upon in that day, even by advocates of freedom like Cromwell, with great distrust, although the principles they advocated—such as manhood suffrage—are now the commonplaces of American politics. Of course, then they were not commonplaces; they were revolutionary ideas, for the reception of which the mind of the English people was not ready, and therefore it was the duty of men who sought practical reform to refuse to put these schemes into operation.

There were much more extreme and dangerous groups than the mere Republicans; groups of men in whom the desire for religious, political, and moral reform had overstepped the broad, but not always clearly marked, border line which divides sane and healthy fervor from fanaticism. In such troublous times small sects and parties of extremists swarm. Already the foundations were laid for the Fifth Monarchy men, the men who believed that the times were ripe for the installation of the last great world monarchy, the monarchy of which the Saviour himself was to be Ruler; the men who shouted for King Jesus, and were ferociously opposed to everybody who would not advocate the immediate introduction into all mundane affairs of Heaven’s law, as the Fifth Monarchy men chose to interpret it. Of course, men of this type are always to be found in every free government, and aside from their peculiar notions, they may have excellent traits. In peaceful times and places like the United States at the present day, they merely join little extreme parties, and run small, separate tickets on election-day, thereby giving aid, comfort, and amusement to the totally unregenerate. In times of great political convulsion, when the appeal to arms has been made, these harmless bodies may draft into their ranks—as the Fifth Monarchy men did—fierce and dangerous spirits, ever ready to smite down with any weapons the possible good, because it is not the impossible best. When this occurs they need to be narrowly watched.

There are many good people who find it difficult to keep in mind the obvious fact that, while extremists are sometimes men who are in advance of their age, more often they are men who are not in advance at all, but simply to one side or the other of a great movement, or even lagging behind it, or trying to pilot it in the wrong direction.

The seething unrest of the army found expression in the creation of a regular political organization to oppose the organized Parliament. The officers formed a Council, and the rank and file chose delegates, two for each company or troop, known as “agitators.” In short, the army became an organized political body whose scarcely acknowledged function was to control or supersede the Parliament; just as, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Committees of Correspondence were formed, in the various colonies, out of which there sprang the Continental Congress, which superseded the loyalist colonial legislatures.

Cromwell, like every other great leader who rises in a period of storm and convulsion, could partly direct the forces around him, and in part had to be directed by them. He did not sympathize with the extreme position of the army about the King—the “man of blood,” as the Puritan zealots called him, whose life they already demanded; nor yet with their radical political aspirations. But it was the army alone through which he could act, which gave him his strength; and in return he was the one man who could in any way check or control it, for its loyalty to, and admiration of, the great leader at whose hands it had drained the cup of victory, were the only emotions strong enough to offset its fierce zeal for its own theories of Church and State.

Cromwell was most earnestly desirous of getting a working compromise between the King, the Presbyterian Parliament, and the Independent army; a compromise which would allow the King to reign, exercising such executive powers as the Parliament felt he should possess, and which should leave the supreme control to Parliament, but with sufficient guarantees for political and religious freedom to insure justice to the Independents and the soldiers. He strove so hard to accomplish his purpose as to excite angry mutterings against himself among his own followers in the army; and the first steps of the impending revolution were seemingly taken by him only because he was irresistibly pushed onward by the army itself. When, however, he had once made up his mind that there was no other path possible, he trod it as a leader, with all his wonted firmness and decision.

The effort for reconciliation was hopeless, chiefly because the King was an utterly impossible person with whom to deal. He had many bitter foes; but they could not prevail against him until he convinced some of his would-be friends that he was absolutely and utterly untrustworthy. He never for a moment entertained the idea of accepting his defeat, of abandoning the effort to rule as a despot, and of acting with good faith toward the people. His purpose was to play off the Presbyterians, together with the Scotch, against the Independents; as he wrote to a friend, he hoped to get either the one party or the other “to side with me for extirpating one another, and I shall be really King again.”

Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Parliament was determined not to tolerate the “sectaries” of the Congregationalist and Baptist Churches, and was drawing closer and closer to the Scotch Covenanters, who were even more intolerant; and finally it grew ready to accept the King himself on almost any terms, if it could overcome the army.

But the army could not be overcome. It had perfected its political organization, and had begun to work through Ireton—Cromwell’s other self. The army was genuinely reluctant to break with the Parliament, for, after all, it was deeply permeated with the English respect for law and order; and in the elections to fill the vacancies in the House, very many Independents—men like Ireton, Fairfax, and Blake, the after-time admiral—had been returned, so that there was in the Parliament a party which strongly sympathized with the army.

The majority in Parliament, however, remained steadfast in its own views, and by its refusal to give the soldiers their arrears of pay it added a very tangible, material grievance to those of an ethical character. In January, 1647, the Scottish army delivered King Charles to the agents of the Parliament, and quitted England, having received part of the sum of money due them.

The most complicated and devious negotiations followed between the King, the Parliament, and the army. Cromwell tried to get the army in touch with the Parliament, but found the Parliament hopelessly obstinate. He tried to get it in touch with the King, but found the King hopelessly false. Yet, neither could the King and Parliament come together. Then the army threatened mutiny, whereupon the Parliament began to negotiate for bringing back the Scottish force to overawe the New Model, and attempted the disbandment of the latter. The army struck back with great decision and sent Cornet Joyce to seize the person of the King and take him away from the Presbyterians. Parliament attempted to proceed with the disbandment of the army, but was forced to abandon the effort when it became evident that to pursue it meant war. No one knew quite what the outcome would be, or, indeed, what his own course would be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamilton moved slowly south toward Preston, his army scattered in a long line, Langdale at the head, and Munro bringing up the rear. Cromwell abandoned his heavy baggage-train that it might not encumber his movements; Lambert joined him, and he marched with fiery speed to strike his foes. The Scotch, confident in their numbers, and ignorant of the movements of their speedy antagonist, advanced in loose order. On August 17th Cromwell struck their army; by which time Hamilton’s straggling march had resulted in Langdale’s taking position to cover its left flank. The Scotch were partially aware of their danger and were uneasily trying to concentrate. Langdale was left to bear the shock of the first attack single-handed. Cromwell appreciated, as well as any commander that ever lived, the vital element of time; the need for taking full advantage of what the moment brought forth. His headlong march had resulted in some of his soldiers lagging behind the others, but he had gained what he wanted; he had surprised his foes when they were unprepared to use their superiority of force, and he dashed at them as soon as his foremost men came up, determined to destroy them in detail. Langdale made a stiff fight, and owing to the character of the country—the fields were small, and the fences strong and high—the cavalry was not able to do much, so that the decisive fighting was done by the infantry, which was not usually the case in these wars. The struggle took place about four miles from Preston, near which town, but south of the river Ribble, the bulk of the Scotch foot were gathered.

For four hours Langdale’s men clung to their hedges and buildings, regiment after regiment of the Cromwellians fighting to dislodge them. Says Cromwell: “Our men fought with incredible valor and resolution ... often coming to push of Pike, and to close Fire, and always making the Enemy to recoil ... the Enemy making, though he was still worsted, very stiff and sturdy resistance. Colonel Dean’s and Colonel Pride’s, outwinging the enemy, could not come to so much share of the Action ... the Enemy shogging down toward the Bridge, and keeping almost all in reserve that so he might bring fresh commands often to fight.”

The Scotch sent some men and ammunition to Langdale, but made no serious effort to help him, and continued their march. At last he was overpowered and driven into the town. As soon as his men were dislodged from the hedges and enclosures, the Cromwellian horse fell furiously upon them, utterly routing and scattering them; at the same time, the Cromwellian foot, pushing forward, drove back the Scotch foot, which had been posted near the bridge to secure a passage for Langdale across the Ribble, and cut off the fugitives from the rest of the army.

The Ironsides thundered into the streets of Preston at the heels of Langdale and the flying remnants of his forces. Hamilton led one or two charges, and for a moment checked the pursuit, but it was now too late to retrieve matters, and soon afterward the whole of his army was again in panic rout. The beaten cavalry fled north, goaded by the Cromwellian sword, until they reached the rear guard under Munro. Most of the Yorkshire and Scotch infantry north of the Ribble were killed, captured, or scattered; a few only escaped to the Scotch army south of the Ribble by swimming across it.

The day thus ended with the defeat of part of the Scotch forces, who lost in killed or captured, 5,000 men, besides those who were dispersed. Moreover, the Scotch army was cut in two; Munro being to the north, separated from all the rest, who, under Hamilton, were completely cut off from their base in Scotland. Sending a few troops to harry the flying horsemen, Cromwell turned to deal with the Scotch main army, which was even yet more numerous than his own. But the Scotch were cowed by the success of Cromwell’s utterly unexpected attack. The soldiers had lost confidence in their leaders, and they were cut off from their own country, and, therefore, from all hope of supplies. A council of war was held that night, and the retreat was continued. The fagged-out Cromwellians followed and harassed them. The horse, under Colonel Thornhaugh, rode into their rear ranks and bothered and detained them, though at cost of the life of the Colonel, who was shot in one of the fierce struggles. Again and again the Scotch stood, but each time to be beaten; the last stand being made at Winwick church, under a “little spark in a blue bonnet” who himself was slain. Here they lined the hedges with musketeers, and filled the lane with their pikemen, and hours went by before the Puritans, under Pride, finally pushed their charge home, and gained possession of the place which had been held so stubbornly. Both sides were utterly worn out, and it was impossible to urge the pursuit as rapidly and strongly as Cromwell hoped. Finally, leaving Lambert to deal with the shattered fragments of Hamilton’s command, Cromwell turned north and followed Munro.

The victory was overwhelming. Two thousand Scotch and Royalists had been slain, and 10,000 were captured; more than Cromwell’s whole force. Almost all the generals were taken; Hamilton was afterward beheaded. The fate of the captured rank and file was hard. Throughout the First Civil War, the common soldiers, when taken, had either been exchanged or released, or often enough had enlisted on the side of the victors; but the Puritan generals and those behind them were in no mood to take a merciful view of men whom they regarded as wanton offenders, whether they were Scotchmen or Englishmen. The captives of Preston battle were sold into slavery; some being sent to the Virginia planters, and others to the Venetian Government, for galley slaves. When the Puritans could act thus toward their fellow-Englishmen, and toward the Scotch Presbyterians who were so nearly of their own creed, there is small cause for wonder in the treatment afterward accorded the Irish. It was a merciless age, the age of Tilly and Wallenstein, and we cannot judge its great men by the canons of to-day.

This was the first time that Cromwell had actually been in supreme command in a great victory, and too much praise cannot be accorded him for his hardihood, energy, and skill. The speed of his motions and his prompt decision had rendered it possible for him to strike home at his adversary in the flank, and to eat him up piecemeal. During three days of incessant marching and fighting he halted only to do battle or to take the rest absolutely needed; and at the end of that time the enemy’s foot had been killed, captured, or dispersed to the last man, and his horse was a beaten rabble, flying toward the border.

The battle of Preston put an end to the Second Civil War. Colchester capitulated to Fairfax immediately afterward. The part of the fleet that had revolted had come back under Prince Charles and Rupert, to coöperate with the risen Royalists, but could do nothing; most of the ships in time returned to their allegiance to the Parliament. The indomitable Rupert, with seven ships, kept the sea and made a long cruise, which finally degenerated into mere buccaneering. Blake, whom the Parliament made Admiral, pursued him, captured most of his ships, and finally forced him to take refuge in France. In Scotland, Argyle and the Presbyterian ministers—the Kirk party—on the news of Hamilton’s overthrow, promptly rose in the so-called Whigamore raid. Munro fell back, plundering right and left until he crossed the border.

Cromwell’s exertions had been so severe that he could not follow the flying Royalists with his usual rapidity. The army had been long without pay; they had not a penny with which to get their horses shod, and so many horses had been slain and were lamed or done out that a large number of the troopers were on foot, and the others could hardly spur their jaded mounts into a trot. Munro was not only a ruthless plunderer, but a hard fighter, and on his arrival in Scotland Argyle felt doubtful as to his capacity to cope with him, and sent to Cromwell for assistance. Cromwell promptly invaded Scotland, being careful to pose as the ally of Argyle and the Kirk, and therefore the true friend of the Scottish nation. According to his custom, he rigorously suppressed plundering. All resistance withered away before him. He was received at Edinburgh as a powerful and honored ally, and before he recrossed the border the Scotch were again avowed supporters, for the time being at least, of the Parliament.

The enemy in arms had been defeated. It remained to deal with the Parliament and the Presbyterian party. Some had been active for the King; most had been lukewarm; the victory had been a victory for the army, and therefore for the Independents. Neither Cromwell nor the army was of a temper to refrain from finishing matters. Before the struggle was decided Cromwell had written Fairfax: “I pray God teach this nation and those that are over us ... what the mind of God may be in all this, and what our duty is. Surely it is not that the poor, godly people of this Kingdom should still be made the object of wrath and anger, nor that our God would have our necks under a yoke of bondage. For these things that have lately come to pass have been the wonderful works of God, breaking the rod of the oppressor.”

He was not in the least a doctrinaire Republican or Parliamentarian; he believed as little in the divine right of majorities as in the divine right of kings. Neither would he have admitted such a right as existing in an army, or, as yet, in himself. But it was impossible to stand still. He had to act with some party, though with none was he in entire accord; for one was hostile, another hopelessly undecided, the third prone to extreme measures and representing only a minority in the nation. He could only act with the last, and yet this meant an overturn of the recognized governmental authorities. Whether he would or not, he had to proceed along the path of revolution.

The Presbyterians—the men who controlled Parliament—were halting between two burdens. They would not push far enough against the King to make the Revolution a success, or to put a permanent end to despotism; and they would not eat their past words and deeds by turning wholly to his support. The King himself was obstinately bent on keeping the supreme power in his hands and setting the people under his feet, whatever he might promise; and this was the attitude of the large Royalist and Episcopalian party, which had showed, in supporting him, either that it cared little for liberty and eagerly championed a servility which it misnamed loyalty, or else that it feared disorder more than tyranny.

On the other hand, the determined foes of Absolutism, the armed Independents, were even more cut off from the bulk of the nation by their good qualities than by their shortcomings. Their advocacy of toleration for every creed, their desire for legal reform, and their strong democratic tendencies, all put them so far in advance of the rest of the nation as to be completely out of touch with it; and they offended it even more than their harshness and narrowness, and the behavior of the bands of fantastic enthusiasts in their ranks. Moreover, the sincerity of their convictions, at a time when the practical application of belief in the rule of the majority was entirely new and strange, drove them to rely on their strong right arms, instead of upon the votes of a people which was mainly hostile or apathetic. When Cromwell acted with them, heedless of what the majority might think, he was making ready for a time when he might choose in turn to disregard the majority within their own ranks.

Though neither Cromwell nor the Independents believed in the abstract in employing the army as an instrument of government, they were face to face with a condition of affairs in which, partly because of their own shortcomings, but very much more because of the shortcomings of their antagonists, they were driven to adopt this as the only possible course. Doubtless Cromwell was still acting as he sincerely believed the interests of the nation demanded. In the complex tissue of motives which go to determine a man’s deeds it is rarely possible to say that there is not some, and mayhap even a strong, element of self-interest and of desire for personal aggrandizement; yet Cromwell’s conduct toward the King goes to show that he would gladly have saved him had not the behavior of this typical Stuart been such as to render it impossible for an upright and far-seeing friend of English liberty longer to remain his ally.

Parliament had no sooner been relieved by the action of the army from all danger from the King’s adherents, than in September it proceeded to open negotiations with the King. These negotiations in effect aimed at the destruction of the army by uniting Parliament and King against it; among other things, they expressly excluded any toleration for the sects which made up the strength of the army. It would have been inexcusable folly for the men who had won the victory to submit to such action. The army, headed by Ireton, demanded a purge of the House which would rid it of the members so treacherous to the interests of the nation. Ireton and his followers then laid before Fairfax a remonstrance, which included a demand that the King should be brought to justice for the “treason,” “blood,” and “mischief” of which he had been guilty. Fairfax opposed this and carried the army with him in favor of a substitute which merely requested the King to assent to a constitutional plan which would have limited his powers precisely as those of Queen Victoria are now limited, and would have made the Constitution of England what it now is. A more moderate proposal was never made by victorious revolutionists, and it shows conclusively that the fault was not with Cromwell and his followers when they were forced to overturn the King and the Parliament. But Charles promptly rejected the proposals and thereby signed his own death-warrant. He had just sought, in Cromwell’s words, “to vassalize us to a foreign nation,” and now, after having twice plunged England into Civil War, and shown himself eager to submit her to the power of the alien, he obstinately refused a plan which would not merely have left him unpunished, but would have given him all the power of a constitutional monarch; a power greater than that which the House of Orange at that time enjoyed in Holland.

The House of Commons stood firm in its position, and against the position of the army, which thereupon marched into London; and on December 6th, Colonel Pride carried through the famous “Pride’s Purge.” He stood with a military guard at the door of the House, and turned back or arrested the members who had voted for a continuation of the negotiations with the the King. This was, of course, a purely revolutionary measure, with no warrant, save as Ireton and Harrison—the Republican generals—had said, “the height of necessity to save the Kingdom from a new War.” It was but the second step; the all-important one had been taken long before, when the army first marched into London to see that the Parliament did its liking.