CHAP. IV

289

BATTLE OF WORCESTER Fleetwood advanced to the attack, the Scots on the right bank of the Severn offered a strong resistance. Cromwell passed a mixed force of horse and foot over his Severn bridge to the relief of Fleetwood. Together they beat the enemy from hedge to hedge, till they chased him into Worcester. The scene then changed to the left bank. Charles, from the cathedral tower observing that Cromwell's main force was engaged in the pursuit of the Scots between the Teme and the city, drew all his men together and sallied out on the eastern side. Here they pressed as hard as they could upon the reserve that Cromwell had left behind him before joining Fleetwood. He now in all haste recrossed the Severn, and a furious engagement followed, lasting for three hours at close quarters and often at push of pike and from defence to defence. The end was the "total defeat and ruin of the enemy's army; and a possession of the town, our men entering at the enemy's heels and fighting with them in the streets with very great courage." The Scots fought with desperate tenacity. The carnage was what it always is in street warfare. Some three thousand men lay dead; twice or even three times as many were taken prisoners, including most of the men of high station; Charles was a fugitive. Not many of the Scots ever saw their homes again.

Such was the battle of Worcester,-as stiff a contest, says the victor, as ever I have seen. It was Oliver's last battle, the "Crowning Mercy." In what sense did this great military event deserve so high a title ? It has been said, that as a military commander Cromwell's special work was not the overthrow of Charles I., but the rearrangement of the relations of the three kingdoms. Such a distinction is arbitrary or paradoxical. Neither at Naseby and Preston, nor at Dunbar and Worcester, was any indelible stamp impressed upon the institutions of the realm; no real incorporation of Ireland

U

and Scotland took place or was then possible. Here as elsewhere, what Cromwell's military genius and persistency secured by the subjugation alike of king and kingdoms, was that the waves of anarchy should not roll over the work, and that enough of the conditions of unity and order should be preserved to ensure national safety and progress when affairs had returned to their normal course. In Ireland this provisional task was so ill comprehended as to darken all the future. In Scotland its immediate and positive results were transient, but there at least no barriers arose against happier relations in time to come.

CHAPTER V

CIVIL PROBLEMS AND THE SOLDIER

WHEN God, said Milton, has given victory to the cause, "then comes the task to those worthies which are the soul of that enterprise, to be sweated and laboured out amidst the throng and noises of vulgar and irrational men." Often in later days Cromwell used to declare that after the triumph of the cause at Worcester, he would fain have withdrawn from prominence and power. These sighs of fatigue in strong men are often sincere and always vain. Outer circumstance prevents withdrawal, and the inspiring daimon of the mind within prevents it. This was the climax of his glory. Nine years had gone since conscience, duty, his country, the cause of civil freedom, the cause of sacred truth and of the divine purpose, had all, as he believed, summoned him to arms. With miraculous constancy victory had crowned his standards. Unlike Condé, or Turenne, or almost any general that has ever lived, he had in all these years of incessant warfare never suffered a defeat. The rustic captain of horse was Lord-General of the army that he had brought to be the best-disciplined force in Europe. It was now to be seen whether the same genius and the same fortune would mark his handling of civil affairs and the ship of state plunging among the breakers. It was certain that he would be as active and indefatigable in peace as he had proved himself in war; that energy would never fail, even

if depth of counsel often failed; that strenuous watchfulness would never relax, even though calculations went again and again amiss; that it would still be true of him to the end, that "he was a strong man, and in the deep perils of war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all others." A spirit of confident hope, and the halo of past success these are two of the manifold secrets of a great man's power, and a third is a certain moral unity that impresses him on others as a living whole. Cromwell possessed all three. Whether he had the other gifts of a wise ruler in a desperate pass, only time could show.

The victorious general had a triumphal return. The parliament sent five of its most distinguished members to greet him on his march, voted him a grant of £4000 a year in addition to £2500 voted the year before, and they gave him Hampton Court as a country residence. He entered the metropolis, accompanied not only by the principal officers of the army, but by the Speaker, the Council of State, the Lord Mayor, the aldermen and sheriffs, and many thousand other persons of quality, while an immense multitude received the conqueror of Ireland and Scotland with volleys of musketry and loud rejoicing. In the midst of acclamations that Cromwell took for no more than they were worth, it was observed that he bore himself with great affability and seeming humility. With a touch of the irony that was rare in him, but can never be wholly absent in any that meddle with affairs of politics and party, he remarked that there would have been a still mightier crowd to see him hanged. Whenever Worcester was talked of, he never spoke of himself, but talked of the gallantry of his comrades, and gave the glory to God. Yet there were those who said, "This man will make himself our king," and in days to come his present modesty was set down to

CHAP. V

COMMONWEALTH POLICY

293

craft. For it is one of the elements in the poverty of human nature that as soon as people see a leader knowing how to calculate, they slavishly assume that the aim of his calculations can be nothing else than his own interest. Cromwell's moderation was in truth the natural bearing of a man massive in simplicity, purged of self, and who knew far too well how many circumstances work together for the unfolding of great events, to dream of gathering all the credit to a single agent.

Bacon in a single pithy sentence had, in 1606, foreshadowed the whole policy of the Commonwealth in 1650. This kingdom of England, he told the House of Commons, "having Scotland united, Ireland reduced, the sea provinces of the Low Countries contracted, and shipping maintained, is one of the greatest monarchies in forces truly esteemed that hath been in the world." The Commonwealth on Cromwell's return from the Crowning Mercy" had lasted for two years and a half (Feb. 1, 1649-Sept. 1651). During this period its existence had been saved mainly by Cromwell's victorious suppression of its foes in Ireland and in Scotland, and partly by circumstances in France and Spain that hindered either of the two great monarchies of Western Europe from armed intervention on behalf of monarchy in England. Its protestantism had helped to shut out the fallen sovereignty from the active sympathy of the sacred circle of catholic kings. Cromwell's military success in the outlying kingdoms was matched by corresponding progress achieved through the energy and policy of the civil government at Westminster. At Christmas 1650, or less than two years after the execution of Charles, an ambassador from the King of Spain was received in audience by the parliament, and presented his credentials to the Speaker. France, torn by intestine discord and with a more complex game to play, was slower, but in the winter