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Yet, ere you sleep, stray thoughts will creep The good sun has broken that armor cold

T

genius in war, and to do justice to him as a great captain.

Mr. Gardiner, indeed, has attempted the task in his elaborate "History of the Great Civil War;" but though his industry is above praise, he is perhaps not deeply versed in the military art. In this slight sketch I shall endeavor to show what Cromwell was as a leader in the field; and if I must glance at his career from the civil side, I shall dwell chiefly on what he achieved as a soldier. His correspondence must be my chief authority, though large parts of it are not forthcoming; and unlike the correspondence of later warriors, resembling in this, however, the correspondence of

they abound in precious materials for the competent student.

From Temple Bar. OLIVER CROMWELL AS A SOLDIER. THE renown of Cromwell is on the increase, and has scarcely attained its complete development. Many causes concurred, until the present age, to disparage the fame of a great man, who, if we except Edward I., and perhaps Henry VIII., was the most illustrious of English rulers. To the Cavaliers and their Tory successors, whose judgments we see in the pages of Hume, he appeared a fierce, hypocritical tyrant; the party which triumphed in 1688, the representatives of the Vanes and the Hollises, the "men of law" of the Long Parliament, looked upon him as an armed usurper, who overthrew the Turenne, his contemporary, and a throne and the altar. It is unnecessary genius of wonderful powers, it exhibits to say that Scotland and Ireland had the art of war in its infancy, and does solid grounds to dislike his memory; not reason, so to speak, from principles. and the century of Pope, of Gibbon, of To those who will "not look for the Paley, could not comprehend his acts gold through the bough," and to whom or his motives, and denounced his Puritanism is a sealed book, the letters Puritanism as fanatical cant, or dis- of Cromwell may appear tedious ; but simulation of the vilest kind. A larger they reveal a real master of war; and knowledge of history, and a philosophic view of the great religious movements of the seventeenth century, have grad- Oliver Cromwell was born in 1599, a ually dissipated these false ideas; and scion of an ancient and knightly house, we now see that Cromwell was a most long seated in Huntingdon, on the lands able ruler during a period of revolution of Hinchinbrook. The celebrated minand trouble, and that he was a God-fear-ister of Henry VIII., the "Hammer of ing and sincere man, if an enthusiastic the Monks" in priestly language, was and stern-hearted zealot. Parts of his policy, doubtless, must be condemned; and his fame has suffered from the extravagances of Carlyle, the blind eulogist of the faith that might is right, and the apologist of his deeds whatever their character. But the soldier who raised England, from what seemed decrepitude, to a foremost place among the powers of Europe, and who traced the lines of her empire on the seas, was, we now perceive, one of her mightiest sons; and it was no ordinary or short-sighted statesman who projected the union of the three kingdoms, and the codification of our still formless law, and who rescued the State from civil war and anarchy. The political genius of Cromwell is not now questioned; but no writer of eminence has yet appeared to bring out distinctly his

one of his not remote kinsmen. The family was connected with the Hampdens, and St. Johns, and others of the best landed gentry; and more than once it had entertained sovereigns in their progresses through the eastern counties. Like Napoleon, Cromwell was thus a gentleman; and the accident of his birth in part explains the strong conservative and loyal instincts which were among his distinctive qualities, until Puritanism and an age of trouble made him the master-spirit of a great revolution. The boy was educated after the manner of his time; he was sent to Cambridge at an early age; it is believed that he ate some terms at Gray's Inn; but, when his father died, while he was still a youth, he betook himself to the pursuit of farming, having just married an excellent wife, loved by him

Europe had been taken by France, her ancient enemy. Cromweil was returned for Cambridge in the Long Parliament; and we now begin to see more distinctly the lineaments of that commanding figure. He took at first the moderate and constitutional side; of course voted for the strong measures which deprived Charles of his

over

with pure and manly affection. His life | war of the Thirty Years, to a discredited flowed on peacefully for years at St. power of the second order; and how Ives, and his letters during this period her place as the head of Protestant are lost; but it is impossible to doubt that the events of the time made a strong and lasting impression on him. Oliver was an enthusiastic and sincere Puritan; he was penetrated by the stern Calvinistic spirit which had been transforming the national mind; he was an Englishman and a man of genius; and we may be sure that he looked with abhorrence on the movement Rome-grown power; but was associated with ward in the national Church, the favoritism, the crimes, and the follies of the court, and on the degradation of England under James I. He sate for Huntingdon in the Parliament of 1627-9, one of the most memorable in English history; he shared in that early struggle for freedom, in which Wentworth stood by the side of Pym; and he doubtless voted for the Petition of Right, and joined in the first of the "Great Remonstrances." His only recorded speech, however, is a protest against one of the divines of the court; and it seems probable that at this time of his life religion chiefly engrossed his thoughts; he felt the compunctious visitings and the despondent doubts characteristic of the Puritan temper, and made familiar to us by Bunyan's genius.

Hampden, Hollis, Hyde, and other reformers of the higher class of gentry. But he appears to have had, at an early period, a rooted distrust of the good faith of the government; and in the decisive struggle on the Grand Remonstrance he broke off from the more scrupulous spirits, and went over to Pym and the men of action. As the contest deepened, and Charles and the Parliament, after the fatal attempt on the five members, prepared to appeal to the arbitrament of force, Cromwell boldly took a conspicuous part; with Hampden, now ready to draw the sword, he subscribed large sums to support the Houses; and he significantly denounced the Irish Rebellion. For the rest, during these months of trouble, the prelude to the great Civil War, he was an active and energetic He returned to obscurity during the champion of the great popular movelong period when Charles I. tried to ment that was stirring England. We dispense with Parliaments; and the see him advocating the rights of downfew of his letters which have come trodden commoners; crying out against down to us refer chiefly to the common a wrong done to a servant of Prynne, affairs of life, to the self-communings and signing a "protestation of a Calvinistic spirit, and to the wrongs done" to the faith" by Laud and his brethren. Yet such a man could not have felt indifferent-his policy as a ruler is a proof of this - to what was going on in the world around him; how - Anglicanism was being made an instrument of the great Catholic revival at home and abroad; how the monarchy of Elizabeth was being changed into an irresponsible and corrupt despotism; how Wentworth was trying to do for Charles I. what Richelieu had done for Louis XIII.; above all, how England had been reduced, in the great religious

against

the "army plots" intended to save Strafford from national vengeance, and to check the reactionary policy of the court.

His

When Charles raised his standard in August, 1642, Cromwell was in command of a troop of horse in the rude but large Parliamentary army. first experience in the field showed that he had the keen insight and the knowledge of adapting means to ends which are natural gifts of real warriors. king, who might have been crushed by Essex at the outset of the struggle, with the greatest ease, had been allowed

The

to collect a large force; he had routed | supplied. The legend, which has come
a hostile detachment at Powick; and, down to us as a genuine utterance of
marching across the front of his enemy, the future chief- "Put your trust in
he advanced through Warwickshire God, and keep your powder dry !".
against his "rebellious" capital. The expresses the methods adopted by him..
opposing armies met at Edgehill; and He made his troops the fiercest and.
though Essex had the best of the fight, boldest of zealots; but with due regard
the horsemen of Rupert, led by gallant to the requirements of war, he formed
gentlemen, and commanded by a daring them into real soldiers provided with
and brilliant chief, swept the Parlia- all that was needed in the field," a
mentary levies before them. Cromwell goodly sight," as he wrote with pride..
perceived at once where the defect The regiments raised in this manner
lay; "a set of tapsters and poor ap- became by degrees most formidable and
prentices cannot," he said, "fight trustworthy warriors; they were ani-
against men of honor”—here, as mated by passions more intense than
often, we see his aristocratic leanings the Crusaders, or the armed swarms of
and he declared to his cousin, Hamp- Mahomet; their enemies, in their eyes,
den, that nothing could be done until were "ranks of the accurst," and "ves-
the chivalry of the Cavalier was met sels of wrath foredoomed by God;"
and encountered by the spirit of Puri- but their moral power was upheld by
tanism, so to speak, embodied in a thor-material force, brought in time to the
oughly trained and prepared army. He extreme of perfection; and their bear-
addressed himself to carry out his pur-
pose, with the little body of men in his
hands; and the stern fanaticism, and
the fine discipline of "the godly peo-
ple who formed his troop, began by
degrees to become manifest.

ing, their training, their arms, their equipment, and their efficiency in manoeuvring, and in the shock of battle, attained ultimately the very highest excellence. Such was the origin of the far-famed Ironsides a grand mónument of Cromwell's genius-and the nucleus of the invincible army, the finest ever possessed by England, which scattered Rupert and his nobles like sheep; which crushed Ireland, subdued Scotland, and was the right arm of the Protector for years; and which, mighty abroad as it was at home, overwhelmed the best troops of Spain at Dunkirk, and was prized by. Turenne, the first soldier of Europe, as the best instrument of war ever proved by him in his long and almost unequalled career. · gi;

He was soon raised to a colonel's rank; and circumstances concurred to extend his authority beyond that of a subordinate officer. The strength of the Houses, outside the capital, lay principally in the eastern counties; these formed an association to defend themselves, and to provide troops to maintain the war; and Cromwell, swaying all minds by the power of his will, became the master spirit of this league, and the real chief of the levies it raised. We see him organizing, drilling, and training soldiers with extraordinary ad- While he was thus organizing the ministrative skill, in the winter of 1642 eastern counties, Oliver took no part in and the spring of 1643; and he kept the feeble operations of the campaign steadfast to his first ideal, and fash- of 1643. He was not in the ill-led army ioned all his men on the same pattern. of Essex, which fruitlessly hovered The forces he arrayed were mostly round Oxford; he did not witness the composed of small farmers, traders, defeats of Waller, or the great Royalist artisans, and peasants; but, unlike the advance from the west; he was not Feebles and Warts of Falstaff, they present at the siege of Gloucester; he were carefully selected from able-bodied did not join in the first fight at Newmen; and Cromwell breathed into them bury, remarkable for the valor of Skipthe stern Puritan spirit, made them pon, and for the heroism of the train subject to the severest discipline, and bands of London. One letter of his, took care they were well-armed and however, perhaps indicates that he per