History of the British Army (Vol.1&2). J. W. Fortescue
Stuart, who was guiltiest of all. By a final overture for a settlement the Army gave the King a last chance, and on its failure appealed to Parliament to bring him to justice.
1649.
Ireton seems to have been the moving spirit in the actions that followed, though there can be no doubt that Cromwell was in full sympathy with them. Oliver was intensely English in spirit, and had been greatly exasperated by the English Royalists who had called the Scots over the border. He was vehement for justice upon them, and upon the King as the chief of them. Parliament, on the other hand, was engaged in nominal negotiations with Charles; and it was therefore not to be expected that it would comply with the Army's request that he should be brought to trial. But the Army was not to be stopped. The King's person was seized; the Parliament was purged of recalcitrant members; and from these actions to the High Court of Justice the march was short. One leading soldier, Fairfax, did indeed recoil from the final step, but the majority of the officers pressed on; and on the 30th of January 1649, the King was brought out into the ring of red coats to meet his death. He had done his worst against the British Isles. He had invited foreign armies against England, and when he failed had roused Welsh, Scots, and Irish to a hopeless effort to subdue her. But he succeeded only in establishing her strength; and the fall of his head was but the first instalment of the great work done by Cromwell and the Army towards the unity of the islands under the supremacy of England.
We have a pleasant glimpse of Oliver in his lighter moods before he next unsheathed his sword. On the evening of the 23rd of February, as he and Ireton were returning from dinner with Bulstrode Whitelocke, their coach was stopped by the soldiers who were in charge of the streets. They explained who they were, but the captain of the guard would not believe them and threatened to put them into the guard-room. Ireton began to lose his temper, but Cromwell laughed, and pulling out twenty shillings gave them to the men as a reward for doing their duty. Less than three weeks later he was summoned to take command of the army that was collecting for the reconquest of Ireland; for that unlucky island had been chosen by the Royalists as the base of operations for the invasion of England. Rupert, now turned admiral, had already sailed to Kinsale to enlist Irish sailors, and the faithful Ormonde had invited Charles the Second to place himself at the head of the loyal party in Ireland. Cromwell was not unwilling to undertake the duty. He had no idea of yielding England either to Scots or Irish, least of all to the Irish, whose land was regarded rather as a colony than as an integral part of the realm, and was also a stronghold of papistry. Still he declined to accept the command until he had assured himself that all the wants of his troops should be satisfied; he loved his men and would not suffer them to be enticed by the magic of his name to thankless or unprofitable service.
Four regiments of foot and one of horse were then chosen by lot, and the men were informed that they need not go to Ireland unless they wished, but that if they refused they would be discharged from the Army. Several hundred men thereupon at once threw down their arms and were dismissed; but by some blunder, which was none of Cromwell's, not a word was said about the payment of the arrears that were due to them. The idea spread through the ranks that they must either go to Ireland or forfeit those arrears; discontent was naturally aroused and presently burst out into formidable mutiny. Fairfax and Cromwell, however, could depend on their own regiments, and faced the danger with extraordinary swiftness and energy. The mutineers were suppressed with a strong hand. One ringleader was executed in St. Paul's Churchyard, a cornet and a corporal were shot before the eyes of their comrades against the walls of Burford Church, and discipline was again restored. Shortly after, Parliament passed an Ordinance to relieve the financial difficulties of the soldiers, and the preparations for the Irish campaign were resumed. It is curious to note the extreme slowness with which the civilians learned that soldiers were after all men of flesh and blood, not puppets to be hugged or broken according to the caprice of the hour.
The details of the preparations for the war in Ireland may still be read in the State Papers of the time. There are still to be seen the orders for fifteen thousand cassocks, "Venice-red colour, shrunk in water," the like number of pairs of breeches "of grey or other good colour," ten thousand shirts, ten thousand hats and bands,[176] one thousand iron griddles, fifteen hundred kettles, giving a curious picture of the equipment of the first English regular army for what was then esteemed to be foreign service. But I shall not follow the red coats through the terrible Irish campaign of 1649. It was not, like the later war with the Scots, an honourable contest for supremacy: it was rather the stern suppression of a rebellion, wherein the spirit of the masters was inflamed by the insolence of long superiority, by the bitterness of religious hatred, and by the recollection of past outrages which, even if truly reported, would have kindled men to vengeance, and when exaggerated by rage and fear fairly blinded them to mercy. If any Englishman doubted whether the Irish could fight with desperate gallantry he was undeceived at the storm of Drogheda and at Clonmel: but they could not stand, untrained and unorganised as they were, against the veterans of the New Model. Much has been said about Cromwell's cruelty, and that he was ruthlessly severe there can be no question; but when we speak of cruelty we should take at any rate some account of the standard of humanity in the warfare of the seventeenth century. The Irish War was a war of races, a war of creeds, and a war of vengeance. That there should therefore have been such slaughter as at Drogheda and at Wexford is nothing surprising,[177] however deplorable. What is really remarkable in such a war is that Cromwell, from the moment of landing, should have paid his way, visited plunder with the sharpest penalties, and upheld the sternest and most inflexible discipline. Forty years later, when the conquest of Ireland was undertaken by a former marshal of France and a king long schooled in war against the first generals of the time, they were glad to search out Cromwell's plans for his Irish campaign and follow them at such a distance as they might.
1650,
January 8.
June 12.
June 26.
Cromwell was still in full career of victory when the alarming news of a treaty between Charles the Second and the Scots moved the Parliament to recall him to watch over its own safety. He arrived in London on the 1st of June, and was joyfully welcomed not only by Fairfax and the officers of the Army but by all ranks and all classes. It was now almost certain that the Scots would invade England in the King's name, and no time was lost by the Council of State in appointing Fairfax and Cromwell to command the English army in the north. That they would work loyally together in the field no one could doubt; but when the Council consulted the two generals as to plan of campaign, their opinions were found to be diametrically opposed to each other. Cromwell was for taking the bull by the horns and carrying the war into Scotland before the Scots could cross the border; Fairfax, never quite at his ease since the establishment of the Commonwealth, thought such aggressive action unjustifiable. It is impossible to believe that this was his true military opinion, but not all the arguments of the Council nor the pressing entreaty of Cromwell could prevail with him to alter it. Despite all protests he resigned his commission on the plea of physical infirmity, and from this moment passes out of the history of the Army. Never perhaps has that Army possessed a more popular and deservedly popular commander-in-chief.
Only one man could be his successor. On the self-same 26th of June Cromwell received his commission as captain-general and commander-in-chief; and two days later he started on his journey to the north. Charles Fleetwood was his lieutenant-general, John Lambert, an excellent soldier, his major-general; and joined to his staff was another officer whom we saw fighting in the Low Countries many years ago, Colonel George Monk. He had served in the Civil War first with the Royalists, and had been taken prisoner by Fairfax at Nantwich in January 1645; he had then passed some time in confinement in the Tower, and finally had taken service with the Parliament in Ireland, where his merit had attracted the attention of Cromwell. Oliver was now anxious to provide him with a regiment; but the corps which he had designed for him was unwilling to receive a Royalist for colonel. Five companies were therefore taken from Sir Arthur Hazelrigg's regiment at Newcastle and as many more from Colonel Fenwick's at Berwick; and the ten companies were united into Monk's regiment of foot. Thus was formed the oldest of our existing national regiments, the one complete relic of the famous New Model,[178] the one surviving corps which fought under Oliver Cromwell, itself more famous under its later name of the Coldstream Guards.
On the 19th of July Cromwell halted near Berwick, where