History of the British Army (Vol.1&2). J. W. Fortescue
isolated and alone in the position among the sand hills. A French officer rode forward and summoned the little party to surrender. "We were posted here by the Duke of York," was the answer, "and mean to hold our ground as long as we can." The Frenchman explained that resistance was hopeless. "We are not accustomed to believe our enemies," was the reply. "Then look for yourself," rejoined the Frenchman; and leading the commander to the top of a sand hill he showed him the retreating army of Spain. Thereupon the solitary regiment laid down its arms: it was the English King's Royal Regiment of Guards.[193]
The losses of the victorious English were very severe. In Lockhart's regiment but six out of the whole number of officers and sergeants had escaped unhurt; and the honours of the day were admitted by all to lie with the red-coats. The action led to the speedy fall of Dunkirk; and Lockhart, being reinforced by two regiments from England, was able to detach four to continue the campaign under the command of Morgan. Bergues, Dixmuyde, and Oudenarde fell in quick succession, and little opposition was encountered until the siege of Ypres, where the English delivered so daring and brilliant an assault that Turenne, overcome with admiration, embraced their leader, Morgan, and called him one of the bravest captains of the time. The capture of Ypres was the last exploit of the six thousand—the immortal six thousand, as they were styled in the admiring pamphlets of the day. After an advance almost to the walls of Brussels, the campaign came to an end; Morgan returned to England to receive knighthood, and the English retired to Dunkirk to spend another winter in cold and misery and want, and worst of all in deep uncertainty for the future.[194]
1659,
April 21.
For even while Morgan was watching the Spanish garrison march out of Ypres, the soldier who had made the English Army was lying speechless and unconscious at St. James's, worn out with many campaigns and with the work of keeping the peace in England. Before tattoo sounded on the 3rd of September 1658, Oliver Cromwell was dead, and no man could say who should come after him. Richard Cromwell, his son, held two trump-cards in his hand—Henry Cromwell and the army in Ireland, George Monk and his army in Scotland. He was afraid to play either, and yielded up his power to a clique of his father's old officers—Fleetwood, Desborough, and others—who brought back the Rump of the Long Parliament to reign in his stead. Henry Cromwell resigned his command, and the power of the Cromwells was gone. The Rump now took over Cromwell's body-guard for its own protection, and to make the Army thoroughly subservient decided that all officers should be approved by itself, and all commissions signed by the Speaker. So large was the military establishment that this work of revising the list of officers was never completed. George Monk, however, accepted the Speaker's commission without a word.
October 17.
It was not in the nature of things that the English generals should long submit to the junto of politicians which it had set over England. In a very short time the leaders of the Army for the second time cleared away the Rump, and took the supreme power into their own hands; but herein they overlooked the existence of the ablest soldier left in Great Britain. Monk was ready enough to take his orders from Oliver Cromwell, but not from such small men as Lambert and Desborough. No sooner did the news of the new departure reach him at Dalkeith than with amazing rapidity he secured every garrison in Scotland, seized the bridge over the Tweed at Berwick, purged his troops of all officers disloyal to the Parliament, and gave orders for his whole force to concentrate at Edinburgh. Morgan, with the glories of Flanders still fresh on him, presently came to help him in the reorganisation of his army, and by the middle of November he began to move slowly south. Negotiations with the English leaders had been in progress ever since Monk first took decided action, and, though fully aware that they must come to nothing, he was not sorry to gain a little time in order to establish discipline thoroughly in the force under his command. By the end of November he had fixed his headquarters at Berwick.
There, at one o'clock on the morning of the 7th of December, he was surprised by the news that, in spite of much peaceful profession, the English general Lambert had besieged Chillingham Castle and had marched within twenty miles of the Border. One hour sufficed for Monk to write the necessary orders for the movement of the troops, and at two o'clock he was in the saddle and away to inspect the fords of the Tweed. The night was stormy and pitch dark, and the roads were sheets of ice, but on he galloped, despite the entreaties of his staff, through wind and sleet, up hill and down, at dangerous speed. "It was God's infinite mercy that we had not our necks broke," wrote one who was an unwilling partaker of that ride.[195] By eleven o'clock the inspection was over and headquarters were fixed at Coldstream. A regiment of foot had already arrived there to guard the ford before the General came, and had cleared away every scrap of provisions. His staff-officers dispersed to find food where they could, but George Monk put a quid of tobacco into his cheek and sat down contented with a good morning's work. He had occupied every pass from Berwick to Kelso, and had so thought out every detail that he could concentrate his whole force at any given point in four hours. The bulk of his troops under Morgan were stationed on the exposed flank at Kelso; he himself was in the centre at Coldstream. Lambert might attack his front or turn his flank if he dared.
1660.
For three weeks Monk's army lay in this position, four regiments of horse and six of foot,[196] waiting for the moment to advance. The cold was intense, and the quarters in the little village of Coldstream were very strait. The General occupied a hovel wherein he had hardly space to turn round, and the men suffered greatly from privation and hard weather, but Monk's spirit kept them all in cheerfulness, and those who had shared his hardships never ceased to boast themselves to be Coldstreamers. At last, on the 31st of December, came the news that the army which had deposed the Rump was up in mutiny; and at daybreak of the 1st of January 1660 Monk's army crossed the Tweed in two brigades and began its memorable march to the south. All day they tramped knee-deep through the snow, full fifteen miles to Wooler, while the advanced-guard of horse by a marvellous march actually covered the fifty miles to Morpeth. At York they were met by Fairfax, who had roused himself at such a crisis for a last turn of military duty, and picking up deserters on every side from Lambert's regiments they increased their strength at every march. On the 31st of January Monk received at St. Albans the Parliament's confirmation of his commission as General, and three days later he occupied London. His own regiment of foot was quartered for the first time in and about St. James's.
It is unnecessary to dwell on the intricate movements in the political world during the three following months; it must suffice to say that Monk was finally obliged to coerce the Rump as all other soldiers had coerced it. In spite of all engagements to dissolve itself without delay, this pretentious little assembly still clung, notwithstanding its unpopularity, to power; but a letter from the General was sufficient to bring it to reason without a file of musketeers. Such a letter arrived on the 6th of April; and though the House resolved not to read it until it had gratified its vanity by a little further debating, yet it decided after opening it to make the question of dissolution its very next business. Before evening it had ceased to exist. One last desperate attempt of Desborough and Lambert to divide the Army was suppressed with Monk's habitual promptitude, and on the 1st of May the General, sitting as member for his native county in a new House of Commons, moved that the King should be invited to England. Three weeks later Monk's life-guard and five regiments of horse escorted the restored monarch into London; and the work of the New Model Army was done.
CHAPTER V
It is strange that our historians have for the most part taken leave of the New Model without a tinge of regret, without estimation of its merits or enumeration of its services. Mountains of eulogy have been heaped on the Long Parliament, but little has been spared for this famous Army; nay, even military historians by a strange perversity begin the history of the Army not from its foundation but from its dissolution. Much doubtless besides the creation of a standing Army dates from the great rebellion, though few things more important in our history, unless indeed it be the cant that denies its importance. The bare thought of militarism or the military spirit is supposed to be unendurable to Englishmen. As if a nation had ever risen to great empire that did not possess the military spirit, and as if England herself had not won her