The History of the British Army. J. W. Fortescue
from various quarters for the disbandment of the New Model turned the heads rather than strengthened the hands of the two Houses. The only safe and honest course, if the Army must be disbanded, was to discharge the whole of the country's obligations to it in full. Now the pay of the foot was eighteen weeks and of the horse forty-two weeks in arrear, and the total debt due to the forces amounted to three hundred and thirty thousand pounds. The Parliament was in straits for money and by no means inclined to make the necessary effort to raise this sum. It proposed as an alternative to turn twelve thousand of the soldiers into a new army for the pacification of Ireland, and this without a word as to the terms on which the men had taken service, and without the least mention of a settlement of arrears. Further, as if it were not enough to irritate the men, the Parliament did its best to alienate the officers. It passed resolutions insulting to the army, insulting to Fairfax, insulting to Cromwell. So deeply injured indeed was Oliver by this ungrateful treatment, that he thought seriously of carrying his sword and such troops as he could raise to the wars in Germany. Such was the pitch of disgust to which the Parliament had driven the ablest of its servants.
The Army raised its first protest in the form of a respectful petition from the men: the Parliament met it with violent and ungracious censure. Certain officers who had supported this petition then tendered a vindication of their conduct: the Commons refused even to read it. Finally, as if to aggravate the Army to extremity, the Lords proposed to grant the troops six weeks' pay in temporary satisfaction of arrears. This was too much. Discontent grew apace in the ranks, the men refused to have anything to do with service in Ireland, and finally the Army, by the election of two representatives for each regiment, organised itself for the orderly maintenance of its just claims. These representatives were called agitators, a name which in those days signified simply agents. The degradation of the term in our own time into a synonym for political busy-bodies must not mislead us, nor blind us to the dignified patience, under extreme provocation, of this irresistible body of disciplined men.
May 25.
For the moment the Parliament was awed into concessions and promises, but its leaders did not lightly submit to humiliation, and rather than yield to the Army looked about for a force to countervail it. First they turned to the City of London, which was strongly Presbyterian, and sought an armed force in the City train-bands. Next they resorted to Scotland, which was intensely jealous of the New Model, and formed a coalition with it in favour of the King, thereby sowing the seeds of a quarrel between North and South Britain. Finally, after stultifying itself by a promise of attention to the Army's complaints, it passed an Ordinance for its disbandment without further ado. This was past endurance. The soldiers broke into open mutiny; and Fairfax and Cromwell, having striven in vain to gain justice for their men, and at the same time to keep them in subordination to the Parliament, placed themselves at the head of a movement which they could no longer repress. It was indeed high time, for the Presbyterian leaders had already invited the Prince of Wales to place himself at the head of the Scots for an invasion of England.
August 6.
On the 4th of June the Army assembled about four miles from Newmarket at Kentford Heath. There in the course of the next few days it erected a general council, composed of the general officers who had taken the side of the men and of two officers and two privates from each regiment, and made a written declaration of its policy. Still the Parliament remained obstinate, and now endeavoured to enlist the discharged soldiers of the earlier armies in order to meet force with force. The Army advanced to Triplow Heath, whither Parliament sent a last message to propose terms for an agreement. The overtures were rejected, and the Army continued its advance. In panic fear the Parliament now offered bribes to any officers or men who would desert the Army. This contemptible device was a total failure. It then tried to raise troops, to reopen negotiations with the Army, to call out the London trained bands, to forbid the Army's further advance, to gain certain troops, which were not of the New Model, from the north; all was in vain. Irresistible as fate, the Army marched on. At St. Albans it halted and issued a manifesto demanding the expulsion of eleven of its enemies from the Commons, and receiving no encouragement advanced to Uxbridge. There again it halted and spent three weeks in the hopeless effort to arrange a peaceful settlement with the King; and finally it marched straight into London and occupied the capital.
Still the Commons persevered in opposition to the Army; and at last Cromwell, without the orders and in spite of the unwillingness of Fairfax, gave the Presbyterian majority a strong hint to convert itself into a minority. His arguments consisted of one regiment of horse, stationed in Hyde Park, and a small party of foot at the door of the House; and they were sufficient and conclusive. The House thus purged, Cromwell turned to the task which was to occupy the remainder of his life and drive him worn-out to his grave, a final settlement of the original quarrel. Wisely enough he thought that this could be effected only by agreement with the King; and it was to negotiation with Charles Stuart for this object that he now devoted the whole of his energy. But negotiation with a man who was constitutionally incapable of straightforward and honourable dealing could have but one end. The lower ranks of the Army, not more far-seeing but less sanguine than their leader, again interposed. A section of extremists, known at that time by the name of Levellers, began, as is usual at such times, to raise its head, and condemning all further traffic with the King boldly put forward a revolutionary scheme of its own.
Herein, however, the Levellers mistook their man. However Cromwell might be distracted by the difficult questions of a settlement, he was perfectly clear on one point, that the discipline of the Army must be maintained. Symptoms all too significant appeared that that discipline was impaired, and he lost no time in restoring it. One regiment refusing to obey his orders, Cromwell promptly drew his sword and rode single-handed straight into the middle of the malcontents. His resolution speedily convinced the men that he would not be trifled with; the mutineers yielded, and a single execution sufficed to re-establish order.
1648,
January.
Then as usual the portentous folly of the King united all parties not only in the Army but in England against himself. He might have made honourable terms with Cromwell; he preferred to throw himself into the arms of the Scots. Both Houses of Parliament thereupon broke with their North British allies, and the dispute assumed the new phase of a quarrel between English and Scots. English refugees inflamed national feeling at Edinburgh, and on the 11th of April the Scottish Parliament pronounced the treaty between the two nations to be broken. By the first week in May the army which was to invade England began slowly to assemble, and on the 8th of July it crossed the border, ten thousand five hundred strong, and occupied Carlisle.
July.
Meanwhile the energies of the English had been distracted by Royalist risings in Kent and in Wales which kept Fairfax and Cromwell both busily employed; and it was not till the 11th of July that Cromwell was able to leave Pembroke and march to the north. Even then his force, after a trying campaign in very inclement weather, was in no very good state. He was entirely destitute of artillery, and his men were most of them both shoeless and stockingless. In one principal respect, however, the force was strong, for it was perfect in spirit and in discipline. I shall not dwell on the details of Cromwell's dash from Wales into Yorkshire. The Scots, embarrassed by a multitude of commanders, suffered him to attack their far more numerous army in detail, when it was divided on opposite banks of the Ribble; and after one sharp engagement at Preston the campaign resolved itself into a mere pursuit of the beaten Scots. How hotly Cromwell pressed the chase, and with what hardships to his own little army, may be read in his own despatches. Unfavourable weather, torrents of rain, and the miserable state of the roads brought men and horses to the last stage of exhaustion. "The Scots," wrote Cromwell, "are so tired and in such confusion that if my horse could but trot after them we could take them all, but we are so weary we can scarce be able to do more than walk after them … my horse are miserably beaten out, and we have ten thousand prisoners." The memory of this swift raid into Yorkshire, and of the unrelenting chase that followed it should be treasured by the British cavalry that fought through the Pindarri war and the Central Indian campaign of 1857–58.
With the close of the pursuit after Preston, the second Civil War came to an end. The operations of Fairfax in the south had shown him at his very best, swift, active, and resolute, and had been brilliantly successful. Those of Cromwell in the north,