and, for fear they should relapse into heresy, cut all their throats.*

Cruel fighting, desperate violence, and frightful misery, afflicted the unhappy land during eight years. Armies, or savage hordes rather, full of hatred, disobedience, and cruelty, met and fought. Murder, pillage, conflagration wasted the most fertile parts of Ireland. Cromwell was destined to restore order and peace, and give to that country a prosperity which it had not known for many a year. But how was

he to attain this end?

"To those who think that a land overrun with sanguinary quacks," says one of the Protector's biographers,† "can be healed by sprinkling it with rose-water, these letters [of Cromwell] must be very horrible. Terrible surgery this: but is it surgery and judgment, or atrocious murder merely ? Oliver Cromwell did believe in God's judgments; and did not believe in the rose-water plan of surgery, in philanthropic sentimentalism. He arrives in Ireland an armed soldier, solemnly conscious to himself that he is the soldier of God the Just;-an armed soldier, terrible as death, relentless as doom; doing God's judgments on the enemies of God!"

...

It will easily be conceived how great were the difficulties to be encountered in reducing Ireland to submission; and on this account few persons cared to undertake it. All parties concurred in Cromwell's appointment to the Lord-lieutenancy of that province, with the supreme civil and military authority.

He was deeply sensible of the importance of the task which devolved upon him, and appeared the next day in Parliament full of anxiety and seriousness. At first he declared "his unworthiness and disability to support so great a charge;" but, as he was not one of those who shrink from a duty because the duty is difficult, he announced his " entire resigna

* Sir J. Temple, Irish Rebellion, p. 109. London, 1646. + Carlyle, ii. pp. 52, 53.

tion to the commands of the House, and his absolute dependence upon God's providence and blessing, from whom he had received so many signal marks of favor and protection."

Yet he did not conceal the obstacles he should have to encounter in the mission conferred on him: "That kingdom," said he, "is reduced to so great straits that I am willing to engage my own person in this expedition, because of the difficulties which appear in it; and more out of hope, with the hazard of my life, to give some obstruction to the successes which the rebels are at present exalted with. And all that I desire is, that no more time be lost in the preparations which are to be made for so great a work."*

In compliance with his wishes, and under his direction, the Commons made incredible exertions to raise money, provide ships, and collect troops.

Cromwell departed for Ireland at the head of 12,000 men. Before they embarked, the troops observed a day of fasting and prayer: three ministers solemnly invoked the blessing of God on the expedition; and three officers, the Colonels Gough and Harrison, with the Lord-lieutenant himself, expounded certain pertinent passages of Scripture. The army was under the strictest discipline: not an oath was to be heard throughout the whole camp, the soldiers spending their leisure hours in reading their Bibles, in singing psalms, and in religious conferences.

Oliver now began, as a general, to consider the plan he ought to follow for the restoration of order. Should he employ a few weeks, with the sacrifice of 5000 men, or several years, with the loss of perhaps 20,000? This was an important question. If he took prompt and formidable measures, such as were calculated to spread terror on every side, he would immediately check the disease. If, on the contrary, he proceeded with a light and hesitating hand, he would prolong it indefinitely. To Cromwell the most energetic way appeared the most humane. He acted as men * Clarendon, book xii.

do in a great conflagration, where the adjoining houses are pulled down to save the more remote, or as in a hospital, where a diseased limb is cut off to preserve the others. Having weighed everything, he decided for the hand of iron. That hand is never amiable; but yet there are cases in which it is salutary.

On the approach of the general of the English republic, all the parties that ravaged Ireland had united. Catholics of different shades, Episcopalian and Presbyterian royalists, had rallied round Ormond's standard. So that, at the moment when Cromwell set foot in that island, there remained only two towns, Dublin and Londonderry, that held for the Commonwealth; both of which were beleaguered by the enemy's troops.

The success of the republican army was prodigious. "Oliver descended on Ireland," says Carlyle, "like the hammer of Thor; smote it, as at one fell stroke, into dust and ruin, never to reunite against him more.”

We shall not follow Cromwell through all his military exploits; but we must extract one at least of those terrible pages which cannot be read without emotion and pain, but which, as we have observed, present this great man to us as following the most skilful course to arrive at a prompt and universal pacification. This hero, so affectionate towards his friends, so tender to his wife and children, and then inflexible as death before the enemies of the Commonwealth, is an enigma for which we naturally seek a solution. One solution readily offers itself, and I think it is a true one. We should cease to regard him in his individual character, and look upon him only as a general and a judge,-the representative of that inexorable Justice whom the pagans represented with a bandage over her eyes and a sword in her hand.

There is, however, another solution, which explains not only this famous expedition, but also the whole of Cromwell's life. This great man shared in the error which the

Papacy had held during the Middle Ages, and which most of the Reformers entertained during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He did not make a sufficient distinction between the old and the new covenant, between the Old and the New Testament. He thought that a Christian, and particularly a public man, ought to seek his rules of conduct in the Hebrew theocracy. The terrible judgments inflicted by God's command on the unbelieving nations in the times of the judges and kings of Israel, appeared to him not only to authorize but to necessitate similar judgments. He thought that, like Moses and Joshua, he might slay Balaam with the sword (Numbers xxxi. 8; Joshua xiii. 22). It may be that he did not follow this out explicitly; but it was with this prejudice and under this impulse that he usually acted.

This was wrong. The Jewish theocracy existed no longer; and its rules of conduct had been abolished with it. The precepts which ought to direct the life of a Christian are contained in our Saviour's sermon on the mount and in other of his discourses, as well as in the writings of the Apostles. But we may understand how men of upright mind easily took for the guidance of their lives all the declarations comprised in the Word of God, even those which are no longer applicable under the change of covenant.

As soon as Ormond was informed of Cromwell's arrival, he withdrew his army from the neighborhood of Dublin, and resolved to put Drogheda in a position to resist the enemy. He threw into this strong town all the flower of his army, and gave the command to Sir Arthur Ashton, an officer of great reputation.

On the day following the Lord-lieutenant's appearance before this city he ordered a general assault, which being renewed the next morning, he entered it by two different breaches. We give the conclusion of his report to Parliament, dated Dublin, 17th September, 1649.*

"Divers of the enemy retreated into the Millmount, a * Newspapers, in Parl. Hist., xix. 201. Carlyle, ii. 61.

place very strong and of difficult access; being exceedingly high, having a good graft [ditch], and strongly palisadood. The governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town: and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men ;-divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed Saint Peter's church steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next the gate called Saint Sunday's. These, being summoned to yield to mercy, refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of Saint Peter's Church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: 'God damn me! God confound me! I burn, I burn!'

The next day, the other two towers were summoned; in one of which was about six or seven score; but they refused to yield themselves; and we, knowing that hunger must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until their stomachs were come down. From one of the said towers, notwithstanding their condition, they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head; and every tenth man of the soldiers killed; and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared, as to their lives only; and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.

"I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future. Which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret."

It is consolatory to read these words, which reveal to us the motives of the general's severity.