M

CHAPTER XII.

CROMWELL AT DUNBAR.

R ANDREW BISSET has written at greater. length probably than any other recent historian, concerning what he calls Cromwell's invasion of Scotland, and especially concerning the battle of Dunbar. The description of that battle-field, our readers do not need to be told, is one of Carlyle's noblest battle-pieces. Mr. Bisset, however, writes in the earnest desire in some measure to account for, and to cover the disgrace of, that defeat. Nor does he altogether fail. He entertains a pleasant idea that Cromwell was a poor general; that he never on any occasion, not even at Dunbar, exhibited that higher military genius which dazzles and excites. He believes that his merit as a general was confined to his raising a body of troops who were well fed and well disciplined. Cromwell, he thinks, had a fertile genius in craft, and, to use historian Bisset's words, "There are many villains who owe their success, both in public and private life, to the same arts by which Oliver Cromwell overreached his friends and his party, and made himself absolute ruler of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” It is singular that,

according to the theory of Mr. Bisset, the amazing craft which he unquestionably possessed in council, he never displayed on the field. He remarks again:

"The battle of Dunbar was the only battle in these wars, except those battles fought by Montrose, in which any considerable degree of generalship was shown. Most of the battles of this great Civil War were steady, pounding matches, where the hostile armies drew up in parallel lines, and fought till one was beaten." It is not necessary to stay a moment to refute this eminently foolish verdict of a really very well-informed man; still, had we any personal acquaintance with Mr. Bisset, we should like to lay before him the strategic plans of the fields of Marston, Naseby, and others, which perhaps would demonstrate that they were no more mere "pounding matches than were any of the great fields of Marlborough or of Wellington. It certainly does appear that David Leslie, the commander of the Scots at Dunbar, found his hands tied by a committee; and any kind of battle anywhere may be lost, but, probably, no battle of any kind was ever gained, by a committee. The English army reached Dunbar on the night of Sunday the 1st of September, 1650; it was rainy and tempestuous weather; the poor army drew up amidst swamps and bogs, but could not pitch a tent; the expressions in Cromwell's letter seem to show that he felt himself reduced to extremities. To those extremities we may refer presently. A dispassionate glance, however, at the state

of affairs, does not permit us to suppose that, under the most favourable circumstances, the Scots could have been successful. A piece of grim folly it appears, to constitute a Committee of Estates, or a Committee of Court Commissioners into a council of war, to regulate and coerce the will of a commander or general of forces. But this was actually the case; and it was to this Committee Cromwell was indebted for that false move which Leslie made, and which the vigilant eye of the great English commander so soon perceived and turned to fearful account. But it appears clearly the case that, if Leslie had not made this disadvantageous move, he could have had little chance against the inferior numbers of the English army. Cromwell's soldiers were no doubt in uncomfortable circumstances amidst the swamps and the bogs, but they were well appointed, well trained and disciplined, well fed, and well armed; in fact, they had come forth, as Mr. Bisset pleases to call it, to invade Scotland! but in reality to repel the Scotch invasion of England ; and the English nation was behind them.

The Scottish country in those days was not charming; the contrast is strongly expressed by some of the invaders of their impressions of the Scottish as contrasted with the English villages. For the English village, even in those days, was perhaps not less romantic and picturesquely pleasant than now; nay, perhaps, in innumerable instances even more so. The pleasant village green, the old

stone church, even then of many generations, the— compared with our times—rough but yet well-to-do farm, perhaps generally of that style we call the "watling plaster," the straggling labourers' cottages, running along the village for a mile, with their gardens, if not trim and neat, yet, from what we know of the Culpeppers and other such writers of the time, redundant in their wealth of herbs and flowers; the old villages of the England of that day look quite as attractive, beneath their lines of rugged elms and their vast yew trees' shade, as now. Those belonging to the Protector's army who have recorded their impressions, contrast all this with that which greeted their eyes in Scottish villages as they passed along. They saw nothing to remind them of the beauty of the English village; for the most part these were assemblages of mere clay or mud hovels. Land, it seemed, was too valuable in Scotland to be wasted on cottage gardens and village greens. And from such homes as these the inhabitants were dragged forth by their lairds with no very good will of their own, and they appear, as they gathered into their ranks, to have been badly fed and badly accoutred. All this may partly apologise for the exceedingly irascible language historian Bisset indulges in when he says, "In the long black catalogue of disasters brought upon Scotland, during a period of five hundred years, by rulers whom God in His wrath had sent to be her curse, her scourge, and her shame, there is none greater or more shameful than this rout

of Dunbar."

The good historian Bisset, it would seem, has some personal strong feelings which irritate him as he attempts to depreciate the merits of the victory of Cromwell at Dunbar. Our readers will perhaps think his notes of depreciation very slight when he alleges, that Cromwell had not gained the victory probably, only that in the first instance he availed himself of Leslie's bad move, and in the next instance in the conflict he "had the advantage of the initiative," which also seems very foolish reasoning on the part of historian Bisset. Whether in all the battles he fought, he took the initiative or not, it is not necessary here to discuss; but he watched the moment, whenever that moment might be, and then, striking sudden, swift, and sharp, with all the celerity of lightning, this was certainly a way, and for his enemies a very unpleasant way, Cromwell had.

But disposing of and dismissing Mr. Historian Bisset, it still remains true, that to see Cromwell in the full height of his greatness, we must follow him to Scotland, to Dunbar.

It is tolerably easy to understand the state of the question. We have seen the Scots aiding the Parliament and doing battle with the king,-nay, selling him. But they desired the victory of Presbyterianism; Cromwell was opposed to the elevation of any sect. This was one chief cause of the antipathy of the Scotch. Then they invited Charles, son of the late king, from Holland, and proclaimed him king of the Scots; they did not know when they invited him,

Q