"Whereas Charles Stuart, king of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes: and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution remaineth to be done:"These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant."And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good people of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service."Given under our hands and seals.
"Whereas Charles Stuart, king of England, is and standeth convicted, attainted and condemned of High Treason and other high Crimes: and Sentence upon Saturday last was pronounced against him by this Court, to be put to death by the severing of his head from his body; of which Sentence execution remaineth to be done:
"These are therefore to will and require you to see the said Sentence executed, in the open street before Whitehall, upon the morrow, being the thirtieth day of this instant month of January, between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon with full effect. And for so doing, this shall be your warrant.
"And these are to require all Officers and Soldiers, and others the good people of this Nation of England, to be assisting unto you in this service.
"Given under our hands and seals.
"John Bradshaw."Thomas Grey."Oliver Cromwell."And fifty-six others.
"John Bradshaw."Thomas Grey."Oliver Cromwell."And fifty-six others.
The statements of the heartless buffoonery, and the daring violence of Cromwell, at the time of signing the warrant, must be received with some suspicion. He smeared Henry Marten's face with the ink of his pen, and Marten in return smeared his, say the narratives. Probably so. With reference to this anecdote it has been wisely observed, "Such 'toys of desperation' commonly bubble up from a deep flowing stream below." Another anecdote is told by Clarendon; that Colonel Ingoldsby, one who signed the warrant, was forced to do so with great violence, by Cromwell and others; "and Cromwell, with a loud laughter, taking his hand in his, and putting the pen between his fingers, with his own hand writ 'Richard Ingoldsby,' he making all the resistance he could."
Ingoldsby gave this relation, in the desire to obtain a pardonafter the Restoration; and to confirm his story he said, "if his name there were compared with what he had ever writ himself, it could never be looked upon as his own hand." Warburton, in a note upon this passage, says, "The original warrant is still extant, and Ingoldsby's name has no such mark of its being wrote in that manner."
The King knew his fate. He resigned himself to it with calmness and dignity; with one exceptional touch of natural human passion, when he said to Bishop Juxon, although resigning himself to meet his God: "We will not talk of these rogues, in whose hands I am; they thirst for my blood, and they will have it, and God's will be done. I thank God, I heartily forgive them, and I will talk of them no more." He took an affectionate leave of his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, twelve years old; and of his son, the Duke of Gloucester, of the age of eight. To him he said: "Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee king; but thou must not be king so long as thy brothers Charles and James live." And the child said, "I will be torn in pieces first."
There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, while the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors from the states nevertheless persevered, and early in the day of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax. "But we found," they say in their despatch, "in front of the house in which we had just spoken with the general, about two hundred horsemen; and we learned, as well on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent anyone from coming in or going out. The same day, between two and three o'clock, the King was taken to a scaffold covered with black, erected before Whitehall."
To that scaffold before Whitehall Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James' Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. Evelyn records that the Thames was frozen over. The season was so sharp that the King asked to have a shirt more than ordinary when he carefully dressed himself. He left St. James' at ten o'clock. Heremained in his chamber at Whitehall for about three hours in prayer, and then received the sacrament. He was pressed to dine, but refused, taking a piece of bread and a glass of wine. His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people "mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the laws of it." His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude.
It is scarcely necessary that we should offer any opinion upon this tremendous event. The world had never before seen an act so daring conducted with such a calm determination; and the few moderate men of that time balanced the illegality and also the impolicy of the execution of Charles, by the fact that "it was not done in a corner," and that those who directed or sanctioned the act offered no apology, but maintained its absolute necessity and justice. "That horrible sentence upon the most innocent person in the world; the execution of that sentence by the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our blessed Saviour," forms the text which Clarendon gave for the rhapsodies of party during two centuries. On the other hand, the eloquent address of Milton to the people of England has been in the hearts and mouths of many who have known that the establishment of the liberties of their country, duly subordinated by the laws of a free monarchy, may be dated from this event: "God has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemnation, to put him to death."
In these times in England, when the welfare of the throne and the people are identical, we can, on the one hand, afford to refuse our assent to the blasphemous comparison of Clarendon—blasphemy more offensively repeated in the church service for January 30th; and at the same time affirm that the judicial condemnation which Milton so admires was illegal, unconstitutional,and in its immediate results dangerous to liberty. But feeling that far greater dangers would have been incurred if "the caged tiger had been let loose," and knowing that out of the errors and anomalies of those times a wiser revolution grew, for which the first more terrible revolution was a preparation, we may cease to examine this great historical question in any bitterness of spirit, and even acknowledge that the death of Charles, a bad king, though in some respects a good man, was necessary for the life of England, and for her "teaching other nations how to live."
We must accept as just and true Milton's admonition to his countrymen in reference to this event, which he terms "so glorious an action," with many reasonable qualifications as to its glory; and yet apply even to ourselves his majestic words: "After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the highest outward peace and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce—which generally subdue and triumph over other nations—to show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery."
FOOTNOTES:[39]Charles I had been confined here for nearly three weeks.[40]Ludlow uses this text, from Numbers xxxv, in explaining his convictions.
[39]Charles I had been confined here for nearly three weeks.
[39]Charles I had been confined here for nearly three weeks.
[40]Ludlow uses this text, from Numbers xxxv, in explaining his convictions.
[40]Ludlow uses this text, from Numbers xxxv, in explaining his convictions.
Alike on account of its effect upon the Irish people and by reason of the historical debate of which it has continued to be the subject, Cromwell's Irish campaign is a matter of much moment to students of British policy and conquest.Cromwell had already won a complete victory for the Parliamentary forces over the Royalists of England and Scotland, and had suppressed an insurrection in Wales. As a member of the High Court he had signed the death-warrant of Charles I, and on the establishment of the Commonwealth, early in 1649, his preëminence in both military and political leadership gave him almost absolute control of the English government.In 1641 there had been a Catholic uprising in Ireland which was attended with considerable success, won at the cost of slaughter often characterized as massacre. Although Charles I made peace with the insurrectionists in 1643, and soon afterward most of them became Royalists, disorders in Ireland still continued. At last the English Parliament resolved to put an end to these tumults, and in March, 1649, Cromwell was appointed to the supreme command in Ireland.Among the many able writers on Oliver Cromwell none has treated this portion of his career with greater clearness and impartiality than Frederic Harrison, whose history of the campaign in Ireland has been selected, particularly for the sake of these merits, for presentation here.
Alike on account of its effect upon the Irish people and by reason of the historical debate of which it has continued to be the subject, Cromwell's Irish campaign is a matter of much moment to students of British policy and conquest.
Cromwell had already won a complete victory for the Parliamentary forces over the Royalists of England and Scotland, and had suppressed an insurrection in Wales. As a member of the High Court he had signed the death-warrant of Charles I, and on the establishment of the Commonwealth, early in 1649, his preëminence in both military and political leadership gave him almost absolute control of the English government.
In 1641 there had been a Catholic uprising in Ireland which was attended with considerable success, won at the cost of slaughter often characterized as massacre. Although Charles I made peace with the insurrectionists in 1643, and soon afterward most of them became Royalists, disorders in Ireland still continued. At last the English Parliament resolved to put an end to these tumults, and in March, 1649, Cromwell was appointed to the supreme command in Ireland.
Among the many able writers on Oliver Cromwell none has treated this portion of his career with greater clearness and impartiality than Frederic Harrison, whose history of the campaign in Ireland has been selected, particularly for the sake of these merits, for presentation here.
The reconquest of Ireland was by all felt to be the most urgent interest of the young commonwealth; there was almost as much agreement to intrust Cromwell with the task; and after some consideration, and prayerful consultations in the army, he accepted the duty. The condition of England was precarious indeed; service in Ireland was not popular in the army; and an ambitious adventurer would have been loath to quit England while the first place was still unoccupied. It was at great risk to the cause, and at much personal sacrifice, that Cromwell accepted the difficult post in Ireland as his first duty to his country and to religion.
His campaign and the subsequent settlement in Ireland are among those things which weigh heaviest on Cromwell's memory, and which of his stoutest admirers one only has heartily approved. Fortunately, there is no part of his policy where his conduct is more simple and his motives are more plain. The Irish policy of Cromwell was the traditional policy of all Englishmen of his creed and party, and was distinguished from theirs only by his personal vigor and thoroughness. He was neither better nor worse than the English Puritans, or rather all English statesmen for many generations: he was only keener and stronger. When he, with Vane, Fairfax, Whitelocke, and other commissioners, went to the Guildhall to obtain a loan for the campaign, they told the common council that this was a struggle not between Independent and Presbyterian, but between papist and Protestant; that papacy or popery was not to be endured in that kingdom; and they cited the maxim of James I: "Plant Ireland with Puritans, root out papists, and then secure it."
To Cromwell, as to all English Puritans, it seemed a self-evident truth that one of the three realms could not be suffered to become Catholic; as little could it be suffered to become independent, or the open practice of the Catholic religion allowed there, any more than in England; finally, that peace and prosperity could never be secured in Ireland without a dominant and preponderating order of English birth and Protestant belief. By Cromwell, as by the whole Puritan body—we may fairly say by the whole body of Protestants—the Irish rebellion of 1641 was believed to have opened with a barbarous, treacherous, and wholesale massacre, followed during nine years by one prolonged scene of confusion and bloodshed, ending in an almost complete extinction of the Protestant faith and English interests.
The victorious party, and Cromwell more deeply than others, entered on the recovery of Ireland in the spirit of a religious war, to restore to the Protestant cause one of the three realms which had revolted to the powers of darkness. Such was for centuries the spirit of Protestant England.
Five months were occupied in the preparations for this distant and difficult campaign. Cromwell's nomination was on March 15, 1649. On the same day Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the council. During April Cromwell arranged the marriageof his eldest son with the daughter of a very quiet, unambitious squire. On July 10th he set forth from London with much military state. His lifeguard was a body of gentlemen "as is hardly to be paralleled in the world." He still waited a month in the West, his wife and family around him; and thence wrote his beautiful letter to Mayor about his son, and the letter to "my beloved daughter Dorothy Cromwell, at Hursley."
At length all was ready, and he set sail on August 13th with nine thousand men in about one hundred ships. He was invested with supreme civil, as well as military, command in Ireland; amply supplied with material and a fleet. Ireton, his son-in-law, was his second in command.
On landing in Dublin, the general made a speech to the people, in which he spoke of his purpose as "the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish, and all their adherents and confederates, for the propagating of the gospel of Christ, the establishing of truth and peace, and restoring that bleeding nation to its former happiness and tranquillity." His first act was to remodel the Irish army, making "a huge purge of the army which we found here: it was an army made up of dissolute and debauched men"; and the general issued a proclamation against swearing and drunkenness, and another against the "wickedness" that had been taken by the soldiery "to abuse, rob, and pillage, and too often to execute cruelties upon the country people," promising to protect all peaceable inhabitants, and to pay them in ready money for all goods. Two soldiers were shortly hanged for disobeying these orders.
Having made a general muster of his forces in Dublin, and formed a complete body of fifteen thousand horse and foot, he selected a force of ten thousand stout, resolute men, and advanced on Drogheda (in English, Tredagh). Drogheda is a seaport town on the Boyne, about twenty-three miles due north of Dublin. It was strongly fortified, and Ormonde,[41]as Clarendon tells us, had put into it "the flower of his army, both of soldiers and officers,most of them English, to the number of three thousand foot, and two or three good troops of horse, provided with all things." Sir Arthur Ashton, an English Catholic, an officer "ofgreat name and experience, and who at that time made little doubt of defending it against all the power of Cromwell," was in chief command.
Cromwell's horse reached Drogheda on September 3d, his memorable day; some skirmishes followed, and on the 10th the batteries opened in earnest, after formal summons to the garrison to surrender. A steeple and a tower were beaten down the first day; all through the 11th the batteries continued, and at length effected "two reasonable breaches." About five in the evening of the second day the storm began. "After some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hundred men; the enemy disputing it very stiffly with us." But a tremendous rally of the garrison—wherein Colonel Castle and other officers were killed—drove out the column, which retreated disheartened and baffled. Then the general did that which as commander he was seldom wont to do, and which he passes in silence in his despatches.
"Resolved," says Ludlow, "to put all upon it, he went down to the breach; and calling out a fresh reserve of Colonel Ewer's men, he put himself at their head, and with the word 'our Lord God,' led them up again with courage and resolution, though they met with a hot dispute." Thus encouraged to recover their loss, they got ground of the enemy, forced him to quit his intrenchments, and poured into the town. There many retreated to the Millmount, a place very strong and difficult of access; "exceedingly high and strongly palisaded." This place commanded the whole town: thither Sir Arthur Ashton and other important officers had betaken themselves. But the storming party burst in, and were ordered by Cromwell to put them all to the sword. The rest of the garrison fled over the bridge to the northern side of the town; but the Ironsides followed them hotly, both horse and foot, and drove them into St. Peter's Church and the towers of the ramparts.
St. Peter's Church was set on fire by Cromwell's order. He writes to the speaker: "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 two thousand men." Next day the other towers were summoned, and the work of slaughter was renewed for two days, until the entire garrison was annihilated. It was unquestionably a massacre. "That nightthey put to the sword about two thousand men." In St. Peter's Church "near a thousand of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety." "Their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously." "I do not think we lost a hundred men upon the place." Such are a few passages from Cromwell's own despatches.
The slaughter was indeed prodigious. The general writes: "I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives." "The enemy were about three thousand strong in the town." "I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant." He subsequently gives a detailed list of the slain, amounting to about three thousand. Hugh Peters, the chaplain, reports as follows:
"Sir, the truth is, Drogheda is taken, three thousand five hundred fifty-two of the enemy slain, and sixty-four of ours. Ashton the governor, killed, none spared." It is also certain that quarter was refused. "I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town." It is expressly told us that all officers and all priests taken were killed. From the days of Clarendon it has been repeated by historians that men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, and there is evidence of an eye-witness to that effect; but this is not believed to have been done by the order, or even with the knowledge, of the general. The Royalist accounts insist that quarter was promised at first; and that the butchery of men in cold blood was carried on for days. Here again the act must have been exceptional and without authority.
To Cromwell himself this fearful slaughter was a signal triumph of the truth. "It hath pleased God to bless our endeavors." "This hath been a marvellous great mercy." "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 was set upon some of our hearts, That a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God." In the same sense it was received by Parliament and council of state, by some of the noblest spirits of their age.
Ludlow says simply that this "extraordinary severity was used to discourage others from making opposition." It had always been the policy of Cromwell in battle to inflict a crushing defeat; at Marston, at Naseby, and at Preston he had "taken execution of the enemy" for hours and over miles of country. At Basing and elsewhere, after a summons and a storm, he had slaughtered hundreds without mercy. And such was the law of war in that age, practised on both sides without hesitation. But the item of numbers and of time tells very heavily here. The killing of hundreds in hot blood differs from the massacre of thousands during days.
There was no such act in the whole civil war as the massacre—prolonged for days—of three thousand men enclosed in walls entirely at the mercy of their captors, to say nothing of the promiscuous slaughter of priests, if not of women and unarmed men.
In England such a deed could not have been done; and not in Ireland, but that they were Catholics fighting in defence of their faith. The fact that the garrison were Catholics, fighting on Irish soil, placed them, to the Puritan Englishman, out of the pale. No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness—no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England—can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity.
The tremendous blow at Drogheda struck terror into Ormonde's forces. Dundalk and Trim were abandoned in haste. O'Neil swore a great oath that as Cromwell had stormed Drogheda, if he should storm hell he should take it. One fort after another yielded; and in a fortnight from the taking of Drogheda Cromwell was master of the country north of Dublin. Marching from Dublin south, on September 23d, his army took forts in Wicklow, Arklow, and Enniscorthy; and on October 1st the general encamped before Wexford, an important seaport at the southeastern corner of the island. The town was strong, with a rampart fifteen feet thick, a garrison of over two thousand men, one hundred cannon, and in the harbor two ships armed with fifty-four guns.
Cromwell summoned the governor to surrender, not obscurely threatening him with the fate of Drogheda. "It will clearly appear," he said, "where the guilt will lie if innocent persons should come to suffer with the nocent." His terms were quarter and prison to the officers, quarter and freedom to the soldiers, protection from plunder to the town. These terms were refused, and both sides continued the fight. Suddenly, some breaches being made in the castle, the captain surrendered it, and by a surprise the whole army of the Commonwealth poured into the town. The townsmen took part in the defence; and townsmen and garrison together were forced into the market-place.
There, as at Drogheda, a promiscuous massacre ensued. Upward of two thousand were slain, and with them not a few of the citizens; and the town was delivered over to pillage. It is asserted by the Catholic writers that a body of women, who had taken refuge round the cross, were deliberately slaughtered, and that a general massacre took place without regard to sex or age. Priests were killed at once, and in the sack and pillage undoubtedly some noncombatants, it may be some women and children. But these things were incidents of such a storm, and were not done by design or order of the general. This is his own story:
"While I was preparing of it; studying to preserve the Town from plunder, that it might be of the more use to you and your Army—the Captain, who was one of the Commissioners, being fairly treated, yielded up the Castle to us. Upon the top of which our men no sooner appeared, but the Enemy quitted the Walls of the Town; which our men perceiving, ran violently upon the Town with their ladders, and stormed it. And when they were come into the market-place, the Enemy making a stiff resistance, our forces brake them; and then put all to the sword that came in their way. Two boatfuls of the Enemy attempting to escape, being overprest with numbers, sank; whereby were drowned near three hundred of them. I believe, in all, there was lost of the Enemy not many less than Two-thousand; and I believe not Twenty of yours from first to last of the Siege. And indeed it hath, not without cause, been deeply set upon our hearts, That, we intending better to this place than so great a ruin, hoping the Town might be of more use to you and your Army, yet Godwould not have it so; but by an unexpected providence, in His righteous justice, brought a just judgment upon them; causing them to become a prey to the Soldier—who in their piracies had made preys of so many families, and now with their bloods to answer the cruelties which they have exercised upon the lives of divers poor Protestants!
"This Town is now so in your power, that of the former inhabitants, I believe scarce one in twenty can challenge any property in their houses. Most of them are run away, and many of them killed in this service. And it were to be wished that an honest people would come and plant here."
The blow that had desolated Drogheda and Wexford did not need to be repeated. Ross was taken; the Munster garrisons—Cork, Kinsale, and others—joined the Commonwealth. And within three months of Cromwell's march from Dublin, the whole of the towns on the eastern and southern sides of Ireland, except Waterford and some others, were reduced to the Parliament. Waterford resisted them; a wet winter set in; and with the wet, dysentery and fever. Cromwell fell ill; many officers sickened; General Jones died. "What England lost hereby is above me to speak," wrote the general. "I am sure I lost a noble friend and companion in labors. You see how God mingles out the cup to us. Indeed we are at this time a crazy company: yet we live in His sight; and shall work the time that is appointed us, and shall rest after that in peace."
After a short rest, on January 29th Cromwell was again in the field. He passed into the heart of the island—into Kilkenny and Tipperary; Clogheen, Castletown, Fethard, Callan, Cashel, Cahir, Kilkenny, Carrick, were taken after a short defence; and Clonmel at last surrendered after a desperate attempt at storm, which cost Cromwell, it is said, two thousand men. This was his last great fight in Ireland. He had now crushed opposition in the whole east and south of the island; the north had returned to the Protestant cause; Waterford fell soon after; and except Limerick, Galway, and a few fortresses, the Parliament's forces were masters of the island. Cromwell had been nine months in Ireland, and at no time possessed an army of more than fifteen thousand men. Within that time he had taken a score of strong places, and in a series of bloody encounters had dispersed or annihilatedarmies of far greater number than his own. An official summons to England had been sent in January; and it was not till the end of May that he actually obeyed it.
As Cromwell's practice in warfare in Ireland differed somewhat from what he observed elsewhere, and as from that day to this it has been the subject of furious invective, a few words thereon are plainly needed. Cromwell had gone to Ireland, at imminent risk to his cause, to recover it to the Parliament in the shortest possible time, and with a relatively small army. He had gone there first to punish, as was believed, a wholesale massacre and a social revolution, to restore the Irish soil to England, and to replace the Protestant ascendency. In the view of the Commonwealth government, the mass was by law a crime, Catholic priests were legally outlaws, and all who resisted the Parliament were constructively guilty of murder and rebellion. Such were the accepted axioms of the whole Puritan party, and of Cromwell as much as any man.
In such a war he held that where a place was stormed after summons, all in arms might justly be put to the sword, though no longer capable of resistance, and though they amounted to thousands. "They," he writes, "refusing conditions seasonably offered, were all put to the sword." Repeatedly he shot all officers who surrendered at discretion. Officers who had once served the Parliament he hanged. Priests, taken alive, were hanged. "As for your clergymen, as you call them," wrote Oliver to the governor of Kilkenny, "in case you agree for a surrender, they shall march away safely; but if they fall otherwise into my hands, I believe they know what to expect from me." At Gowran the castle surrendered. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commission officers were shot to death. In the same castle also he took a popish priest, who was chaplain to the Catholics in this regiment; who was caused to be hanged."
The Bishop of Ross, marching to save Clonmel with five thousand men, was defeated by Broghill, captured, and hanged in sight of his own men. The Bishop of Clogher was routed by Coote and Venables and shared the same fate. "All their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously," Cromwell wrote at Drogheda—as the Catholic martyrologies assert, with torture.Peaceable inhabitants were not to be molested. But all who had taken part in or supported the rebellion of 1641 were liable to justice.
For soldiers he found a new career. By a stroke of profound policy he encouraged foreign embassies to enlist Irish volunteers, giving them a free pass abroad. And thus it is said some forty thousand Irishmen ultimately passed into the service of foreign sovereigns. With great energy and skill the Lord-Lieutenant set about the reorganization of government in Ireland. A leading feature of this was the Cromwellian settlement afterward carried out under the Protectorate, by which immense tracts of land in the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster were allotted to English settlers, and the landowners of Irish birth removed into Connaught.
Cromwell has left on record his own principles of action in the famous declaration which he issued in January in reply to the Irish bishops:
"Ireland," he says, "was once united to England. Englishmen had inheritances and leases which they had purchased: and they lived peaceably. You broke this Union. You, unprovoked, put the English to the most unheard-of and most barbarous massacre (without respect of sex or age) that ever the sun beheld. It is a fig-leaf of pretence that they fight for their king: really it is for men guilty of blood—helium prelaticum et religiosum—as you say. You are a part of Anti-Christ, whose kingdom the Scripture so expressly speaks should be laid in blood, yea, in the blood of the saints.
"You quote my own words at Ross," he says, "that where the Parliament of England have power, the exercise of the mass will not be allowed of; and you say that this is a design to extirpate the Catholic religion. I cannot extirpate what has never been rooted. These are my intentions. I shall not, where I have power, suffer the exercise of the mass. Nor shall I suffer any Papists, where I find them seducing the people, or by overt act violating the laws. As for the people, what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach."
But as to the charge of massacre, destruction, or banishment he says: "Give us an instance of one man since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed or banished; concerningthe massacre or the destruction of whom justice hath not been done, or endeavored to be done."
This very pointed and daring challenge could hardly have been publicly made by such a man as Cromwell, if, to his knowledge, a slaughter of women and unarmed men had occurred. On the other hand, it is certain that priests and others had been killed in cold blood; and a general who delivers over a city to pillage, and forbids quarter, can hardly say where outrage and massacre will cease. As to banishment, the "Cromwellian settlement" was necessarily based on the banishment of those whom the settlers displaced.
With regard to the policy of confiscation and resettlement, Cromwell warmly justifies it. It is the just way of meeting rebellion, he says. You have forfeited your estates, and it is just to raise money by escheating your lands. But apart from the land forfeited, which is but a part of the account, if ever men were engaged in a just and righteous cause it was this, he asserts:
"We are come to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed; and to endeavor to bring to an account—by the presence and blessing of the Almighty, in whom alone is our hope and strength—all who, by appearing in arms, seek to justify the same. We come to break the power of lawless Rebels, who having cast off the Authority of England, live as enemies to Human Society; whose principles, the world hath experience, are, To destroy and subjugate all men not complying with them. We come, by the assistance of God, to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English Liberty in a Nation where we have an undoubted right to do it;—wherein the people of Ireland (if they listen not to such seducers as you are) may equally participate in all benefits; to use liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they keep out of arms."
Such was the basis of the famous "Cromwellian settlement"—by far the most thorough act in the long history of the conquest of Ireland; by far the most wholesale effort to impose on Ireland the Protestant faith and English ascendency. Wholesale and thorough, but not enough for its purpose. It failed like all the others; did more, perhaps, than any other to bind Ireland to the Catholic Church, and to alienate Irishmen from the English rule. On the Irish race it has left undying memories and a legend oftyranny which is summed up in the peasants' saying of the "Curse of Cromwell."
Cromwell, not worse than the Puritans and English of his age, but nobler and more just, must yet for generations to come bear the weight of the legendary "curse." He was the incarnation of Puritan passion, the instrument of English ambition; the official authority by whom the whole work was carried out, the one man ultimately responsible for the rest; and it is thus that on him lies chiefly the weight of this secular national quarrel.
FOOTNOTES:[41]James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, was now head of the Irish Royalists.—Ed.
[41]James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, was now head of the Irish Royalists.—Ed.
[41]James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, was now head of the Irish Royalists.—Ed.
The seventeenth century was the period of a very remarkable literary outburst in France, an outburst which has done much to mould French genius of more recent times. The latter part of the century, which has been called the Augustan age of France, the age of Louis XIV, has certainly been but seldom equalled in the number and variety of the writers who adorned it. Yet it owes much of its brilliancy, much of its rapid development, to the training of the decades previous to 1650, and especially to the enthusiastic patronage of that great statesman Richelieu. Were a Frenchman seeking for a single event, a single date to mark the most striking moment of this literary era, he would probably select the foundation of the French Academy by Richelieu, in 1635. Or perhaps he might turn to the production of Corneille's most famous tragedy,Le Cid, in 1633. Neither of these events, however, has quite what we would recognize as a world-wide significance. The Academy has done much for France, but it has always remained a French academy, and the forty "immortal" Frenchmen who constitute its membership have not always owed their election solely to literary eminence. Neither have Corneille's tragedies been accepted as models by the world at large.But under Corneille's influence the French stage developed from a state of buffoonery and wooden imitation of the ancients to a state where a greater artist than Corneille gave it really world-wide prominence. Molière is not only the most celebrated of French actor-managers; he is the greatest of all character-comedy writers, the teacher of all future generations, and the satiric scourge of his own. When in 1659 his comedyLes précieuses Ridiculestook Paris by storm, it did more than make a reformation of the manners of its own. It taught the world what true comedy should be, and it sent ringing through the universe forever a mighty trumpet-note against hypocrisy and folly.
The seventeenth century was the period of a very remarkable literary outburst in France, an outburst which has done much to mould French genius of more recent times. The latter part of the century, which has been called the Augustan age of France, the age of Louis XIV, has certainly been but seldom equalled in the number and variety of the writers who adorned it. Yet it owes much of its brilliancy, much of its rapid development, to the training of the decades previous to 1650, and especially to the enthusiastic patronage of that great statesman Richelieu. Were a Frenchman seeking for a single event, a single date to mark the most striking moment of this literary era, he would probably select the foundation of the French Academy by Richelieu, in 1635. Or perhaps he might turn to the production of Corneille's most famous tragedy,Le Cid, in 1633. Neither of these events, however, has quite what we would recognize as a world-wide significance. The Academy has done much for France, but it has always remained a French academy, and the forty "immortal" Frenchmen who constitute its membership have not always owed their election solely to literary eminence. Neither have Corneille's tragedies been accepted as models by the world at large.
But under Corneille's influence the French stage developed from a state of buffoonery and wooden imitation of the ancients to a state where a greater artist than Corneille gave it really world-wide prominence. Molière is not only the most celebrated of French actor-managers; he is the greatest of all character-comedy writers, the teacher of all future generations, and the satiric scourge of his own. When in 1659 his comedyLes précieuses Ridiculestook Paris by storm, it did more than make a reformation of the manners of its own. It taught the world what true comedy should be, and it sent ringing through the universe forever a mighty trumpet-note against hypocrisy and folly.
The drama attained its highest excellence and repute in the age of Louis XIV, and we should not be making a very hazardous assertion if we were to say that the literature of that epoch in France attained its height of glory in the drama. No French dramatist has excelled Molière, Corneille, and Racine; no group of authors in the seventeenth century were more brilliant, morepowerful, more originative. When we turn our eyes upon the stage for which these three wrote, we find ourselves in the full splendor of the Augustan age, in all its refinement and culture, its luxury and elegance, its strength of wit and justness of expression, its social polish and gorgeous display.
Great as was the advance made by the audience of Jodelle upon the audience of the "moralities" and "sotties," the advance of the court and society under the Valois was equally great. The Grand Monarque, listening to a masterpiece of Corneille, Molière, or Racine, surrounded by his brilliant circle of lords and ladies, represented an almost incalculable development of ceremonious culture, in idea, in apparel, and in general surroundings, since the day when, about a hundred years before, while the blossom of the Renaissance was barely expanded, the popinjay King Henry II looked on at the first crude sketch of a French classical play. Stage, scenery, appointments, audience, critic, music, actors, and authors, all now bore witness to and adorned, as they were in fact the most elaborate product of, an Augustan age.
Paris up to this time had had little opportunity of knowing what true comedy was. It had had farces in abundance, not only of home growth, but imported, and from Italy in particular. When Molière came before the public with his homogeneous and well-trained company, and his repertory of excellent character-sketches and comic situations, the prevailing sentiment was expressed by a member of the audience which listened to the first production of hisPrécieuses Ridicules: "Courage, Molière; this is genuine comedy!"
France had long been waiting for genuine comedy; waiting rather by an instinctive requirement of the national genius, and with an aptitude to appreciate the highest comic art as soon as it might be manifested, than with any definite conception of the exact thing that was lacking on the stage. The French nature was precisely fitted to produce and to enjoy the loftiest style of character-comedy, but no modern literature had hitherto exhibited that which Molière was to provide. The author of thePrécieuses RidiculesandTartuffewas essentially the outcome of his age, the dramatist of drawing-room life, whose genius enabled him to web the foibles of the salon with elegant phraseology, andscenic effect with admirable poetic expression; and the contrast between his lofty and conscientious work and the puerilities and license of the Spanish and Italian models was as marked as it was readily recognized.
Yet it was no easy matter to acclimatize in France even the high style of comedy introduced by Molière, and he had to inter-mix it with a good many farces to make it go down. For twelve long years, leading the life of a strolling player, Molière observed and studied character; and when at last he thought himself safe from opposition, under the powerful patronage of Louis XIV, the Church, the University, the Sorbonne, and the bigotry of the statesmen—once more united as in the age of Francis I—conspired to cast stumbling-blocks in the way of literary freedom. It was the authorities of the Church which, shocked and jealous at the enthusiasm which greeted the appearance ofTartuffe, brought the veto of the King to bear against the company of the Palais Royal; and though Molière believed that his private intercession had obtained the removal of this veto, his enemies were bold and powerful enough during the absence of Louis, on the further representation of the play, to prevent its production a second time. Molière was able to cope with his adversaries; yet it is a noteworthy fact that the decree of excommunication passed against comedians in France was not absolutely rescinded until the present century.
We do not forget that Corneille wrote comedies before Molière; and indeed there is no doubt that the younger of the two dramatists owed something, even in comedy, to the older. Molière began by adapting from and imitating the Italian and Spanish comedy-writers, upon whom many of his first farces were founded, and it is not at all unlikely that he even remodelled some of the earlier sotties. It was perhaps due to Corneille's influence as much as to anything else that his genius at last discovered its true level. He confessed to Boileau his great indebtedness toLe Menteur. "When it was first performed," he says, "I had already a wish to write, but was in doubt as to what it should be. My ideas were still confused, but this piece determined them. In short, but for the appearance ofLe Menteur, though I should no doubt have written comedies of intrigue, likeL'Etourdi, orLe Dépit Amoureux, I should perhaps never have written theMisanthrope." Eliminate the generosity from this confession, and no doubt the truth remains that Molière did form his best style of comedy upon the master of French tragedy.
Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who subsequently assumed the name of Molière, was born in the year that François de Sales died, one year after the birth of La Fontaine, four years before the birth of his friend Chapelle and of Madame de Sévigné. WhenLe Cidwas first performed he was fourteen years old, and twenty-two at the time of the first representation ofLe Menteur. The son of avalet-de-chambre tapissierof Louis XIII, he succeeded in due course to the emoluments and honors, such as they were, of his father; but he had early conceived a passion for the stage, and in 1643 he attached himself to the Illustre Théâtre of Madeleine Béjart, a woman four years his senior. With her were already associated her brother Joseph, her sister Geneviève, about two years younger than Molière, and eight others, most of whom had dropped out of the company before its final settlement in Paris.
For a year or two the Illustre Théâtre tempted fortune in the capital without success, and in 1646 they commenced a tour through the provinces which was destined to continue for twelve years. The debts which they had incurred weighed upon them during the whole of this time, and principally upon Molière, who was once imprisoned and several times arrested at the suit of the company's creditors. No doubt these latter had discovered that the young actor had friends who would rescue him from durance, which was done on several occasions, but as late as 1660 we read of Molière's discharging probably the last of the debts for which at this period he made himself responsible.
The plays first acted by Molière and his friends were, of course, the farces then most in vogue; among others the comedies of Scarron and the yet inferior productions of Denis Beys and Desfontaines. The former had written a ridiculous piece calledL'Hôpital des Fous. The latter was the author ofEurymédon ou l'Illustre Pirate, l'Illustre Comédien ou le Martyre de Saint-Genes, and of several other inflated pieces. It would be difficult to fix the exact date at which Molière's earliest plays were produced, but it is probable that he began to write for his company as soon as he had enlisted in it. He seems, likeShakespeare, to have, in part at least, adapted the plays of others; but in 1653, if not earlier, he had producedL'Etourdi, and in 1656Le Dépit Amoureux.
The Illustre Théâtre is heard of at Nantes, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Lyons, where Molière produced his first serious attempt at high comedy in verse,L'Etourdi. In 1653 they played by invitation at the country seat of the Prince de Conti, the schoolfellow of Molière. Three years later they played theDépit Amoureuxat Béziers during the meeting in that town of the Parliament of Languedoc. At Grenoble, in 1658, the painter Mignard, with other of his admirers, persuaded him to take his company—for he was joint manager with Madeleine Béjart—to Paris; and this he did, after a concluding trip to Rouen. In Paris they began by playing before Philippe, Duke of Anjou, the brother of Louis XIV, who took them under his protection and introduced them to the court.
At this time the company was considerably stronger, as well as richer, than when it left Paris. There were now four ladies, Madeleine Béjart, Geneviève Béjart, Duparc, and Debrie; the two brothers Béjart—the youngest, Louis, had joined at Lyons—Duparc, Debrie, Dufresne, and Croisac making, with Molière himself, eleven persons. It may be concluded that their tour, or, at all events, that part of it which dated from Lyons, had been very successful; for we find that Joseph Béjart, who died early in 1659, left behind him a fortune of twenty-four thousand golden crowns. So at least we are told by the physician Guy-Patin in a letter dated May 27, 1659; and he adds, "Is it not enough to make one believe that Peru is no longer in America, but in Paris?"
The condition of the drama in Paris at the time when Molière returned to the capital was anything but satisfactory. There were in 1658 five theatres in Paris: One at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; one at the Marais; one under the patronage of Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orléans; a Spanish company; and an Italian company at the Petit Bourbon, under the managership of Torelli. It was with the first and last of these that Molière came chiefly into conflict; and it is probable that the other three were of no great account, at all events as competitors for the favor of the general public. Torelli soon found that thenewcomer commanded his hundreds where he himself could only count by scores, and he gave up the Petit Bourbon to Molière in 1659.
Molière's company called themselves "Comédiens de Monsieur"; and after Torelli had left them full possession of the Petit Bourbon, their greatest rivals in public favor were the company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who played Corneille, Scudéry, Scarron, and other authors of less note. In 1659 Molière took the town by storm with hisPrécieuses Ridicules, a satire in one act on the exaggerations of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. This was followed in the succeeding year bySganarelle ou le Cocu Imaginaire; in the beginning of 1661 appearedDon Garcie de Navarre, a heroic piece in five acts, intended to delineate the evils of passionate jealousy; and in the same year were producedL'École des Maris, a satire on unreasonable jealousy, andLes Fâcheux, a court sketch of several kinds of bores; in 1662L'École des Femmes—an attempt to show the danger of bringing girls up in too strict a manner—with its sequel, theCritique de l'École des Femmes, in the year after.
Boursault, an amiable man but a mediocre playwright, envious of Molière's growing fame, wrote for the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which eagerly accepted, if it did not bespeak, his piece,Le Portrait du Peintre ou la Contrecritique de l'École des Femmes, in which he attempted to bring his brother-author into ridicule; but Molière took ample revenge in hisImpromptu de Versailles, in which he soundly lashed his rivals, though it may be mentioned to his honor that it was never printed during his lifetime. In 1664 he wrote theMariage Forcé, a one-act piece with eightentrées de ballet, specially designed for court representation, in which the King himself was pleased to dance, and, a month or two later, thePrincesse d'Elide, a cumbrous and comparatively inferior production, done in great haste at the command of Louis XIV, who had determined upon an eight-days' festival in honor of Louise de la Vallière.
It was during these festivities that for the first time was represented the first three acts of Molière's masterpiece,Tartuffe ou l'Imposteur, a play well worthy of the best and most legitimate subject which satire can have to deal with. Nothing can be fairer or more appropriate than that the art which consists infeigning a representation of real life on the stage should take, as the butt of its ridicule and the object of its skill, the man whose whole life and character are engaged in feigning the possession of virtue and seeming to be that which he is not. The earliest satirists and dramatists have seized on the topic with avidity; and to go no further out of our way than Molière's predecessors in France, we may mention the authors of the romance ofReynard the Fox, Rutebœuf; Jean de Meung, the author of theFarce des Brus, Regnier, Scarron, even Pascal.
Very various, no doubt, are the hypocritical types encountered in the works of these and other satirists; but all must necessarily have a certain amount of family likeness, and many a hereditary trait is recognized as common to at least two, if not to all, of the race. "Molière gives us the hypocrite by nature, the man who would be a canting scoundrel even if it did not 'pay'; who cannot help being so; who is a human being, and therefore not perfect; who is a man, and thus sensually inclined; who employs certain means to subdue his passions and to become a 'whited sepulchre,' but who gives way all the more to them when he imagines that he can do so with impunity." Tartuffe, who ought to be bound to Orgon by the strongest ties of gratitude, allows the son to be turned out of the house by his father, because the latter will not believe the accusations brought against the hypocrite—tries to seduce his benefactor's wife, to marry his daughter by a first marriage; and finally, after having obtained all his dupe's property, betrays him to the king as a criminal against the state. Thedénouementof the play is that Tartuffe himself is led to prison, and that vice is for the nonce punished on the stage as it deserves to be.
Tartuffemade many enemies for Molière, especially among the clergy, who were not afraid of being twitted with their too ready application to themselves of the moral of the play. It was prohibited in 1664; and some zealous clergymen even went so far as to write treatises which they hoped would counteract the effects of the dramatist's works. For their own sakes we may hope that they did not succeed. The King was not strong enough to withstand the influence of the clergy, and did not venture at once to remove the interdict. The relaxation did not take place until five years later. But it was at this time thatLouis XIV bestowed on Molière's company the name of "Comédiens du Roi"; and the troop was subsidied by a yearly pension of seven thousand livres.
Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, a piece in which a nobleman—who is a libertine as well as a sceptic and a hypocrite—is brought upon the stage, was first acted in February, 1665, and raised such an outcry that it was also forbidden to be played. In spite of failing health and serious depression of spirits, Molière continued to produce play after play; and some of his best and most admired were the fruits of his most unhappy moments.
Early in 1662 he had married Armande Béjart, the youngest sister of Madeleine Béjart, who was about twenty years younger than her husband. It was apparently a marriage of mutual affection, but it can hardly be said to have been a fortunate one for either. Armande loved admiration from whatever source, and indulged in pleasures which her husband could not share. The breach between them gradually widened, and it was not till 1671 that their friends brought about a better understanding between them. Meanwhile, in September, 1665, appearedL'Amour Médecin, a comedy in three acts, in which a lover appears disguised as a physician, to cure the object of his love, pretends to be dumb, and in which Molière makes his first serious attack against the doctors.
It was acted only a few times when the theatre had to be closed on account of the author's illness; and the death of Anne of Austria, in the spring of 1666, delayed its reopening until June of that year. It was then that theMisanthropewas introduced to the public—a play which has been ranked as high in comedy asAthalieis ranked in French tragedy. The circumstances under which it was written were such as might almost warrant us in calling it a tragedy; for the great satirist, who had spent his life in copying the eccentricities of others, had now employed the season of his illness to commit to paper a drama in which he was himself the principal actor. The misanthrope Alceste loves the coquette Célimène, almost against his will; and we can imagine the feelings with which Molière himself took therôleof Alceste to his wife's Célimène.
In 1669 the King, growing more independent of his advisers, sanctioned the production ofTartuffe; but this strengthening ofhis repertory did not prevent Molière producingMonsieur de Pourceaudnac, a farcical comedy in three acts, in which there is a masterly and not exaggerated sketch of a consultation of doctors in Molière's time; and, in 1670, theBourgeois Gentilhomme, in which the folly of aping noblemen is delineated, as well as theAmants Magnifiques, a comedy-ballet for the particular behoof of the court. In 1671 he combined with Corneille and Quinault in the production ofPsyche, a tragedy-ballet, and wrote, or rather, perhaps, remodelled from among his earlier efforts, theFourberies de Scapinand theComtesse d'Escarbagnas.
His two last works were among the highest and happiest creations of his genius—theFemmes Savantes, a sort of sequel to thePrécieuses Ridicules, though of a more general application—and theMalade Imaginaire. In the latter, he insisted on playing the part of Argan upon the first representation, February 10, 1673; but it was the crowning act of his energetic mind. He became ill during the fourth representation of the play, and died that same evening, February 17th, exactly one year after Madeleine Béjart, with whom, seven-and-twenty years ago, he had set out from Paris with little more ambition than that of earning a livelihood by the pursuit of a congenial career.
Molière placed upon the stage nearly all human passions which lend themselves to comedy or farce. Sordid avarice, lavish prodigality, shameless vice, womanly resignation, artless coquetry, greed for money, downright hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ingenuity, roguery, affectations, homeliness, thoughtlessness, pedantry, arrogance, and many more faults and vices, find their representatives. The language which they employ is always natural to them, and is neither too gross nor over-refined. His verse has none of the stiffness of the ordinary French rhyme, and becomes in his hands, as well as his prose, a delightful medium for sparkling sallies, bitter sarcasms, and well-sustained and sprightly conversations.
And how remarkable and delicate is the nuance between his different characters, though they may represent the same profession or an identical personage. None of his doctors are alike;his male and female scholars are all dissimilar. Mascarille is not Gros-Réné, Scapin is not Sbrigani, Don Juan is not Dorante, Alceste is not Philinte, Isabelle is not Agnes, Sganarelle is not always the same, Ariste is not Béralde nor Chrysalde; while even his servants, Nicole, Dorine, Martine, Marotte, Toinette, Claudine, and Lisette; his boobies, such as Alain and Lubin, and his intriguants in petticoats, such as Nérine, Lucette, Frosine, vary in character, expression, and conduct. They exemplify the saying, "Like master, like man."
A remarkable characteristic of Molière is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate, and the moral of his plays is not obtruded, but follows as a natural consequence of the whole. He rarely rises to those lofty realms of poetry where Shakespeare so often soars, for he wrote not idealistic, but character, comedies; which is, perhaps, the reason that some of his would-be admirers consider him rather commonplace. His claim to distinction is based only on strong common-sense, good manners, sound morality, real wit, true humor, a great, facile, and accurate command of language, and a photographic delineation of nature.
It cannot be denied that there is little action in his plays, but there is a great deal of natural conversation; his personages show that he was a most attentive observer of men, even at court, where a certain varnish of overrefinement conceals nearly all individual features. He generally makes vice appear in its most ridiculous aspect, in order to let his audience laugh and despise it; his aim is to correct the follies of the age by exposing them to ridicule.