Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/259

] and on the last of October, in the night, Essex's horse, under Sir William Balfour, by a successful manoeuvre, passed the enemy, and made their way back to London. Essex, with lord Roberts and many of his officers, escaped in a boat to Plymouth, and major-general Skippon, with the fort, capitulated, leaving to the king their arms and artillery.

This was a most ignominious termination of Essex's movement westward, which he had undertaken and continued, spite of the remonstrance of the parliament. He had no right to expect anything but the most severe censure; but he retired to his house, and demanded an investigation, charging his failure to the neglect of Waller. The parliament, however, instead of reproaching him, thanked him for the fidelity which he had shown when tempted by the king, and for his many past services.

But there was an eye which had long been casting a scrutinising glance over the proceedings of the aristocratic generals, to whom was intrusted the care of the commonwealth, and a mind which was at war with their slow notions and their blind meanderings in aimless confusion. These were the eye and the mind of Oliver Cromwell. His clear perception seized at once on the general view of things; and by an unending instinct, flew lightning like to the spot of necessary action. But it was in vain that he endeavoured to move the heavy spirit of his superior, the earl of Manchester, and hence they came more and more to disputes. Cromwell was insubordinate because it was impossible that fire could be subordinate to earth. In vain he pointed out what ought to be done, and he grew impatient and irritated at what was not done. That irritation and impatience became the greater as he turned his eyes on what Essex, Waller, and the rest of the parliamentary generals were doing. It seemed to him that they were asleep, paralysed, when a few bold strokes would bring the war to a close.

Charles having broken up Essex's army in Cornwall, and put Essex himself to flight, made a hasty march back again to Oxford to avoid being himself in turn cooped up in the narrow west. Already the parliament was mustering its forces for that purpose. Essex and Waller, the old slow-worm generals, were again set at the head of troops, and the victorious forces of Marston Moor, wider Manchester and Cromwell, were summoned to join them, the enemy being quelled northwards. They endeavoured to stop the king in his attempt to reach Oxford, and encountered him again near the old ground of battle at Newbury. Charles was attacked in two places at once, Show on the eastern, and at Speen on the western side of the town. The earl of Essex was ill, or, as many believed, pretended to be so; at all events, the command fell to Manchester. On the 26th of October, this first brush took place, and the next morning being Sunday, the attack was renewed more vigorously. The soldiers of Manchester, or rather of Cromwell, went into the fight singing psalms, as was their wont. The battle was fiercely contested, and it was not till ten o'clock at night that Charles retreated towards Wallingford. It was full moonlight, and Cromwell prepared to pursue him, but was withheld by Manchester. Again and again did Cromwell insist on the necessity of following and completing the rout of the royal army. "The next morning," says Ludlow, "we drew together and followed the enemy with our horse, which was the greatest body that I saw together during the war, amounting at least to seven thousand horse and dragoons; but they had got so much ground, that we could never recover sight of them, and did not expect to see any more in a body that year; neither had we, as I suppose, if encouragement had not been given privately by some of our party."

In other and plain words, there were strong suspicions that the aristocratic generals did not want to press the king too close. This became apparent ten days after. The king, on retreating, had done exactly as he did before at this same Newbury; he had thrown all his artillery into the castle of Donnington, and now he came back again to fetch it, nobody attempting to hinder him, as nobody had attempted to reduce Donnington and secure the artillery. So extraordinary was the conduct of the parliamentary generals, that though Charles passed through their lines both in going and returning from Donnington, and even offered them battle, no one stirred. The generals dispersed their army into winter quarters, and both parliament and public loudly complained of the affair of Newbury. The parliament set on foot an inquiry into the causes of the strange neglect of public duty, and they soon saw one powerful cause in the jealousies and contentions of the generals. Each and all laid the fault on the others. It was time that a new organisation was introduced, and Cromwell saw that beyond the mere incapacity of the commanders, there were aristocratic prejudices that stood in the way of any effectual termination of the war. The aristocrat, however intellectually endowed, stands no comparison in the great field of military action, as in many others, with the men who rise from the people, not perhaps or exclusively from the poor, but from the educated classes of commoners. Cromwell, Marlborough, Wellington, Bonaparte, all rose from the ranks of mere gentry, and had to push their fortunes. The greenhouse plant can never compete with the oak, which has sprung from the clefts of the rock and battled with all the tempests. There may be grace in the one, but there are vigour and robust spurt which belong to the other, and which give them the mastery.

Cromwell was at the head of the independents, and these were as adverse to the dominance and intolerance of the presbyterians, as Cromwell was to the slow-going generals. He knew that he should have their support, and he determined to come to a point on the vital question of the arrangement of the war. He had declared plumply, in his vexation, "That there never would be a good time in England till we had done with lords;" and he had horrified the milk-and-water aristocrats, by protesting that "if he met the king in battle, he would fire his pistol at him as he would at another." He was now resolved to have lords out of the army at least, and therefore, on the 25th of November, 1644, he exhibited a charge in the house of commons against the earl of Manchester, asserting that he had shown himself indisposed to finish the war; that since the taking of York he had studiously obstructed the progress of the parliamentary army, as if he thought the king already too low, and the parliament too high, especially at Donnington. That since the junction of the armies he had shown this