Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/230

 victory would be a disadvantage to;—and hath declared this by principles express to that purpose, and “by” a continued series of carriage and actions answerable.

‘That since the taking of York, as if the Parliament had now advantage fully enough, he hath declined whatsoever tended to farther advantage upon the Enemy; “hath” neglected and studiously shifted-off opportunities to that purpose, as if he thought the King too low, and the Parliament too high,—especially at Dennington Castle.

‘That he hath drawn the Army into, and detained them in, such a posture as to give the Enemy fresh advantages: and this, before his conjunction with the other Armies, by his own absolute will, against or without his Council of War, against many commands of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, and with contempt and vilifying of those commands;—and, since the conjunction, sometimes against. the Councils of War, and sometimes by persuading and deluding the Council to neglect one opportunity with pretence of another, and this again of a third, and at last by persuading “them” that it was not fit to fight at all’

To these heavy charges, Manchester,—furnished with his confused Crawford Documents, and not forgetting Letter Twentieth which we lately read,—makes heavy answer, at great length, about a week after: of which we shall remember only this piece of countercharge, How his Lordship had once, in those very Newbury days, ordered Cromwell to proceed to some rendezvous with the horse, and Cromwell, very unsuitably for a Lieutenant-General, had answered, The horses were already worn off their feet; ‘if your Lordship want to have the skins of the horses, this is the way to get them!’—Through which small slit, one looks into large seas of general discrepancy in those old months! Lieutenant-General Cromwell is also reported to have said, in a moment of irritation surely,