Historical Tales Volume Iv Part 26

"Think well," answered Harrison; "it is a dangerous work."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER CROMWELL.]

The man of fate subsided into silence again. A quarter of an hour more pa.s.sed. Then the question was put "that this bill do now pa.s.s."

Cromwell rose, took off his hat, and spoke. His words were strong.

Beginning with commendation of the Parliament for what it had done for the public good, he went on to charge the present members with acts of injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and similar faults, his tone rising higher as he spoke until it had grown very hot and indignant.

"Your hour is come; the Lord hath done with you," he added.

"It is a strange language, this," cried one of the members, springing up hastily; "unusual this within the walls of Parliament. And from a trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honored; and one----"

"Come, come," cried Cromwell, in the tone in which he would have commanded his army to charge, "we have had enough of this." He strode furiously into the middle of the chamber, clapped on his hat, and exclaimed, "I will put an end to your prating."

He continued speaking hotly and rapidly, "stamping the floor with his feet" in his rage, the words rolling from him in a fury. Of these words we only know those with which he ended.

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You should give place to better men! You are no Parliament!" came from him in harsh and broken exclamations. "Call them in," he said, briefly, to Harrison.

At the word of command a troop of some thirty musketeers marched into the chamber. Grim fellows they were, dogs of war,--the men of the Rump could not face this argument; it was force arrayed against law,--or what called itself law,--wrong against wrong, for neither army nor Parliament truly represented the people, though just then the army seemed its most rightful representative.

"I say you are no Parliament!" roared the lord-general, hot with anger.

"Some of you are drunkards." His eye fell on a bottle-loving member.

"Some of you are lewd livers; living in open contempt of G.o.d's commandments." His hot gaze flashed on Henry Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth. "Following your own greedy appet.i.tes and the devil's commandments; corrupt, unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of the gospel: how can you be a Parliament for G.o.d's people? Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of G.o.d--go!"

These words were like bomb-sh.e.l.ls exploded in the chamber of Parliament.

Such a scene had never before and has never since been seen in the House of Commons. The members were all on their feet, some white with terror, some red with indignation. Vane fearlessly faced the irate general.

"Your action," he said, hotly, "is against all right and all honor."

"Ah, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane," retorted Cromwell, bitterly, "you might have prevented all this; but you are a juggler, and have no common honesty. The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!"

The retort was a just one. Vane had attempted to usurp the government.

Cromwell turned to the speaker, who obstinately clung to his seat, declaring that he would not yield it except to force.

"Fetch him down!" roared the general.

"Sir, I will lend you a hand," said Harrison.

Speaker Lenthall left the chair. One man could not resist an army.

Through the door glided, silent as ghosts, the members of Parliament.

"It is you that have forced me to this," said Cromwell, with a shade of regret in his voice. "I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather slay me than put upon me the doing of this work."

He had, doubtless; he was a man of deep piety and intense bigotry; but the Lord's answer, it is to be feared, came out of the depths of his own consciousness. Men like Cromwell call upon G.o.d, but answer for Him themselves.

"What shall be done with this bauble?" said the general, lifting the sacred mace, the sign-manual of government by the representatives of the people. "Take it away!" he finished, handing it to a musketeer.

His flashing eyes followed the retiring members until they all had left the House. Then the musketeers filed out, followed by Cromwell and Harrison. The door was locked, and the key and mace carried away by Colonel Otley.

A few hours afterwards the Council of State, the executive committee of Parliament, was similarly dissolved by the lord-general, who, in person, bade its members to depart.

"We have heard," cried John Bradshaw, one of its members, "what you have done this morning at the House, and in some hours all England will hear it. But you mistake, sir, if you think the Parliament dissolved. No power on earth can dissolve the Parliament but itself, be sure of that."

The people did hear it,--and sustained Cromwell in his action. Of the two sets of usurpers, the army and a non-representative Parliament, they preferred the former.

"We did not hear a dog bark at their going," said Cromwell, afterwards.

It was not the first time in history that the army had overturned representative government. In this case it was not done with the design of establishing a despotism. Cromwell was honest in his purpose of reforming the administration, and establishing a Parliamentary government. But he had to do with intractable elements. He called a const.i.tuent convention, giving to it the duty of paving the way to a const.i.tutional Parliament. Instead of this, the convention began the work of reforming the const.i.tution, and proposed such radical changes that the lord-general grew alarmed. Doubtless his musketeers would have dealt with the convention as they had done with the Rump Parliament, had it not fallen to pieces through its own dissensions. It handed back to Cromwell the power it had received from him. He became the lord protector of the realm. The revolutionary government had drifted, despite itself, into a despotism. A despotism it was to remain while Cromwell lived.

_THE RELIEF OF LONDONDERRY._

Frightful was the state of Londonderry. "No surrender" was the ultimatum of its inhabitants, "blockade and starvation" the threat of the besiegers; the town was surrounded, the river closed, relief seemed hopeless, life, should the furious besiegers break in, equally hopeless.

Far off, in the harbor of Lough Foyle, could be seen the English ships.

Thirty vessels lay there, laden with men and provisions, but they were able to come no nearer. The inhabitants could see them, but the sight only aggravated their misery. Plenty so near at hand! Death and dest.i.tution in their midst! Frightful, indeed, was their extremity.

The Foyle, the river leading to the town, was fringed with hostile forts and batteries, and its channel barricaded. Several boats laden with stone had been sunk in the channel. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the stream. A boom was formed of trunks of fir-trees, strongly bound together, and fastened by great cables to the sh.o.r.e. Relief from the fleet, with the river thus closed against it, seemed impossible. Yet scarcely two days' supplies were left in the town, and without hasty relief starvation or ma.s.sacre seemed the only alternatives.

Let us relate the occasion of this siege. James II. had been driven from England, and William of Orange was on the throne. In his effort to recover his kingdom, James sought Ireland, where the Catholic peasantry were on his side. His appearance was the signal for fifty thousand peasants to rise in arms, and for the Protestants to fly from peril of ma.s.sacre. They knew their fate should they fall into the hands of the half-savage peasants, mad with years of misrule.

In the north, seven thousand English fugitives fled to Londonderry, and took shelter behind the weak wall, manned by a few old guns, and without even a ditch for defence, which formed the only barrier between them and their foes. Around this town gathered twenty-five thousand besiegers, confident of quick success. But the weakness of the battlements was compensated for by the stoutness of the hearts within. So fierce were the sallies of the desperate seven thousand, so severe the loss of the besiegers in their a.s.saults, that the attempt to carry the place by storm was given up, and a blockade subst.i.tuted. From April till the end of July this continued, the condition of the besieged daily growing worse, the food-supply daily growing less. Such was the state of affairs at the date with which we are specially concerned.

Inside the town, at that date, the dest.i.tution had grown heart-rending.

The fire of the enemy was kept up more briskly than ever, but famine and disease killed more than cannon-b.a.l.l.s. The soldiers of the garrison were so weak from privation that they could scarcely stand; yet they repelled every attack, and repaired every breach in the walls as fast as made. The damage done by day was made good at night. For the garrison there remained a small supply of grain, which was given out by mouthfuls, and there was besides a considerable store of salted hides, which they gnawed for lack of better food. The stock of animals had been reduced to nine horses, and these so lean and gaunt that it seemed useless to kill them for food.

The townsmen were obliged to feed on dogs and rats, an occasional small fish caught in the river, and similar spa.r.s.e supplies. They died by hundreds. Disease aided starvation in carrying them off. The living were too few and too weak to bury the dead. Bodies were left unburied, and a deadly and revolting stench filled the air. That there was secret discontent and plottings for surrender may well be believed. But no such feeling dared display itself openly. Stubborn resolution and vigorous defiance continued the public tone. "No surrender" was the general cry, even in that extremity of distress. And to this voices added, in tones of deep significance, "First the horses and hides; then the prisoners; and then each other."

Such was the state of affairs on July 28, 1689. Two days' very spa.r.s.e rations alone remained for the garrison. At the end of that time all must end. Yet still in the distance could be seen the masts of the ships, holding out an unfulfilled promise of relief; still hope was not quite dead in the hearts of the besieged. Efforts had been made to send word to the town from the fleet. One swimmer who attempted to pa.s.s the boom was drowned. Another was caught and hanged. On the 13th of July a letter from the fleet, sewed up in a cloth b.u.t.ton, reached the commander of the garrison. It was from Kirke, the general in command of the party of relief, and promised speedy aid. But a fortnight and more had pa.s.sed since then, and still the fleet lay inactive in Lough Foyle, nine miles away, visible from the summit of the Cathedral, yet now tending rather to aggravate the despair than to sustain the hopes of the besieged.

The sunset hour of July 28 was reached. Services had been held that afternoon in the Cathedral,--services in which doubtless the help of G.o.d was despairingly invoked, since that of man seemed in vain. The heart-sick people left the doors, and were about to disperse to their foodless homes, when a loud cry of hope and gladness came from the lookout in the tower above their heads.

"They are coming!" was the stirring cry. "The ships are coming up the river! I can see their sails plainly! Relief is coming!"

How bounded the hearts of those that heard this gladsome cry! The listeners dispersed, carrying the glad news to every corner of the town.

Others came in hot haste, eager to hear further reports from the lookout tower. The town, lately so quiet and depressed, was suddenly filled with activity. Hope swelled every heart, new life ran in every vein; the news was like a draught of wine that gave fresh spirit to the most despairing soul.

And now other tidings came. There was a busy stir in the camp of the besiegers. They were crowding to the river-banks. As far as the eye could see, the stream was lined. The daring ships had a gauntlet of fire to run. Their attempt seemed hopeless, indeed. The river was low. The channel which they would have to follow ran near the left bank, where numerous batteries had been planted. They surely would never succeed.

Yet still they came, and still the lookout heralded their movements to the excited mult.i.tude below.

The leading ship was the Mountjoy, a merchant-vessel laden heavily with provisions. Its captain was Micaiah Browning, a native of Londonderry.

He had long advised such an attempt, but the general in command had delayed until positive orders came from England that something must be done.

On hearing of this, Browning immediately volunteered. He was eager to succor his fellow-townsmen. Andrew Douglas, captain of the Phoenix, a vessel laden with meal from Scotland, was willing and anxious to join in the enterprise. As an escort to these two merchantmen came the Dartmouth, a thirty-six-gun frigate, its commander John Leake, afterwards an admiral of renown.

Up the stream they came, the Dartmouth in the lead, returning the fire of the forts with effect, pushing steadily onward, with the merchantmen closely in the rear. At length the point of peril was reached. The boom extended across the stream, seemingly closing all further pa.s.sage. But that remained to be seen. The Mountjoy took the lead, all its sails spread, a fresh breeze distending the canvas, and rushed head on at the boom.