Oliver Cromwell

The wisdom of a foreign policy which gave England a land-frontier in Europe has been often discussed, and the conflict of argument has not yet died away. It is true that in later years this country has had forced on it the task of securing colonial possessions which, in some cases for thousands of miles, march with territories held by independent, and possibly hostile States. There is, however, no comparison between an enormous territory, such as the Dominion of Canada, inhabited by an increasing and loyal population, and a fortified post, such as that of Dunkirk, the inhabitants of which were alien in race and religion from the English garrison which was to hold them down, especially as Dunkirk was a mere port on the edge of a Continent held by great nations, two of which coveted its possession, and would certainly leave no stone unturned to recover it. The only parallels in our history worth considering are the occupation of Calais in the middle ages, and of Gibraltar in modern times. It is idle to speculate whether, if Dunkirk had not been surrendered amicably to France by Charles II., it would have undergone the fate of Calais, but it is not idle to remind ourselves that, whilst Gibraltar is occupied in order to keep the sea open, and has never been used as a threat to the independence of Spain, Dunkirk, as we know from Thurloe, to whom all the secrets of Oliver's mind were revealed, was occupied in the first place, as a menace to the Dutch maritime power, and in the second place, to enable England to interfere with effect against either France or Spain, whilst it was believed by Mazarin that Oliver's main object was to crush the growing power of France. These pretensions might be condemned or defended on abstract grounds, leaving out of account any particular circumstances or any particular time. What is absolutely certain is that such a policy, if it were to be successful, required not merely the prolongation of Oliver's life, but the continuation, and more than the continuation of his military system. At a time when the English nation – it matters not whether with just cause, or from mere impatience of a taxation which it was well able to bear – was bitterly complaining of the heavy burdens imposed by the necessity of keeping up the existing army, Oliver was embarking on a foreign policy which would topple down with a crash unless that army were doubled – perhaps even trebled – to make head against the enemies it would arouse. It was a policy condemned in advance if only by the desperate financial embarrassments which must follow in its train, when France was no longer bound to England by her need of help against Spain. The hostility of France might indeed be confronted by a Government strong in the devotion of its people, and in the accumulated wealth of another half-century of commerce – strong too in an alliance with military Powers, based on the need of joining in resistance to a common danger. If Oliver had been granted those twenty more years of life which enthusiastic worshippers hold necessary for the success of his schemes, it can hardly be doubted that a European coalition would have been formed against the Protector long before it was formed against Louis XIV.

Such a danger, great as it was from the mere political claims of the Protector, was immensely increased by his attempt to inspire his foreign policy – hazardous enough in itself – with a moral and religious sentiment which found but little echo in England, and none whatever on the Continent. No doubt it was Oliver's highest glory that he aimed at something more satisfying than the material gain and the material power which are often held to be the sufficing objects of a nation's endeavour, and his interference on behalf of the victims of Piedmontese cruelty has sunk as deeply into the memories of Englishmen as the massacre of Drogheda has sunk into the memories of Irishmen. It is to be hoped that no one whose opinion is worth having will ever reproach Oliver for having sought to use his strength in defence not only of the power and interests of his country, but also of her honour – an honour which consists, not in a touchy resentment of slights, but mainly in her readiness to help in the higher service of mankind beyond her own borders as well as within them. Yet there is no effort requiring greater discretion, greater accuracy in ascertaining the relative importance of complex facts, greater knowledge of the temper of those who are likely to be affected by the action intended for the benefit of others.

It was precisely in this direction that Oliver's mind was most defective. From the beginning of the Protectorate he had overestimated the danger to Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Powers, and had striven in vain to form a great Protestant alliance to resist what was scarcely more than an imaginary danger. The massacre of the Vaudois had confirmed his belief that the danger was a permanent one, and his war with Spain had brought him into sharp antagonism with a Roman Catholic Power of intensest bigotry. We may therefore give full credence to Thurloe when he adds to the causes which induced Oliver to occupy Dunkirk, his hope that the possession of the place would be serviceable to his great design of weakening not merely Spain, but the whole House of Austria, as being engaged in a conspiracy for the injury and, if possible, the destruction of Protestantism. That this view of the case was a gross anachronism, no one familiar with the history of Europe will now deny. Isolated instances indeed there were – and there were likely to be more – of the persecution of Protestants by Roman Catholic Governments, but the tendency to form European alliances on the basis of religion was a thing of the past. So far indeed as Dunkirk was in question – and both critics and admirers of the foreign policy of the Protectorate have been apt to argue as if it concerned France and Spain alone – Oliver's intentions in this direction are of little interest, as he did not live long enough even to attempt to make his new port the basis of a European war. It is in his Baltic policy that the defects of his method were most clearly revealed.

The policy of Sweden had long been directed to the acquisition of possessions on the opposite coast of the Baltic, a policy which Oliver had more recently followed on a smaller scale with regard to the lands beyond the Channel. With a territory more thinly populated and poorer than that of England, the Kings of Sweden had, like the Commonwealth and Protectorate, gathered an army too large to be supported except by offensive war. The command of the Baltic Sea was the object in view, and in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years' War, Sweden found herself in possession, not merely of Finland and the coast districts as far south as Riga, but of Western Pomerania, of the port of Wismar and of the secularised Bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. It was a policy even more provocative than that pursued by Oliver, because it concerned not merely the possession of a solitary point beyond the sea, but the possession of territories commanding the mouths of such rivers as the Oder, flowing into the Baltic, and the Elbe and the Weser, flowing into the North Sea. In 1655 the warrior-king, Charles X., who in the year before had succeeded to the Swedish throne upon the abdication of Christina, plunged into a war with Poland, which threatened to give him the command of the Vistula as well. In all this England had an interest because it was of great importance to her that the whole trade of the Baltic, whence she derived the materials without which she would have been unable to send her fleets to sea, should not pass entirely into the hands of one great military Power. It was this view of the case which commended itself to the Dutch, and led in 1656 to their sending a fleet into the Baltic to preserve the independence of Dantzic. Such a view could not be lost sight of by Oliver, but it was not in his nature to content himself with the chase after purely material interests. Ever since the summer of 1655, when Charles X. made overtures for his alliance, the Protector had been striving to give to it the character of a general Protestant League for the purpose of striking a blow at the German branch of the House of Austria.

Oliver's whole scheme can only be described as the product of consummate ignorance – ignorance in supposing that Charles X., aggressive, self-centred and careless of everything but his own interests as a king and as a soldier, was another Gustavus Adolphus – or rather another such disinterested enthusiast as Gustavus Adolphus appeared in the imagination of Englishmen – ignorance too in fancying that either Austria and Poland on the one hand, or Brandenburg and Denmark on the other, were likely to govern their movements by religious rather than by political motives.

The crisis came in 1657, the year in which Oliver was raised by Parliament to the constitutional Protectorate. Charles X. having secured a hold on the mouth of the Vistula by his occupation of Western Prussia had naturally become an object of suspicion to Frederick William of Brandenburg – the Great Elector, as he was subsequently styled – who saw with displeasure the growing power of Sweden on the Baltic coast and who was urged by every consideration of policy to secure for himself the strip of land which intervened between part of his own possessions and the sea. Frederick III. of Denmark again, fearing the ultimate loss of his own territory beyond the Sound, took the opportunity of declaring against Charles, and both Brandenburg and Denmark, Protestant as they were, looked for the support of Leopold, who had just succeeded to the Austrian hereditary estates. Leopold, however, instead of hurrying to the assistance of these two States, was held back by purely political interests, and showed little inclination to assist them. Charles X. took the opportunity and led his army through Holstein into Schleswig and Jutland without difficulty, thus gaining possession of the whole of the Continental States of the King of Denmark.

The Swedish King had been ready to fool Oliver to the top of his bent. Though he had nothing of the spirit of the crusader, he was quite prepared to gain what advantage he could out of Oliver's enthusiasm. Happily for England, he had rejected the Protector's proposal – made in the spring of 1657 – to take over the secularised Archbishopric of Bremen as a security for a loan, the Archbishopric being required by Oliver as a basis for an advance into Germany in an attack upon the German Catholic States, a project far more unwise than the occupation of the Flemish ports, and one which, if it had been carried into effect, would have left little room for Oliver's panegyrists to dwell upon the excellence of his foreign policy. For the remainder of the year Charles was quite ready to discuss the Protestant alliance, if only he were not required to carry it into immediate action. No doubt he would be ready at some future time to attack Austria or any other country if there was anything to be gained by it. For the present he was occupied with his quarrel with Denmark, and till that had been brought to a conclusion, there was nothing else to be done.

It was at this moment that Oliver opened the second session of his second Parliament. Full of satisfaction with his own foreign policy, he was also full of grieved surprise at the misconduct of Frederick of Denmark and of Frederick William of Brandenburg, who, not without the good will of the Dutch Republic, had thrown themselves in the path of the new Gustavus Adolphus. Within a few days of the opening of the session, Oliver held up to Parliament a picture of Papal Europe seeking 'everywhere Protestants to devour'. "What is there in all the parts of Europe," he asked at last, "but a consent, a co-operating, at this very time and season, to suppress everything that stands in the way of the Popish powers?" "I have," he added, "I thank God, considered, and I would beg you to consider a little with me, what that resistance is that is likely to be made to this mighty current which seems to be coming from all parts upon all Protestants? Who is there that holdeth up his head to oppose this danger? A poor prince; indeed poor; but a man in his person as gallant, and truly I think I may say, as good as any these last ages have brought forth; and a man that hath adventured his all against the Popish interest in Poland, and made his acquisition still good for the Protestant religion. He is now reduced into a corner; and what addeth to the grief of all – more grievous than all that hath been spoken of before – I wish it may not be too truly said – is, that men of our religion forget this and seek his ruin." The cause of Charles X. had become very dear to Oliver, and ought, he imagined, to be very dear to the English people. The 'Popish plot' against the Swedish king loomed largely in his eyes. "It is a design," he continued, "against your very being; this artifice, and this complex design against the Protestant interest – wherein so many Protestants are not so right as were to be wished! If they can shut us out of the Baltic Sea," – with Oliver the consideration of material prosperity was never far distant from his spiritual enthusiasm – "and make themselves masters of that, where is your trade? Where are your materials to preserve your shipping? Where will you be able to challenge any right by sea, or justify yourselves against a foreign invasion on your own soil? Think upon it; this is the design! I believe if you will go and ask the poor mariner in his red cap and coat, as he passeth from ship to ship, you will hardly find in any ship but they will tell you this is designed against you. So obvious is it, by this and other things, that you are the object; and, in my conscience, I know not for what else, but because of the purity of the profession amongst you, who have not yet made it your trade to prefer your profit before your godliness, but reckon godliness the greater gain."

It was Oliver's head – not his heart – that was at fault. But a few days after these words were spoken, Charles X. was tramping with his army over the ice of the two Belts, in that marvellous march which landed him in Zealand, and compelled Frederick III. to sign the Treaty of Roeskilde which abandoned to Sweden the Danish possessions to the east of the Sound. What then were Oliver's Ambassadors doing when that treaty was negotiating? They were but arguing as any Dutchman or Brandenburger might have argued, on behalf of the material interests of their own country. They favoured Charles's wish to annex the Danish provinces beyond the Sound, because it would leave the passage into the Baltic under the control of two Powers instead of one. They opposed his wish to annex more than two provinces of Norway, in order that the monopoly of the timber trade might not fall into his hands. Of the Protestant alliance not a word was spoken.

For all that, the Protestant alliance had not passed out of Oliver's mind. Now that Denmark was crushed, Charles professed himself to be quite ready to attack Leopold of Austria, if only he were allowed to crush Brandenburg first; and in May an English Ambassador was sent to Berlin to plead with the Elector of Brandenburg to join England and Sweden against Leopold, to whose support Frederick William was looking against an unprovoked attack from Charles. Happily for England, Frederick William refused to countenance this insane proposal, and in August Charles renewed the war against Denmark, with a fixed determination to bring the whole of the Scandinavian territory under his own sway, before he involved himself in those further complications in Germany, in which Oliver, supported by Mazarin, was anxious to involve him. "France," said the King of Sweden, "wants to limit me and to prescribe the course I am to take, and England attempts to do the same, but I will put myself in a position to be independent of their orders." His Ministers spoke even more openly of their future plans. When Denmark and Norway had been annexed, and the Baltic brought under the undisputed control of Sweden, Courland and West Prussia must inevitably pass into their master's hands. Then with an army of 40,000 men, supported by a navy of 100 ships, the Swedish army would march through Germany into Italy, visit the Pope, and plunder Rome. "Their first thought is pillage," added the French Ambassador who reported these vapourings perhaps not without exaggeration. Charles X. was a great soldier, but he was by no means the oppressed saint of Oliver's imagination.

There can be little doubt that the maintenance of a war in the heart of Germany, even with a Swedish ally, would have been far beyond Oliver's means. The occupation of the Flemish ports had taxed his resources to the uttermost. In the speech in which he had sung the high praises of the Swedish king, he had been obliged to plead the necessities of the army as a ground for his demand for fresh supplies. The pay of the army was far in arrear, and it was on the army that he depended to keep down hostile parties at home and to stave off a Royalist attack from abroad. Nor was that army needed for purposes of mere defence. Picturing to himself the majority of the Continental nations as actuated by a wild desire to assail England, he inferred that attack was the best defence. "You have counted yourselves happy," he said to Parliament, "in being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside. Truly you will not be able to keep your ditch, nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into troops of horse and companies of foot; and fight to defend yourselves on terra firma."

This then was what Oliver's much-lauded foreign policy had come to – more regiments, and even higher taxation than what the vast majority of Englishmen believed to be far too high already. A great Continental war, with all its risks and burdens, was dangled before the eyes of a Parliament to which such an outlook had no attractions. That Parliament was no longer the body which had voted the new constitution. Not only were there now two Houses, but the composition of the older House had been significantly altered. The most determined supporters of the Protectorate had been withdrawn to occupy the benches of the new House, whilst the clause of The Humble Petition and Advice, which prohibited the Protector from ever again excluding members duly elected from what had now become the House of Commons, opened its doors to his most determined enemies. The men who now found their way to their seats, such as Hazlerigg and Scott, were opposed heart and soul to the whole system of the Protectorate, and longed for the re-establishment of Parliamentary supremacy. Such men were the more dangerous because they were sufficiently versed in Parliamentary tactics to know the advantage of a rallying cry which would bring the lukewarm to their side. The powers and attributes of the other House were ill-defined in the constitutional document to which it owed its birth, and it was easy to gain adherents by urging that it was not entitled either to the name or the privileges of the House of Lords of the Monarchy. After some days of wrangling, the Protector resolved to put an end to the debates. It was hard, he complained, to have accepted a constitutional settlement on the invitation of that very Parliament, and then to have it brought into question. "I can say," he continued, "in the presence of God – in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth – I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken such a government as this. But undertaking it by the advice and petition of you, I did look that you who had offered it unto me should make it good."

Such language must appear to those who judge by the recorded words and actions of this Parliament to be without adequate justification. It is undeniable that the constitution contained no definition of the powers of the new House, and if there had been no other than the ostensible question at issue, it would have been unreasonable in Oliver to hurry on a crisis before attempting, directly or indirectly, to suggest terms of compromise. As a matter of fact this question of the other House was very far from covering the whole ground of debate. A petition to which thousands of signatures were appended was being circulated in the City, asking for a complete restitution of Parliamentary supremacy and – no doubt to catch the support of a certain section of the army – for an enactment that no officer or soldier should be cashiered without the sentence of a court martial. Oliver was perfectly right in holding that the attack on the other House was equivalent to an assault on the constitutional Protectorate. He had himself looked to that House as restoring to him in another form the powers which he had abandoned when he let fall the Instrument. By keeping in his own hands the selection of its members, and providing that that House should have a veto on subsequent nominations – the principle of inheritance being totally excluded – he imagined that he had sufficiently provided for the future. His objects in so doing may be taken as those set forth by a writer who had ample means of gathering his intentions. "It was no small task for the Protector to find idoneous men for this place, because the future security of the honest interest seemed – under God – to be laid up in them; for by a moral generation, if they were well chosen at the first, they would propagate their own kind, when the single person could not, and the Commons, who represented the nation, would not, having in them for the most part the spirit of those they represent, which hath little affinity with a respect of the cause of God." It is easy to criticise such a principle from a modern point of view. Yet if the morality of Oliver's political actions are ever to be judged fairly, it must never be forgotten that the right of an honest Government to prevent the people from injuring themselves by out-voting the saner members of the community was – rather than any democratic or Parliamentary theory – the predominant note of his career. It is this at least which explains his assent to the choice of the nominated Parliament, as well as his breach with the Parliaments which he dismissed in 1655 and 1658.

Such views could not but lead the Protector to a breach with his second Parliament as well. The men who were grumbling at the insolence of his new lords were, as he well knew, prepared to follow up their attack by another more directly aimed at his own authority. The remainder of the Protector's speech is only intelligible on this supposition. Professing his intention to stand by the new constitution, he accused his opponents of a design to subvert it. "These things," he asseverated, "lead to nothing else but to the playing of the King of Scots' game – if I may so call him – and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it; and if this be so, I do assign it to this cause – your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your Petition and Advice, as that which might prove the settlement of the nation; and if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament! And let God be judge between you and me!"

No man knew better than Oliver the weight of the blow that had fallen on him. His attempt to govern constitutionally with a Parliamentary constitution had proved as impracticable as his attempt to govern constitutionally with a military constitution. For a whole week he shut himself up, meditating apart from his Council on the means of repairing the disaster. Only once during the whole time did he even appear in his family circle. Then after prolonged consultation with advisers gathered from far and near, he resolved to summon another Parliament to meet in that very spring. He at least would stand firmly by the constitution to which he had sworn, and he could but hope that the nation would be equally loyal when the choice between ordered liberty and the unrestricted government of a single House was fairly set before the electors. It was the remedy applied afterwards by William III. to a similar mischief, and not applied in vain.

Unfortunately for Cromwell the circumstances were not the same. It is unnecessary here to discuss the relative merits of written and unwritten constitutions on the one hand, or of a dominant Parliament and a dominant executive on the other. The one form of government or the other may be desirable in different nations or at different times. The one thing needful is that the institutions of a nation, whatever they be, shall be supported by the national sentiment. It was this that Oliver had never succeeded in evoking, because he had never appealed to it, and he was hardly likely to succeed in evoking it now. He could, for a time – and only for a time – rule England with an army. He could not rule it with a piece of paper. At no long distance, as he already saw, the unchecked supremacy of Parliament would bring back the Stuarts, because the traditional hold of the old monarchy upon the minds of men was the only power capable of keeping in check alike the tyranny of the army, and the anarchy which could not but arise if contending parties were left to struggle for the mastery without fear of military intervention. Oliver's own power for good was growing feebler. Financial embarrassments gathered round him. The sailors and soldiers went unpaid, even though Bremen had not been occupied and no English army was struggling – it can hardly be doubted – towards certain defeat in the heart of Germany.