tory with the
precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of
Crusaders. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time when
it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on
the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England,
Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded
by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only
never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces
whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the
day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most
renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was
startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies
advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier,
when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to
rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers
felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their
countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before
it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage
into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the
ablest of the Marshals of France.

But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other
armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all
ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that
singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen,
and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the
peaceable citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages
were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from
those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl
complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate
was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, or
a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the
Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions
of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to
restrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the
pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time,
were not savoury; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks
of the hatred with which those stern