burning with the wildest fanaticism
of Crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled 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 exprest 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 counterscrap 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 honor 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 the 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 savory; and too many of our cathedrals
still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits
regarded every vestige of Popery.