Читать книгу Monk - Julian Stafford Corbett - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The great drama was about to begin. The star-chamber had given judgment in Hampden's case: the prayer-book had been read in Edinburgh; and it was amidst ominous mutterings of coming evil that Captain Monk set foot once more upon his native shore.

How great a tragedy was to develope itself out of the prologue upon which the curtain was about to rise, no one as yet could tell. Still less were there any to guess that the plain Low Country officer stepping on to the Dover beach was the man who was to cut the knot of the last act and end the play in a blaze of triumph.

We can see him clearly as he rides towards London, brooding, as his manner was, on the ungrateful treatment he had received at the hands of his masters. He is now in his thirtieth year, rather short than tall, but thickset and in full possession of the physical strength which the ill-starred under-sheriff had tasted at Exeter years ago; and as with an air of dogged self-reliance he sits erect upon his horse, handsome, fresh-coloured, well-knit, he looks every inch a soldier. Quietly chewing his tobacco for company, as the fashion was, he speaks little to those who overtake him on the road, except perhaps it is to grumble at the Mynheers when the subject turns that way. He answers strangers with a blunt, almost rude brevity, at which men are offended, but which somehow they feel little inclined to openly resent. He is an ill-mannered, thick-headed soldier, they say, and it is best to leave him alone to take his own way.

And indeed he was little more. He was frankly the ideal of a soldier of fortune, versed in his art to the point of pedantry, wary to the verge of craftiness, fearless to a fault, jealous of his honour as the knight of La Mancha himself. The name by which such men were known is unfortunate, for it has led to much misconception of their character. Then it was well understood to mean a soldier by profession, no more nor less than what every officer in our army is to-day. The ideal soldier of fortune was marked not so much by his readiness to change his colours as by his blind devotion to those with which for the time being he was engaged. Until the period of his commission, or of the war or campaign for which he had engaged was ended, his loyalty to his paymasters was as ungrudging as it was unassailable. Nothing would have induced him to enter a service which he considered dishonourable, but having once engaged he fought and toiled and bled in contemptuous indifference to the political manœuvres of the men whose commission he held. To look upon such men as cruel, unprincipled adventurers is the very reverse of the truth where worthy pupils of the heroic Veres are concerned. We must remember that it was in their school that Monk learnt his trade, and not in that which produced men like the Turners and Dalziells and brought disgrace upon the name of the soldier of fortune. They were men who could only teach virtues, though perhaps the only virtues they could teach were honesty and obedience. At any rate that was the lesson which Monk learnt. To be true to his paymaster, that was his rule in life; to obey the civil authority which employed him, that was his political creed. Such was the code which Monk brought home with him from the Low Countries. Simple and rude as it was, it was all he had to guide him through the labyrinth he was about to tread.

As yet the Revolution stirred but in restless slumber, and it is probable that it was not the prospect of civil strife which brought Monk to England in search of employment. Prince Rupert and his brother were at Court in hopes of getting their uncle's aid for the recovery of the Palatinate; and the King, sobered by failure, was turning and doubling every way to shirk the responsibility and enjoy the credit of assisting his beautiful and unfortunate sister. Of all the schemes which were suggested to this end the most extraordinary was the project for the colonisation of Madagascar. The idea was that a thousand gentlemen should join, each with a thousand pounds and a number of servants. The King was to provide twelve ships from the navy, and thirty merchantmen were to complete the fleet. Every adventurer was to sail in person, and the whole was to be commanded by Prince Rupert himself, with the title of Governor-General of Madagascar or St. Lawrence. But Elizabeth grew anxious about her son, and opposed the wild scheme in which she could see no reason. "As for Rupert's romance," she wrote to Roe, "about Madagascar, it sounds more like one of Don Quixote's conquests when he promised his trusty squire to make him king of an island." In the end practical merchants and seamen threw so much cold water on the scheme that it began to lose favour, and Rupert did not go.

Meanwhile all the world was run mad on the romantic adventure. Davenant wrote a little epic about it, which made Endymion Porter exclaim, himself as mad as the rest:

"What lofty fancy was't possest your braine,

And caus'd you soare into so high a straine?"

Suckling so far forgot himself in the craze of the hour as to write a copy of verses that may still be read without a blush. Even the phlegmatic Captain Monk was carried away. Man of the new time as he was, in the bottom of his heart he was Elizabethan. The project was more than enough to revive the dreams of his Devonshire boyhood, of Raleigh, of Guiana, and the early days of Virginia, and he promised to go. But it was not to be. Ere long he withdrew, either because his native shrewdness showed him it was all a bubble or else because the curtain was up at last, and he turned to the thrilling play beside which the Madagascar adventure was only a childish fairy tale.

Scotland was to be coerced into conformity, and in the bustle of preparation Monk saw his chance. To every soldier in England his name must have been perfectly familiar. Every young gentleman who had seen any service was hurrying to the King's standard on the chance of a commission, and the majority of them would be only too glad to claim George Monk as their father-in-arms, and boast of their service in the colonel's company of the crack regiment in the Low Country Brigade.

Nor did Monk lack powerful friends. He was a wide-kinned man, so wide that it is impossible to trace the multitudinous ramifications of his family. He had connections in high places, and they began to take him up. Above all Lord Leicester seems to have found a pleasure in pushing his distinguished young kinsman's fortunes, and at this moment there was no better friend a young man could have than Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester. His family was just now rising into high favour. His brother-in-law, the Earl of Northumberland, was Lord Admiral, while for sister-in-law he could claim the lovely Countess of Carlisle herself.

This "Erinnys of the North," as Warburton called her, for whom Waller could forget awhile his Sacharissa, who made Davenant sing his sweetest, and wrung from Suckling his most lascivious note, was still the reigning beauty of the Court. As she entered middle age her charms seemed only to ripen. Her eyes were as bright, her wit as keen, her vivacity as sparkling as ever. The only change was in the field of her conquests. Weary of breaking the hearts of fops and poets, she was seeking new excitement in political intrigue and new pleasures in charming tried leaders of men such as Pym and Strafford. At this moment a blunt manly soldier like Captain Monk was just the man to find favour in her capricious eyes. Monk was always soft-hearted with a woman, and his admiration of such a beauty must have been frank and undisguised. Whatever was the cause, he found her willing to support Lord Leicester's request for his advancement. The task was not difficult. Officers of tried worth who could be trusted in the quarrel were in high demand for lieutenant-colonels of the newly-raised regiments. Half the colonels were noblemen of little experience, and the rest were occupied with their duties on the staff. Monk, as a man who despised politics and was without convictions, was in every way fitted for a command, and his fair friend was soon able to hand him his commission as lieutenant-colonel of Lord Newport's regiment of foot.

Monk soon found plenty of work to do; but all his efforts to turn his men into soldiers were thrown away. In June, 1639, to his intense disgust a pacification was patched up with the Scots, and the First Bishops' War came to an ignominious end before a blow had been struck. To Monk, whose narrow but enthusiastic patriotism had been only increased by his service abroad, such a fiasco was deeply mortifying. With a stupid constancy, for which it is impossible not to love him, he clung through life to the fixed idea that one Englishman was any day worth two or three of any other nation. To face an army of Scots for months and then come to terms without fighting was a piece of pusillanimity he could not understand, and never forgot.

Nor did the conduct of the Second Bishops' War mend his opinion of the King. His regiment was amongst the first that were ready to take the field. It was present at the rout at Newburn Ford, where its lieutenant-colonel distinguished himself by saving the English guns. But with that disgraceful action the campaign ended. Monk and a few other officers at the Council of War urged every argument which the pedantic strategy of the day could suggest in order to induce the King to attack the Scots with the concentrated army which was now strengthened with the Yorkshire and Durham trained-bands. But all was in vain, and an armistice preliminary to peace was concluded at Ripon, by which the two northern counties were left in possession of the Scots as security for a war-indemnity.

For these two miserable failures Monk never forgave the King. To the end of his life he used to harp on the fatal mistake Charles made in not following the advice he gave, and to the last maintained, with characteristic ignorance of the real questions at issue, that all the blood which flowed in the following years was to be imputed to the folly of sparing it then.

While the Scots were eating up the fat of the land and Monk was fretting at the part he had to play, the plot was thickening fast. The Long Parliament had met and Strafford was brought to bay. The breach between King and Parliament was widening daily, and Charles was foolish enough to listen to schemes which the most hairbrained of his courtiers devised for dragging the army into the quarrel. Men ready to coerce the Houses were to be placed in command, and the army was to be brought up to London and the Tower snatched from the hands of Lord Newport, who was now constable. But there was a difficulty in the way. The Low Country officers, true to their principles, refused to have anything to do with the plot, and the conspirators fell out before the question of command could be settled. Goring, who had been promised the post of Lieutenant-General, in a fit of spite betrayed the plot to Lord Newport. Newport told Pym, and at the critical moment when Strafford's fate hung in the balance Pym played the information as a trump-card. The effect was electrical, and its sequel of no little consequence to Monk. The revelation produced a revulsion of feeling which brought Strafford's head to the block, and Lord Leicester, as a favourite with both King and Parliament, was hastily summoned from Paris to succeed him as Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland.

As the truth about the army-plots was allowed to transpire the worst was believed of the King's intentions. The belief even began to spread that Charles was privy to a popish plot, of which the queen was the centre, to bring troops from Ireland for the utter subversion of the Protestant faith. Then into the midst of the growing distrust there burst like a thunderbolt the news of the Irish rebellion, and the smouldering fires of the Reformation, which had slumbered since the great days when they scorched the throne of Spain, burst into a flame. On the heels of the news came down a letter from Scotland in which the King commended to Parliament the care of reducing the rebels to obedience. The Commons voted on the spot an army of eight thousand men and confidently called for volunteers. But that was not all. The weapon was easy to forge, but it must now be placed out of the King's reach. It was not enough that Leicester was made Captain-General. His second in command must also be a man in whose honour and fidelity the House had implicit confidence.

Astley and Conyers were unwilling to serve. It says not a little for the reputation which Monk had won both as a man and a soldier, that his name was the next mentioned.2 It was proposed that he should be given the command as Lieutenant-General, with Henry Warren, his veteran major and devoted friend, as his Adjutant-General, or Sergeant-major-general, as it was then called. It was a splendid chance, but Monk was doomed to disappointment. The Houses were suddenly informed that Ormonde had been chosen for the command and commissioned Lieutenant-General by the King, and the tactics of the Parliament had to be changed. It was determined to raise an army by an Impressment Bill, to which a clause was to be added vesting the control of it in their own hands. As the month of November wore on and it was still in debate, by every post came news of fresh atrocities committed by the Papist rebels upon the English Protestants. Never perhaps again till the story of the Cawnpore massacre set the nation's teeth, did such a frenzy of revenge take possession of the people. More and more troops were voted every week. Every tale, no matter how hideous or improbable, was greedily believed. It was necessary that something should be done at once. Leicester was ordered to raise two regiments of foot and one of horse by voluntary enlistment, and that the Parliament might keep a firm hand on the reins it was further resolved that he should submit the list of officers he proposed to commission to the Houses for approval. Monk was named for lieutenant-colonel and Warren for major of Leicester's own regiment of foot. Both were at once approved; and the nominations of Leicester's two sons, Lord Lisle and Algernon Sidney, as well as that of Sir Richard Grenville, were confirmed for the horse.

On February 21st, 1642, Colonel Monk landed in Dublin at the head of the Lord-General's regiment of foot. It was a splendid body of men, two thousand strong and officered by the flower of the disbanded army of the north. And with him was Sir Richard Grenville, commanding four hundred of Leicester's new regiment of horse. Over the scenes which followed there is no need to linger. In fire and blood the wretched Irish had to do penance for the outburst of savagery to which they had been goaded by Strafford's imperious rule. The most important operation of the campaign of 1642 was the expedition for the relief of the English settlements in Kildare and Queen's County. With two thousand five hundred foot under Monk, five hundred horse under Lucas, Coote, and Grenville, and six guns, Ormonde left Dublin on April 2nd, and by the 9th had successfully relieved Athy, Maryborough, and some smaller settlements. The work was accomplished with all the horrible accompaniments which characterised Irish warfare. "In our march thither," wrote an officer in Monk's regiment, "we fired above two hundred villages. The horse that marched on our flanks fired all within five or six miles of the body of the army; and those places that we marched through, they that had the rear of the army always burned. Hitherto we met not with any enemy to oppose, yet not a mile nor a place that we marched by, that the dead bodies of the rebels did not witness our passage." But the most difficult part of the enterprise yet remained. Some thirty miles beyond the river Nore, in a country swarming with rebels, lay several garrisons yet unrelieved. Ormonde's provisions were running so short that to reach them by a regular operation was impossible; but sooner than abandon them Grenville, Lucas, and Coote undertook to make a dash to their aid with the cavalry, while Monk covered the retreat. On the morning of Saturday the 10th, in the dead of night, the horse sallied from Maryborough, and succeeded in passing the river unobserved. The Irish at once took the alarm, and seized the only two fords by which they could return. That at Portnahinch they barred by an intrenchment, and leaving the other open they laid a strong ambush along the dangerous causeway by which it was approached. There, certain of their prey, they quietly waited to wreak a terrible vengeance on Grenville's ruthless troopers. On Monk rested the only chance of escape. Early on Monday morning, with a party of six hundred musketeers, he attacked a neighbouring castle, which belonged to one of the rebel leaders, hoping to draw to its relief the forces which held the fords; but not a man would they stir. In desperation he determined to force the pass at Portnahinch, but on reaching it he found the river so swollen that it was impassable for foot. The last hope seemed gone, but Monk was not to be beaten. Seizing every point of vantage on his own bank, he placed his musketeers with such skill that the Irish could neither abandon nor reinforce their intrenchments. Assured that the horse must mean to force a passage at this point under cover of Monk's fire, they at last withdrew the whole of their strength from the other ford, and while Monk occupied them with a deadly fusilade, Grenville and his exhausted comrades rode unmolested along the abandoned causeway and reached Maryborough in safety.3

The horse were saved, and, now his object was accomplished, Ormonde began to retire to Dublin. It was in the course of this march that he won his brilliant action at Kilrush. Monk was present with the staff during the general's reconnaissance on the eve of the battle, and we may credit him with at least a share of the masterly tactics by which the victory was obtained. That Ormonde appreciated his services is certain, for on this occasion he was mentioned in despatches "for the alacrity and undaunted resolution" he had displayed.

By the end of June eight more regiments, including Lord Lisle's carbineers, were landed in Dublin, and the Parliament seemed to have exhausted all the resources it could spare for Ireland. The Civil War was beginning. By straining every nerve it could only hold its own against the King in England, and the Irish army was left to shift for itself. Constant forays became a necessity, and indeed were the only operations possible. In these no one was so successful as Monk. He displayed in them all the qualities which endear a commander to his men, and soon no officer in the army was so popular with rank and file as he. No one, they used to say, was too sick or sorry for action, and nobody's boots were too bad for a march, when the word was passed that "honest George" was off foraying again. It became a joke that his regiment was the purveyor for the whole of Dublin.

This was hardly the work that Monk had promised himself when he volunteered for Ireland; but at any rate it was a great relief to him that he was leaving behind the politics which he detested and only half understood for some hard fighting which was his meat and drink. But he was to be sadly disappointed. Lord Leicester, commissioned by the King and paid by the Parliament, was still in England, detained by orders from Oxford. In Ormonde Charles knew he had a representative in every way satisfactory. He was a royalist above suspicion. The advent of Leicester could only strengthen the hands of the Lords Justices, who represented the Lord Lieutenant in his absence. These men were staunch Parliamentarians, and made it their business to oppose Ormonde's influence in every way. Indeed their enemies accused them of deliberately thwarting his operations in order that, by allowing the rebellion to spread, there might be a larger area of land for confiscation. In return for providing money for the suppression of the rebellion an influential body of London capitalists had obtained from Parliament a concession of one quarter of the land which should become liable to confiscation; and it is to be feared the Lords Justices were to some extent interested in this gigantic job. The Lords Justices had their fortunes to make, and they saw them in their power of distributing the forfeited lands. Their interests as well as their opinions were in sympathy with the parliamentary cause. Thus Ormonde represented for them a double danger, and without accusing them of actually fostering rebellion, it is certain that they did their best to discredit Ormonde with the King in order to procure his recall.

To seek Monk's attitude in the strife we need not go far. If he had any sympathies either way, which is very doubtful, they were certainly at this time parliamentarian. Indeed a slight he received about this time must have sharply spurred him to the side to which contempt for the King, anxiety about his pay, and the influence of his friends the Sidneys already inclined him. In May Sir Charles Coote, the governor of Dublin, had been killed in action. No one deserved to succeed him so well as "honest George." No one had done so much for the place, above all, in keeping in temper the troops who were always on the verge of mutiny for want of pay and clothes and food. Accordingly Lord Leicester, on the recommendation of the Lords Justices, sent over a commission by which he was appointed governor at a double salary of forty shillings a day, a little addition which made the post doubly dear to the soldier of fortune; but hardly had the commission arrived when there came a letter direct from the King approving the permanent appointment of Lord Lambert, who had been acting as Coote's deputy, and Monk found the governorship and his forty shillings a day snatched out of his very mouth.

Important as this affair was to poor Monk, it was but one of many such passages between the two parties. Ormonde, on the whole, was getting the upper hand; but the condition of friction which this state of things set up could have but one result. The rebels gained ground by strides. In September General Preston landed from Spain with quantities of supplies of all kinds for their use. A popish plot was winded once more. A new design was suspected of raising an army for the King in Ireland with Catholic money and arms. Ormonde's popularity was growing alarming. What was to prevent him suddenly joining hands with the rebels and turning with the whole army upon the Parliament? How could it then withstand the King? An old prophecy was in every one's mouth: