Memoirs of a Cavalier

4. The army broke three Parliaments, and are at last broke by a free Parliament; and all they had done by the military power, undone at once by the civil.

5. Abundance of the chief men, who by their fiery spirits involved the nation in a civil war, and took up arms against their prince, first or last met with ruin or disgrace from their own party.

(1.) Sir John Hotham and his son, who struck the first stroke, both beheaded or hanged by the Parliament.

(2.) Major-General Massey three times taken prisoner by them, and once wounded at Worcester.

(3.) Major-General Langhorn, (4.) Colonel Poyer, and (5.) Colonel Powell, changed sides, and at last taken, could obtain no other favour than to draw lots for their lives; Colonel Poyer drew the dead lot, and was shot to death.

(6.) Earl of Holland: who, when the House voted who should be reprieved, Lord Goring, who had been their worst enemy, or the Earl of Holland, who excepting one offence, had been their constant servant, voted Goring to be spared, and the Earl to die.

(7.) The Earl of Essex, their first general;

(8.) Sir William Waller;

(9.) Lieutenant-General Ludlow;

(10.) The Earl of Manchester;

– all disgusted and voted out of the army, though they had stood the first shock of the war, to make way for the new model of the army, and introduce a party.

* * * * *

In all these confusions I have observed two great errors, one of the king, and one of his friends.

Of the king, that when he was in their custody, and at their mercy, he did not comply with their propositions of peace, before their army, for want of employment, fell into heats and mutinies; that he did not at first grant the Scots their own conditions, which, if he had done, he had gone into Scotland; and then, if the English would have fought the Scots for him, he had a reserve of his loyal friends, who would have had room to have fallen in with the Scots to his assistance, who were after dispersed and destroyed in small parties attempting to serve him.

While his Majesty remained at Newcastle, the queen wrote to him, persuading him to make peace upon any terms; and in politics her Majesty's advice was certainly the best. For, however low he was brought by a peace, it must have been better than the condition he was then in.

The error I mention of the king's friends was this, that after they saw all was lost, they could not be content to sit still, and reserve themselves for better fortunes, and wait the happy time when the divisions of the enemy would bring them to certain ruin; but must hasten their own miseries by frequent fruitless risings, in the face of a victorious enemy, in small parties; and I always found these effects from it: —

1. The enemy, who were always together by the ears, when they were let alone, were united and reconciled when we gave them any interruption; as particularly, in the case of the first assault the army made upon them, when Colonel Pride, with his regiment, garbled the House, as they called it. At that time a fair opportunity offered; but it was omitted till it was too late. That insult upon the House had been attempted the year before, but was hindered by the little insurrection of the royal party, and the sooner they had fallen out, the better.

2. These risings being desperate, with vast disadvantages, and always suppressed, ruined all our friends; the remnants of the Cavaliers were lessened, the stoutest and most daring were cut off, and the king's interest exceedingly weakened, there not being less than 30,000 of his best friends cut off in the several attempts made at Maidstone, Colchester, Lancashire, Pembroke, Pontefract, Kingston, Preston, Warrington, Worcester, and other places. Had these men all reserved their fortunes to a conjunction with the Scots, at either of the invasions they made into this kingdom, and acted with the conduct and courage they were known masters of, perhaps neither of those Scots armies had been defeated.

But the impatience of our friends ruined all; for my part, I had as good a mind to put my hand to the ruin of the enemy as any of them, but I never saw any tolerable appearance of a force able to match the enemy, and I had no mind to be beaten and then hanged. Had we let them alone, they would have fallen into so many parties and factions, and so effectually have torn one another to pieces, that whichsoever party had come to us, we should, with them, have been too hard for all the rest.

This was plain by the course of things afterwards; when the Independent army had ruffled the Presbyterian Parliament, the soldiery of that party made no scruple to join us, and would have restored the king with all their hearts, and many of them did join us at last.

And the consequence, though late, ended so; for they fell out so many times, army and Parliament, Parliament and army, and alternately pulled one another down so often till at last the Presbyterians who began the war, ended it, and, to be rid of their enemies, rather than for any love to the monarchy, restored King Charles the Second, and brought him in on the very day that they themselves had formerly resolved the ruin of his father's government, being the 29th of May, the same day twenty years that the private cabal in London concluded their secret league with the Scots, to embroil his father King Charles the First.

NOTES

p. 1. The preface to the first edition, which appeared in 1720, was written by Defoe as "Editor" of the manuscript. The second edition appeared between 1740 and 1750, after the death of Defoe. (He was probably born in 1671 and he died in 1731.) In the preface to that edition it was argued that the Cavalier was certainly a real person.

p. 2, l. 35. "Nicely" is here used in the stricter and more uncommon sense of "minutely." This use of words in a slightly different sense from their common modern significance will be noticed frequently; cf. p. 8, l. 17 "passionately," p. 18, l. 40 "refined," p. 31, l. 18 "particular."

p. 3, l. 3. Charles XII the famous soldier king of Sweden died in 1718.

p. 3, l. 31. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, was one of the staunchest supporters of Charles I, and Chancellor under Charles II. His History of the Rebellion is naturally written from the Royalist standpoint. This statement concerning "the editors" can only be intended by Defoe to give colour of truth to his story of the manuscript.

p. 10, l. 17. England had been nominally at war with Spain since the beginning of the reign of Charles I. Peace was actually made in 1630.

p. 12, l. 3. A pistole was a gold coin used chiefly in France and Spain. Its value varied but it was generally worth about fifteen or sixteen shillings.

p. 14, l. 5. Cardinal Richelieu, one of the greatest statesmen of the seventeenth century, was practically supreme in France during the reign of Louis XIII.

p. 14, l. 16. The cause of the war with Savoy is told at length on page 23. Savoy being the frontier province between France and Italy it was important that France should maintain her influence there.

p. 14, l. 18. Pinerolo was a frontier fortress.

p. 14, l. 36. The queen-mother was Mary de Medicis who had been regent during the minority of Louis XIII.

p. 15, l. 3. The Protestants or Huguenots of Southern France had been tolerated since 1598 but Richelieu deprived them of many of their privileges.

p. 15, l. 21. In 1625 when England was in alliance with France English ships had been joined with the French fleet to reduce la Rochelle, the great stronghold of Protestantism in Southern France.

p. 16, l. 7. The Louvre, now famous as a picture gallery and museum, was formerly one of the palaces of the French Kings.

p. 17, l. 16. The Bastille was the famous prison destroyed in 1789 at the outbreak of the French Revolution.

p. 18, l. 13. In the seventeenth century Italy was still divided into several states each with its own prince.

p. 18, l. 22. Susa was another Savoyard fortress.

p. 19, l. 17. A halberd was a weapon consisting of a long wooden shaft surmounted by an axe-like head.

p. 21, l. 30. The Cantons were the political divisions of Switzerland.

p. 23, l. 7. Casale, a strong town on the Po.

p. 25, l. 14. A dragoon was a cavalry soldier armed with an infantry firearm and trained to fight on foot as well as on horseback.

p. 27, l. 25. Saluzzo a town S.E. of Pinerolo.

p. 29, l. 12. This truce prepared for the definite "Peace of Cherasco," April 1631, which confirmed the Duchy of Mantua to the Duke of Nevers but left only Pinerolo in the hands of the French.

p. 31, l. 12. This refers to the Treaty of Bärwalde, 1631, by which Gustavus Adolphus promised to consider the interests of the French (who were the natural enemies of the Empire).

p. 31, l. 16. In 1628 the Duke of Pomerania had been obliged to put his coast line under the care of the imperial troops. In attacking it therefore in 1639 Gustavus Adolphus was aiming a blow at the Emperor and obtaining a good basis for further conquests.

p. 31, l. 25. Gazette is the old name for newspaper.

p. 33, l. 12. Bavaria was the chief Catholic State not under the direct government of the Emperor. Maximilian, its elector, was appointed head of the Catholic League which was formed in 1609 in opposition to the Protestant Union which had been formed in 1608.

p. 33, l. 20. By the end of the sixteenth century the Turks had advanced far into Europe, had detached half of Hungary from the Emperor's dominions and made him pay tribute for the other half. During the seventeenth century, however, they were slowly driven back.

p. 33, l. 37. In 1628 the two Dukes of Mecklenburg had been "put to the ban" by the Emperor for having given help to Christian of Denmark who had taken up the cause of the Protestants.