It is now time to pass to the foreign wars of the Protectorate; for though they be little remembered they fairly launched the Army on its long career of tropical conquest, and of victory on the continent of Europe.
1654.

It is not easy to explain the motives that prompted Cromwell to make an enemy of Spain. He was eagerly courted by both French and Spaniards, and it was open to him to choose whichever he pleased for his allies. The probability is that he was still swayed by the old religious hatred of the days of Elizabeth, and, like her, looked to fill his empty treasury with the spoils of the Indies. He did not perceive that the religious wars of Europe were virtually ended, and that nations were tending already to their old friendships and antagonisms as they existed before the Reformation. Be that as it may, he was hardly firm in the saddle as Protector when he began to frame a great design against the Spanish possessions in the New World. His chief advisers were one Colonel Thomas Modyford of Barbados, who had his own reasons for wishing to ingratiate himself with the Protector, and Thomas Gage, a renegade priest, who had lived long in the Antilles and on the Spanish Main and had written a book on the subject. The most fitting base of operations was obviously Barbados, which, from its position to windward of the whole Caribbean Archipelago, possessed a strategic importance which it has only lost since the introduction of steam-vessels. It lay ready to Cromwell\'s[259] hand, having been an English possession since 1628, and was, if Modyford were to be believed, ready to give active assistance in the enterprise. There remained the question whether the expedition should be directed against an Island or against the Main. Gage was for the latter course, and named the Orinoco as the objective: Modyford recommended Cuba or Hispaniola,[185] and Modyford\'s opinion prevailed.

Gradually the design matured itself, and presently assumed gigantic proportions. A footing once established on one of the Spanish Islands to leeward, there was to be a general contest with the Spaniards for the whole of the South Atlantic. Two fleets were to be employed, one in seconding the army\'s operations on the Islands and making raids upon the Main, the other in cruising off the Spanish coast so as to interrupt both plate-fleets from the west and reinforcements from the east. Lastly, not England only, but New England was to play a part in the great campaign. Supplies would be one principal difficulty, but these could be furnished from English America, and not only supplies but settlers, who, trained to self-defence by Indian warfare, should be capable of holding the territory wrested from Spain. Thus the English from both sides of the Atlantic were to close in upon the Spanish dominions in the New World, and turn Nova Hispania into Nova Britannia. There was no lack of breadth and boldness in the design.

All through the latter half of 1654 mysterious preparations went forward with great activity in the English dockyards, and France, Spain, and Holland each trembled lest they might be turned against herself. But the existing organisation in England was unequal to the effort. To equip two fleets of forty and of twenty-five ships for a long and distant cruise was a heavy task in itself; but to add to this the transport of six thousand men over three thousand miles of ocean for an expedition to the tropics was to tax the resources of the naval and[260] military departments to excess. The burden of the duty fell upon John Desborough, major-general and commissioner of the Admiralty, who was not equal to thinking out the details of such an enterprise nor disposed to give himself much trouble about them. His difficulties were increased by the rascality of contractors, and by the composition of the expeditionary force. By a gigantic error, which has not yet been unlearned, Cromwell, instead of sending complete regiments under their own officers, made up new corps, partly of drafts selected by various colonels and probably containing the men of whom they were most anxious to be rid, and partly of recruits drawn from the most restless and worthless of the nation. He returned in fact to the old system that had so often been found wanting in the days of Elizabeth, of James, and of Charles.

The distribution of command was also faulty. The military commander-in-chief was Robert Venables, who had made a reputation as a hunter of Tories in Ireland; the Admiral joined with him was William Penn, who is unjustly remembered rather as the father of a not wholly admirable Quaker than as one of the ablest and bravest naval officers of his day. But as if two commanders were not already sufficient, there were joined with them three civil commissioners, one Gregory Butler, an officer who had served in the Civil War, Edward Winslow, a civilian and an official, and the Governor of Barbados, Daniel Searle. There was of course nothing new in the presence of civil commissioners on the staff, and a general\'s instructions since the days of Henry the Eighth had usually bound him to act by the advice of his Council of War only; but it is abundantly evident that Winslow was employed not only as a commissioner, but as a spy on his colleagues, or on some one of them whose loyalty was suspected. It is strange that so sensible a man as Cromwell should have made such a mistake as this. Monk was the man whom he had wished to send, could he have spared him from Scotland; but failing Monk, Penn and Venables were both of[261] them men who had shown ability in their previous service.

With immense difficulty the expedition was got to sea at the end of December 1654, just two months too late. Even so it sailed without a portion of its stores, which Desborough promised faithfully to send after it without delay. The fleet reached Barbados after a good passage on the 29th of January 1655; and then the troubles began. From too blind faith in the promises of Thomas Modyford, the Protector had trusted to Barbados in great part to equip his army, and to help it on its way. Barbados, from its Governor downwards, refused to move a finger. It had no desire to denude itself of arms or of men, and so far from assisting the English threw every possible obstruction in their way. The planter upon whom Venables had been instructed chiefly to depend was found to be entirely under the thumb of his wife. She was averse to the expedition; and the commissioners, observing her, as they said, to be very powerful and young, abandoned all hope of co-operation from that quarter. Every day too brought fresh evidence of the rotten composition of the force at large, which was without order, without coherency, and without discipline. Unfortunately Venables was not the man to set such failings right. He showed indeed some spasmodic energy, called the Barbadian planters a company of geese, improvised rude pikes of branches of the cabbage-palm, organised a regiment of negroes and a naval brigade, and after several weeks\' stay sailed at last for St. Domingo. On the way he picked up a regiment of colonial volunteers which had been collected by Gregory Butler at St. Kitts, and on the 13th of April the expedition was in sight of St. Domingo.
1655.

The naval officers were for running in at once and taking the town by a sudden attack. Winslow, the civilian, objected: the soldiers, he said, would plunder the town, and he wanted all spoil for the English treasury. This order against plunder raised something like a mutiny among the troops; but eventually a new plan was chosen,[262] which was probably based on the precedent of Drake in 1586. Venables with three thousand five hundred men sailed to a landing-place thirty miles west of the town, and there disembarked; leaving fifteen hundred more men under a Colonel Buller to land to the eastward of it and march on it from that side. Buller, however, finding it impracticable to obey his instructions, after two days\' delay also landed to the westward of the town, though but ten miles from it, at a point called Drake\'s landing. Elated by a trifling success against a handful of Spaniards who had opposed his disembarkation, he laid aside all thought of co-operation with Venables and pushed on hastily into the jungle to take St. Domingo by himself. No sooner was he gone, past call or view, when up came Venables to the identical spot where Buller had landed. He had for two days pursued a terrible march of thirty miles through jungle-paths, in the sultry steam of the tropical forest. The men\'s water-bottles had been left behind in England, and they were choked with thirst; they had torn the fruit from the trees as they passed and had dropped down by scores with dysentery. Hundreds had fallen out, sick and dead, and the column was not only weakened but demoralised.

Next day Venables effected a junction with Buller, and the force, though heartless and spiritless, made shift to creep up to a detached fort which covered the approach to the town. On the way it fell into an ambuscade, and though it beat off the enemy, it lost in the action the only guide who knew where water was to be found, and was compelled to retire ten miles to Drake\'s landing. There it remained for a week, eating bad food from some scoundrelly contractor\'s stores, drinking water that was poisoned by a copper mine, and soaked night after night by pouring tropical rain. Dysentery raged with fearful violence, and Venables himself did not escape the plague. Unfortunately, instead of sharing the hardship with his men in camp, he went on board ship to be nursed by Mrs. Venables, who[263] had accompanied him on the voyage. Thus arose open murmurs and scandalous tales, which cost him the confidence of the army.

Nevertheless after six days\' rest he again advanced by the same line to the fort from which he had been forced to retreat. To prevent repetition of mishaps from ambuscades he gave strict orders that the advanced guard should throw out flanking parties on each side of the jungle-path. The injunction was disobeyed. The advanced guard walked straight into an ambuscade, two officers fell dead, the third, Adjutant-General Jackson, who was in command, turned and ran; the advanced guard fled headlong back on to the support; the support tumbled back on to the main body, and there, wedged tight in the narrow pass, the English were mown down like grass by the guns of the fort and the lances of the Spanish cavalry. At last an old colonel contrived to rally a few men in the rear, and advancing with them through the jungle fell upon the flank of the Spaniards and beat them back. He paid for his bravery with his life, but he assured the retreat of the rest of the force, which crept back beaten and crest-fallen to the ships, leaving several colours and three hundred dead men behind it.

Venables and his men were now thoroughly cowed by failure and disease. Penn in vain offered to take the town with his sailors, but Venables and Winslow would not hear of it. All ranks in the fleet now abused the army for rogues, and the worst feeling grew up between the two services. Finally, on the 7th of May, the expedition sailed away in shame to Jamaica. Arrived there, Penn, openly saying that he would not trust the army, led the way himself at the head of the boats of the fleet; and after a trifling resistance the Island was surrendered by capitulation. Then fleet and army began to fight in earnest, officers as well as men; and at last, after the commissioners in command had spent six weeks in incessant quarrelling, Venables and Penn sailed home, leaving the troops and a part of the squadron behind them.

[264]
1656.

Cromwell\'s disappointment and chagrin over the failure of his great enterprise were extreme. Both the returned commanders were forthwith sent to the Tower, and though presently released, remained throughout the whole of the Protectorate in disgrace. Still Jamaica had been won and must be held. The command after Venables\' departure had devolved on Richard Fortescue, a colonel of the New Model, who, without concealing his infinite contempt for those who had gone home, set himself cheerfully to turn the new possession to account. To him Cromwell wrote letters of encouragement and thanks, with promise of speedy reinforcement. But now a new enemy appeared in Jamaica, one that has laid low many tens of thousands of red-coats, the yellow fever. In October 1655 the first reinforcements arrived, under command of Major Sedgwicke. He had hardly set foot on the island before Fortescue succumbed, and he could only report that the army was sadly thinned and that hardly a man of the survivors was fit for duty. Then the recruits began to fall down fast, and in a few days the men were dying at the rate of twenty a day. Sedgwicke was completely unnerved; he gave himself up for lost, and in nine months followed Fortescue to the grave. Fresh reinforcements, including all the vagabondage of Scotland, were hurried across the Atlantic to meet the same fate. Colonel Brayne, who had served with Monk in Scotland, arrived to succeed Sedgwicke in December 1656. He lasted ten months, surviving even so two thirds of the men that he brought with him, and then went the way of Sedgwicke and Fortescue. Finally a Colonel D\'Oyley, who had sailed with the original expedition, took over the command, and being a healthy, energetic man, soon reduced things to such order that when in May 1658 the Spaniards attempted to recapture the island, he met and repulsed them with brilliant success. Thus at length was firmly established the English possession of Jamaica.

So ended the first great military expedition of the English to the tropics, the first of many attempts, nearly[265] all of them disastrous, to wrest from Spain her Empire in the West. I have dwelt upon it at some length, for it is the opening chapter of a long and melancholy story, whereof one recitation will almost serve for the whole. We have still to go with Wentworth to Carthagena and with Albemarle to Havanna; we shall accompany Abercromby and Moore to St. Vincent and St. Lucia, and other less noted officers to Demarara and Surinam; we shall even see Wellington himself drawing up a plan for operations on the Orinoco: but in spite of a hundred experiences and a thousand warnings we shall find the mistakes of Oliver Cromwell eternally repeated, and though we may never again have to tell so disgraceful a story as that of the repulse from St. Domingo, yet we shall seldom fail to encounter such mournful complaints as were made by Fortescue, Sedgwicke, and Brayne, of regiments decimated as soon as disembarked, and annihilated before the firing of a shot. We have now well-nigh learned how to conduct a tropical expedition, and life in the tropics is a thing familiar to tens of thousands of Englishmen; but it is worth while to give a thought to these poor soldiers of the Commonwealth. They were the first Englishmen who went to the tropics, not like Drake\'s crews as fellow-adventurers, but simply as hired fighting men. Yet the traditions of Drake\'s golden voyages were strong upon them, and they landed, big with expectations of endless gold told up in bags.[186] We can picture their joy at coming ashore, bronzed healthy Englishmen, and their open-mouthed wonder at all that they saw; and then after a few hours the first cases of sickness, the puzzled surgeons with busy lancets, the first death and the first grave; the instant spread of fever on the turning of the virgin soil, and then a hideous iteration of ghastly symptoms, and, sundown after sundown, the row of silent forms and shrouded faces. Englishmen had faced such terrors in the flooded leaguers of Flanders, but it was hard to find them in a fruitful and pleasant land, where the sun shone brighter[266] and the forest grew greener than in England, the loved England that lay so far away over the glorious mocking blue of the tropic sea.[187]
1655,
Sept. 9.
1657,
March.

The aggressive attack on St. Domingo at once decided the hostility of Spain towards the Commonwealth, and drove her to take Cromwell\'s most formidable enemy, Charles Stuart, to her heart. The Protector, on his side, hastened to make treaty of peace and friendship with France, which he presently expanded into an offensive and defensive alliance. Mazarin, who had to encounter not only Spain but Condé, was only too glad to welcome the English to his side. By the terms of the treaty it was agreed that the French should provide twenty thousand men, and the English six thousand men, as well as a fleet, for the coming campaign against the Spaniards in Flanders. Of the English six thousand half were to be paid by France, but the whole were to be commanded by English officers, and reckoned to be the Lord Protector\'s forces. The plan of campaign was the reduction of the three coast-towns of Mardyck, Dunkirk, and Gravelines, of which the two first were to be made over to England and the third retained by France. Cromwell\'s great object was to secure a naval station from which he could check any attempted invasion of England by Charles Stuart from Spanish Flanders, and he was therefore urgent that Dunkirk should be first attacked. Turenne disliked this design, and even threatened to throw up his command if it should be insisted on. To beleaguer Dunkirk without first securing Nieuport, Furnes, and Bergues would, he said, be to be besieged while conducting a siege. But Cromwell had made up his mind that the thing should be done, and, as shall soon be seen, it was done.
1657.

Throughout the spring of 1657 therefore preparations for the expedition kept both military and naval[267] departments busily employed, for the fleet was not only to supply the army but to second its operations. The six thousand men, though for the most part old soldiers, were made up of drafts and of new recruits, and were distributed into six regiments. Turenne would gladly have preferred complete corps from the standing Army, but in the existing menace of invasion Cromwell was indisposed to spare them. Nevertheless the new regiments were in perfect order and discipline when they embarked on the 1st of May from Dover for Boulogne. The general in command was Sir John Reynolds, whom we saw lately in Ireland; the major-general was Thomas Morgan, Monk\'s right-hand man in the Highland war, an impetuous little dragoon known by the name of the "little colonel,"[188] and justly reputed to be one of the best officers in the British Isles.

The arrival of the six thousand English foot, all dressed in new red-coats, created a great sensation in France. They were cried up for the best men that ever were seen in the French service; they took precedence of the whole French army, even of the famous Picardie, excepting the Swiss and Scottish body-guards; and they were welcomed by emissaries from the King and Mazarin and inspected by the royal family. It is significant of the difference between the French and English even in their civil wars that the six thousand were amazed to see all the villagers fly from their houses at their approach. They were told that the French soldiery were dreaded as much by their countrymen as by their enemies; and yet Reynolds admitted that the discipline of the French troops was good, for France. "But we," he added proudly, "can lie in a town four days without a single complaint." One thing alone went amiss with ............