ment by which Frederic beat the French at Rosbach and the Austrians at Leuthen, Cromwell had the advantage made for him, while Frederic made it for himself. Craft, when employed against an enemy in war as Hannibal employed it, is an exercise of mind which may be fairly used by an honourable man, and also requires far greater fertility of genius than the craft which overreaches friends, which was what Cromwell excelled in, and which may be more properly called fraud. There are so many villains who owe their success both in public and private life to the same arts by which Oliver Cromwell overreached his friends and his party and made himself absolute ruler of England, Scotland, and Ireland, that it is a duty which a historian owes to truth, honesty, and morality to note carefully this part of the character of Cromwell as a general, and the light it throws on his character as a man.

Down Hill, on which Leslie had encamped, is distant, as I have said, about two miles from Dunbar. But though this spur or offshoot of the Lammermoor Hills approaches at this point so near to Dunbar, and consequently so near to the sea, the Lammermoor chain of hills does not approach the sea till it has stretched about ten miles to the southeast of Dunbar. Between the hills and the sea extends a fertile tract or strip of land, which is celebrated now for the best farming in the world, and which even then seems to have struck the English by its superior cultivation. The letters from the army state that in those parts where the army marched was the greatest plenty of corn that they ever saw and not one fallow field; and "now," they add, marking one of the curses of war, "extremely trodden down and wasted, and the soldiers enforced to give the wheat to their horses.” 1

1 Whitelock, p. 470.

A A

Down Hill is so steep on the north and west as to be almost inaccessible. On the east it is less steep. On the south and south-east it slopes with such a gentle declivity that cavalry might charge up it. By the north-east side of the hill runs a small stream in a deep grassy glen, called Broxburn. Brocksburn, the old spelling, marks the origin of the name. Broxburn after pursuing its course for about a mile in this small glen passes through the grounds of Broxmouth-house and then joins the sea. It is impossible to understand the battle of Dunbar without understanding the nature of the ground where that battle was fought, and particularly the relative situation of Broxburn and Down Hill.

2

The words used in the contemporary narratives of the English officers, "a great clough," "a great dyke," do not by any means convey an adequate idea of the nature of the ground. For the space of about a mile, the distance between Down Hill and the point where it passes the London road and enters the park of Broxmouth-house, Broxburn runs in one of those grassy glens, or troughs, in which streams of greater or less magnitude are frequently seen in Scotland, winding about in them from one bank to the other, and leaving a large space of level ground, green sward or sand and gravel-here it is green sward-now on one side the small valley, now on the other. This small valley or glen is now pretty thickly planted with trees; but in 1650 it appears to have been only grassy, not wooded. It is not only of considerable depth, some forty or fifty feet, and considerably more in width, but

4

Cadwell says (Ibid.) "about 40 or 50 feet wide, and as deep as broad"but the width or breadth is considerably greater.

the banks are steep, except in one spot, about half a mile above the point where the burn enters the grounds of Broxmouth-house. At this spot the banks shelve or slope in such a manner as to form a sort of passage for carts. In this pass there stood a shepherd's hut which was occupied by twenty-four foot and six horse of Cromwell's army; but it was taken by Leslie the evening before the battle. It may give an idea of the size of the stream that runs somewhat rapidly down this glen, for there is a considerable fall between the foot of the hill and the sea, to mention that it is of the smallest size of those Scottish streams which contain fine trout of moderate size. At the point where the brook passes the road to Berwick and enters the grounds of Broxmouth-house, the valley or glen disappears, the high banks, that formed it, sloping or shelving down, so that the road crosses the brook without any descent on one side or ascent on the other. It was at this point and somewhat to the south of it that the principal struggle of the battle of Dunbar took place. There is one thing more that requires to be mentioned. Down Hill and the range of hills of which it forms a part do not incline towards the sea here, and consequently do not follow closely, or only for a short distance, the course of Broxburn and its little valley, but slope somewhat away from it, making with it an acute angle. Nevertheless it would appear from the reasons given by Lambert in the council of war, which will be stated presently, for the attack of Leslie's right wing, that Leslie's army was so posted as to be confined between the hill and the glen, and had not room to move freely. And even if it had room to move freely, if the movement was not made before the attack commenced, it was then too late to pre

vent Cromwell's attack of one flank from paralysing and destroying the whole body.

The English army had reached Dunbar on the night of

Sunday the 1st of September.

very rainy and tempestuous.

The next morning was "Our poor army," says

1

Captain Hodgson, " drew up about swamps and bogs, not far from Dunbar, and could not pitch a tent all that day. If other evidence were wanted, Cromwell's letter to Sir Arthur Haselrig, written on that Monday the 2nd of September, the dreary day briefly described in the foregoing words of Captain Hodgson, shows that he considered himself reduced to extremities. At this moment the madness, not of the Scottish ecclesiastics of the Kirk Commission, as has been so often asserted, but of the oligarchical Committee of Estates, saved him and destroyed his opponents. Baillie's words are these:-"After all tryalls, finding no maladministration on him [David Leslie] to count of, but the removal of the army from the hill the night before the rout, which yet was a consequence of the Committee's order, contrare to his mind, to stop the enemies' retreat, and for that end to storm Brocksmouth House as soon as possible." 3

It is always extremely difficult to obtain a perfectly accurate statement of the numbers on each side.

1 Captain Hodgson's Memoirs, p. 144.

Cromwell to Sir Arthur Haselrig. Septr. 2, 1650.

3 Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. iii. p. 111. Edinburgh, 1842. Baillie adds: "On these considerations, the State unanimously did with all earnestness intreat him to keep still his charge. Against this order Warristone and, as I suppose, Sir John Cheisly

Crom

did enter their dissent; I am sure Mr. James Guthrie did his, at which, as a great impertinence, many [were] offended." This Mr. James Guthrie was one of the Presbyterian preachers who showed his total want of good sense, good feeling, good manners, and common decency by "public invectives against David Leslie from the pulpit," for the loss of the battle of Dunbar. Baillie.-Ibid.

1

well's statements in his dispatch of September 4th may be considered as not very wide of the truth. He says that the enemy's numbers were "about six thousand horse, and sixteen thousand foot at least; ours drawn down, as to sound men, to about seven thousand five hundred foot, and three thousand five hundred horse." But the Scots Committee of Estates had taken measures to destroy effectively any advantage they might have derived from their superiority of numbers. For they had now placed their army with its left wing resting on Down Hill and its right advanced to the place where the banks of the Broxburn valley flatten or slope down to level ground, where the road to Berwick then as now crossed the burn, where consequently their right wing lay in such a position that it might be attacked by Cromwell with an overwhelming superiority of force. That the importance of this movement in favour of the English was seen immediately by Lambert we have the authority of Captain Hodgson and of Cromwell himself; that it was seen by Cromwell we have only Cromwell's own word, which, as is too well known, is not always to be implicitly relied on. But, though there are two witnesses, Cromwell himself and Captain Hodgson, that this plan of attack was Lambert's, while that it was also Cromwell's there is no witness at all except Cromwell's own assertion, Cromwell at all events had the merit of seeing the value of it when it was suggested to him, and of putting it in execution with his usual promptitude and resolution. Nor is it to be inferred, assuming the plan to have occurred to the mind of Lambert and not to that of Cromwell, that Lambert was therefore the greater man of the two, even though it may prove him to have been a better general than Cromwell. For subsequent events abundantly proved 1 Sir Edward Walker says they were "about 16,000 foot and 7000 horse." P. 181.