Cromwell himself had with his characteristic good sense told the House of Commons at the end of the second year of the war, that he would recommend to their prudence not to insist upon any complaint or oversight of any commander-in-chief upon any occasion whatsoever; adding this reason for his recommendation, "for as I must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can rarely be avoided in military affairs." 1 It is instructive to compare with this the terms in which Lord Clarendon and Mrs. Hutchinson speak of military affairs, of which their knowledge was about equal. The lawyer and the lady are equally profuse of their scorn and reprobation for brave men when the chances of war have gone against them. But the considerations suggested by the remark of Cromwell above quoted in exculpation of the Scottish commander do not in any degree exculpate those who then administered the government of Scotland, and overruled the commander of the Scottish army. In the long black catalogue of disasters brought upon Scotland during a period of five hundred years by rulers whom God in His wrath had sent to be her curse, her scourge, and her shame, there is none greater or more shameful than this rout of Dunbar, rendered yet more galling and made to bear a pre-eminence of hardship and infamy by the treatment which the prisoners met with from the victors. In a letter to the Council of State, ordered to be printed and published by the English Parliament, 8th Nov. 1650, Sir Arthur Haselrig, governor of Newcastle, states that after the battle at Dunbar the lord-general wrote to him that there were about nine thousand prisoners, and that he had set at liberty all those that were wounded, and, as he thought, disabled for future 1 Parl. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 326, 327. service, in number five thousand one hundred. The rest the general sent towards Newcastle, conducted to Berwick by Major Hobson, and from Berwick to Newcastle by some foot of the garrison of Berwick and a troop of horse. It is stated on other authority that the Scots were driven like turkeys by the English soldiers, and went along cursing their king and clergy for insnaring them in misery. I have shown that they had been dragged from their homes and driven by force into the ranks by their native oppressors, their lairds and lords. It is further stated in Haselrig's letter to the Council of State that the officers that marched with them to Berwick were necessitated to kill about thirty, fearing the loss of them all, for they fell down in great numbers, and said they were not able to march from fatigue, wounds, and want of food. It is further stated that the officers in command of the guard brought their prisoners far in the night, so that doubtless many ran away. When they came to Morpeth, the prisoners, being put into a large walled garden, ate up raw cabbages, leaves, and roots, "so many that the very seed, and labour at fourpence a day, was valued at nine pounds; which cabbage as I conceive," proceeds Haselrig, they having fasted, as they themselves said, near eight days, poisoned their bodies; for, as they were coming from thence to Newcastle, some died by the wayside; and when they came to Newcastle, I put them into the greatest church in the town; and the next morning when I sent them to Durham, about seven score were sick, and not able to march, and three died that night, and some fell down in their march from Newcastle to Durham and died." The royalist writers accuse Haselrig of starving the 1 Whitelock, p. 470. prisoners. On the other hand there is a statement in Whitelock to the effect that the Scottish soldiers had been starved by their own officers before the battle, and that they had been at least comparatively well fed by the governor of Berwick. This statement is that the governor of Berwick gave to each Scotch prisoner for one day three biscuits and a pottle of pease, which they said was more than their own officers gave them in three days together." When the prisoners came to Durham, they were told off into the great cathedral church, and their number was found to be only three thousand. The disease, dysentery, still increasing among them, the sick were removed out of the cathedral church to the bishop's castle. Abundance of wholesome food was now supplied to them; and medicine, nurses, and medical attendance were provided for the sick and wounded. Notwithstanding all this, they still continued to die with frightful rapidity, many who were apparently healthy and had not at all been sick, suddenly dying, without any other apparent cause but that they were all infected and that the strength of some held out longer, so that when the governor wrote his letter, that is, made his report to the Council of State, about sixteen hundred were dead and buried. The report among other things states, "They were so unruly, sluttish, and nasty, that it is not to be believed; they acted rather like beasts than men; so that the marshal was allowed forty men to 1 Bates (Part ii. p. 106) tells the story in his way, which, as may be supposed, differs a good deal from Haselrig's. "The prisoners," says Bates, "after the wounded, sick, and weak, and those that were of no value were set at liberty, are sent to Newcastle in England; where by the governor Haselrig many of them were starved, cleanse and sweep them every day." Other accounts state that the countrymen were much enslaved to their lords, and the people very poor, and barbarous and dirty, washing their linen not above once a month and their hands and faces not above once a year.1 It would seem that at that time the Highlanders, at least those serving in Leslie's army, were not distinguished from the Lowlanders by any peculiar dress, for the report says:-"there are about 500 sick in the castle, and about 600 yet in health in the cathedral, most of which are in probability Highlanders, they being hardier than the rest, and other means to distinguish them we have not." Whether the Highlanders or Lowlanders were the chief aggressors in the following revolting cruelties I will not presume to say. "Some were killed by themselves [by the prisoners]; for they were exceeding cruel one towards another. If a man was perceived to have any money, it was two to one but he was killed before morning, and robbed; and if any had good clothes, he that wanted, if he was able, would strangle him, and put on his clothes." 2 Now as this passage has been edited without comment by Sir Walter Scott, who possessed the command of the Advocates' Library and all the best sources of information for disproving it if he considered it false or improbable, I greatly fear that it must be considered as too true a tale. When we reflect that the Scottish Government professed to have undertaken this war for the glory of God and the purity of the Christian religion, of which they declared themselves to be not only the best but the sole judges and champions, can any satire of the most severe satirist who 1 Whitelock, p. 468. 2 Sir Arthur Haselrig to the Committee of the Council of State-in the same collection with Captain Hodgson's Memoirs-p. 343-edited with notes by Walter Scott, Edinburgh, 1806. ever lashed the follies and vices of mankind exceed the intensity of reprobation conveyed by the simple fact here stated? Here were kings, nobles, and priests, or presbyters, if they prefer the term, who had been, as they declared, set over a nation by Almighty God to lead them and feed them, to govern them and teach them and preach to them; —and what had they done? Preaching indeed they had given in plenty; but how had they taught them? After a thousand years under the religion of the Church of Rome, and a hundred years under that of the Kirk of Scotland, here was the vast bulk of a nation still in that state of primæval barbarism where "there is continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." They had shorn their flock indeed, but they had neither fed them, nor led them, for it will not be denied that true Presbyterians of some shade or other composed the bulk of the army of the Covenanted Kirk and Covenanted Oligarchy of Scotland. But all this cruelty, barbarity, and wretchedness of the people were the natural consequence of a reformation consecrated by grillades of the trustees of church lands by the nobles, and of a clergy dependent on such nobles for every morsel of bread they ate. There can be little doubt that the people at large were worse off since those lands out of which they received at least some pittance of food had been violently and lawlessly seized to swell the pride, luxury, insolence, and other vices of the feudal oligarchy. If Scotland had continued a separate and independent kingdom, and her aristocracy or oligarchy had been suffered to run out its full career, there can be little doubt but the nobility of Scotland would have had a similar fate to that of the nobility of France. It would have terminated its career at the lanterne or the guillotine. |