Cromwell first detached a strong force to Ireland to the support of Jones, who was threatened in Dublin by the besieging army of Ormond. By a fortunate sally. the parliamentary general obliged his antagonists to •-use the siege, and Cromwell soon after arriving in the capital, was welcomed with general rejoicings. The progress of Cromwell's arms was rapid, bloody, and zr resistible. He first stormed the garrison of Tredah, which he butchered to one man: he next made a similar massacre at Wexford. Every before which he presented himself, surrendered in terror at these severe examples; and when his forces were 1)k:if-inning to decay from sickness and difficulties, they were recruited by the voluntary desertion from all the English garrisons in Munster. Ormond despairing of the cause, fled, and left the management of the Catholics to Clanricarde, who was glad to bargain for banishment. Forty thousand native Irish were allowed by Cromwell to pass into fo reign service.
The offers of the Scottish parliament to receive the young Charles as their sovereign, were renewed to the Prince at Breda; but as Charles had already enjoined Montrose to make a descent in his favour by force of arms upon Scotland, he protracted thZ; treaty with du plicity, till he should know the result of the enterprise. Montrose, with arms and money by Sweden and Denmark, and about 600 Germans, arrived from Hamburgh on the Orkney isles, and by a forced levy on the poor islanders, raised his army to 1400. The northern Scotch remembering his cruelties, sled with horror before his standard. Advancing beyond the pass of Inverearron, he was surprised, surrounded, and con veyed to Edinburgh. He was there doomed, by a sen tence pronounced on his former attainler, to be hanged on a gibbet 30 feet high, and his limos were stuck up in the principal towns of the kingdom. His defeat was productive of only a further limitation, or rather expla nation of the former condition offered by the Scotch to their king. Charles no longer refused to accept the conditions, and receive the covenant (if required,) on his arrival, and embarking with his court in a Dutch fleet, arrived at the mouth of the Spey. As the jealousy of the Scotch was increased by the late invasion, the covenant was exacted from him before he was suffered to land. His English attendants, all but a few comply ing persons, were dismissed, and he soon found that he had only exchanged exile for imprisonment. Ile was surrounded by the clergy, who approached his person in the humblest postures, but with exhortations full of bitter invectives against the iniquity of his father's house, the idolatry of his mother, and his own connexion with inveterate malignants. He listened to their sermons, and tried to follow their observance of the Sabbath with all his gravity, but neither disgust nor insincerity could entirely escape the notice of his attendants.
The Scotch were disappointed in their expectations of maintaining peace with Ireland, by observing neu trality. Cromwell, after Fairfax had conscientiously refused to draw his sword against his Scottish brothers of the covenant, received the command of the troops, and was within a month, from the time of the king's arrival, on the banks of the Tweed with 16,000 men.
Argyle, at the head of the committee of estates, made the most vigorous preparations for his reception. Lesly, a general who had never been beaten, opposed his cool sagacity to the genius of Cromwell. He entrenched himself in a fortified camp between Edinburgh and Leith, and wasted \lersc and the Lothians, to deprive the English of subsistence. Cromwell tried every ex pedient, without success, to bring Lesly to a battle. The king came to the Scottish camp, where his pre sence exciting the jealousy of the fanatical clergy, they ordered him immediately to leave it. They also purged it of 4000 Malignants and Engagers,* the soldiers of chief credit and experience in the nation ; and being now an army of saints, concluded they could not be beaten. They murmured at their prudent general. They mur mured also at the Lord, for his delays in delivering them, and plainly told him. that he should no longer be their God, if he would not save them from the sectaries. An advantage having offered to Lesly on Sunday, they would not suffer him to take it for fear of Sabbath-break ing. Cromwell was in a bad situation, straitened for provisions, and reduced in numbers by sickness, he re tired to Dunbar. Lesly followed him, and encamped on the heights of Lammermuir above the town, taking pos session of the passes by which the enemy could retreat to Berwick. The English general had come to the des perate resolution of sending his foot and artillery by sea to England, and of breaking through with his cavalry to Berwick. But the madness of the Covenanters snatched a bloodless victory from Lesly, when he was on the eve of seizing it. The ministers, who had been wrestling, (as they termed it,) with the Lord in prayer, fancied that they had at last obtained the victory, and forced their general, in spite of his remonstrances, to descend to the plain and attack the English. When Cromwell discovered, through his glass, an unusual movement in the Scottish camp, " they arc coming down !" he exclaimed, " the Lord hath delivered them into our hands." They continued, during a tempestu ous night, to descend from the hills : their matches were extinguished, and their undisciplined numbers were exposed to the skill of veteran troops, who had been carefully covered from the storm. They were, indeed, delivered into the hands of Cromwell. Three thousand were slain, and nine hundred taken prisoners. The Scottish parliament, taught by this disaster the neces sity of an union of all parties, resolved, in their meeting at Perth, to call in the aid of the Malignants and En gagers, on condition of a repentance of errors, which was ridiculously dictated and adopted. But two shires in the west of Scotland protested against this admission of the ungodly to co-operate in the cause, and withdrew from the general levy five thousand men.