Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

Let no one suppose that, because Cromwell, and other officers of the army, had been negotiating with the king, bidding for him, in fact, against the Parliament, and offering terms such as it was mere infatuation upon his part not to accept, that they were, therefore, not sincere in this their fanaticism, which now so clearly told them they should be doing the express will of God in putting him to death. Those who have paid attention to this disease of the mind, know well, that while nothing is more violent at one moment, nothing is more flexible at another. Against the assaults of reason it is rock,—it is adamant; but to self-interest, or a covert passion, it is often surprisingly ductile. The genuine fanatic is gifted with a power which will equally uphold him, whether he walks to the right or to the left, and lets him change his course as often as he will. He has a logic that is always triumphant—which proves him always in the right—whether he would advance or recede. Success—it is God's own sanction; failure—it is what you please,—God's disapproval if you would retreat—a trial only of your faith, if you have the heart to advance. In the present case, our pious army, having found it impossible to treat with the king, has but to spend "its day in prayer," and its fierce zeal resumes its former channel with greater violence than ever. It has been led astray, it finds, by carnal reasonings and sinful weakness; and, rushing back to its old "path of simplicity," it raises the cry of death!

This account, which Adjutent Allan gives of diseased piety and perilous fanaticism, Mr Carlyle accompanies with interjections of applause, and cheers of encouragement. To him, also, it seems quite fit that the army should return to its path of "simplicity." The King must die.

How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,—the mere peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered, and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,—our compassion, very little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We are strangely fashioned—kings, and all of us—made up of fragments of virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the traditionary maxims and manœuvres of a subtle policy. Nor was it ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous passions which had been conjured up around him! He was fencing with the whirlwind. Perhaps no prince, trained in a court, can be a match for the rude adversaries which revolutionary times raise up against him. What chance is there that he should ever learn the nature of his new and terrible enemy? You have taught him, according to all the laws of woodcraft, to chase the stag and the fox, and now you let loose upon him the wild beast of the forest! How was Charles to learn what manner of being was a Puritan, and how it struck its prey? His courtiers would have taught him to despise and ridicule—his bishops to look askance with solemn aversion,—but who was there to teach him to fear this Puritan?—to teach him that he must forthwith conciliate, if he could not crush?

It is worth while to continue the narrative a little further. We adopt Mr Carlyle's words. "At London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis. The resumed debate, 'shall the army remonstrance be taken into consideration?' does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on Thursday the 31st, it comes out negative, by a majority of ninety. 'No, we will not take it into consideration.' 'No?' The army at Windsor thereupon spends again 'a day in prayer.' The army at Windsor has decided on the morrow, that it will march to London; marches, arrives accordingly, on Saturday, December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in St James's, 'and other great vacant houses in the skirts of the city and villages about, no offence being given any where.' In the drama of modern history, one knows not any graver, more note-worthy scene; earnest as very death and judgment. They have decided to have justice, these men; to see God's justice done, and his judgments executed on this earth."

Adjutant Allen and Mr Carlyle are both of the same mind,—take the same views of public matters, political and religious. But the Adjutant himself would open great eyes at the sentence which next follows:—

"The abysses where the thunders and splendours are bred—the reader sees them again laid bare and black. Madness lying close to the wisdom which is brightest and highest;—and owls and godless men who hate the lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no judges of the actions of heroes! Shedders of blood? Yes, blood is occasionally shed. The healing surgeon, the sacrificial priest, the august judge, pronouncer of God's oracles to man, these and the atrocious murderer are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl's eye, that, except for the dresses they wear, discerns no difference in these! Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our chronology and swift course of events."

By forcibly expelling more than one hundred of the members of Parliament, and thus converting a minority into a majority, these "sacrificial priests" contrived to accomplish their very righteous act. In the face of raving such as this, it would be absurd to enter seriously upon any consideration, moral or political, touching the King's death. We would rather that Mr Carlyle occupied the field alone. We saw him just now dealing with his "abysses," and his "lightning;" we quote his concluding comment on this event, which will present a specimen of his more facetious style of eloquence, and the singular taste he is capable of displaying:—

"This action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of flunkeyism universally in this world. Whereof flunkeyism, cant, cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas! not till a new genuine hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to degenerate into a flunkeyism and cloth-worship again! which I take to be a very long date indeed.