- IV.

1655.

BOOK from the failure of our first enterprise. They fled, as the people of St Domingo had done, from their town at the first appearance of an enemy. They are supposed at first to have regarded the undertaking as a mere predatory enterprise, and to have retired, with the intention of returning to their abodes when the storm should have passed away P. The landing-place was only five miles from the town; and the general feeling of the military was to march forward immediately, and take advantage of the unpreparedness of the Spaniard. But Venables forbade this; and the next morning when the army entered, they found neither man, woman nor child. The enemy improved the interval that was given them, to remove all their most valuable property to the mountains. A negociation immediately commenced; but a great part of what had been taken away was never recovered 9.

Advantages

from it.

One of the most intelligent of the officers enthat accrue gaged in the expedition, does not hesitate to aver, that the issue of the enterprise was the most fortunate that could have occurred. Hispaniola, he says, being a country much larger than the entire of England, could never have been permanently settled by the ten thousand men that were sent against it. It was full of mountains and wood, so that the enemy could always cover themselves

P Thurloe, p. 507.

Ibid, p. 646.

XIV.

1655.

with the natural advantages of the island, and CHAP. could never be reduced. At the same time Cuba, and even the Spanish main, would be ever at hand, to assist their efforts, and restore them to the ascendancy they might temporarily have lost. While Jamaica, being only one fourth of the dimensions of Hispaniola, might be securely occupied. The English there would feel themselves in safety, and would have every advantage for assailing the enemy, and annoying their trade. The subject of regret was, that the army and fleet had not immediately proceeded for Jamaica, instead of encountering the loss and disgrace they had sustained at Hispaniola'.-Be this however as it will, certain it is, that the principle of the expedition in the mind of Cromwel was very different from that which is here expressed. He had anticipated vast conquests, and the dividing with Spain the whole empire of South America; and to him the disappointment was therefore

• Thurloe, p. 507. The later accounts of this expedition have been for the most part drawn from Burchet's Naval History of England, whose narrative on this head is founded upon the examinations of Penn and Venables after their return, thus treating the statements of the delinquents themselves as the sources of genuine history. Venables aimed to retort on Desborough, the kinsman of Cromwel, to whom the care of the ammunition and provisions for the army was committed, as if that officer, out of a spirit of peculation, had diverted the stores, and defrauded the adventurers of their subsistence, and the aids necessary to their suc

cess.

IV.

BOOK intolerable. Whether the projects he had conceived were capable or incapable of being carried in execution, is a point of no small importance in estimating his true character.

1655.

The com

manders

return

are impri

soned.

The commanders, as soon as they had escaped the disasters and ignominy of their enterprise on home, and St Domingo, broke out into new misunderstandings. Penn, that he might have the advantage of being the first to tell his tale in England, delivered over part of his fleet to his second in command, and took his departure on the twenty-fifth of June. He arrived at Spithead on the last day of August. Venables, stimulated by similar motives, and whose constitution was much shattered by the hardships of the expedition, was only nine days after him. Cromwel ordered them both immediately to the Tower, assigning as his reason their having quitted their conquest without leave, and when their presence there was most urgently necessary".

Censure to

which

liable on

this occa

The history of this enterprise by no means afCromwel is fords a favourable specimen of the government of Cromwel. He exerted a wonderful activity sion. in fitting out this expedition and the adventure of Blake. He took care that every thing should be in readiness for them on their arrival at Barbadoes, so that with the smallest practicable delay

XIV.

1655.

they were enabled to double the numbers intended CHAP. to complete their conquest. Nevertheless the failure of the expedition is in the first place to be imputed to Cromwel. The force employed by him was probably sufficiently numerous to effect all that he purposed. But the materials of which that force was composed were in a great degree of the worst sort. And it is beyond measure surprising, that he committed the charge of this great enterprise to such men as Penn and Venables proved themselves to be. It is a poor excuse for the first magistrate to say that they deceived his expectation. This is the distinction between a great statesman and an inefficient one. The great statesman is not deceived. He sees events in

their causes. He looks into "the seeds of time, and knows which grain will grow, and which will not." He discerns the character of the man in the school-boy, and foresees, if such an individual is put into such a situation, how he will conduct himself. In almost all other cases Cromwel shewed that he possessed this kind of sagacity in a superlative degree. But in this instance he paid the debt which the best of us owe to human frailty.

* Macbeth, Act 1.

204

CHAPTER XV.

PERSECUTION OF THE PROTESTANTS IN PIEDMONT.
-MILITARY QUARTERED UPON THEM.-HOS-

TILITIES COMMENCED.

CRUELTIES PERPE

TRATED ON THE REFORMED.-SENTIMENTS OF
CROMWEL ON THE OCCASION.-EMBASSY OF
MORLAND.-SPAIN OFFERS TO PUT CROMWEL
POSSESSION OF CALAIS.-COURTSHIP AND

IN

IV.

1655.

BOOK A CIRCUMSTANCE early in the present year, which, by calling forth the sympathies of Cromwel, led to display of his ascendancy in Europe, was the tion of the intolerant proceeding of the duke of Savoy against Protestants his Protestant subjects. His mother, the daughter mont. of Henry the Fourth of France, and sister of Louis

Persecu

of Pied

the Thirteenth, is represented as the author of the measure. The victims of the proceeding were the Waldenses, or people of the vallies of Piedmont, who were on all occasions regarded with partiality