The great tragedy which disgraced the revolution was now acted.  The unfortunate King, whose fate was sealed at the battle of Naseby, after various vicissitudes and defeats, put himself into the hands of the Scots and made a league with the Presbyterians.  After Edinburgh was taken, they virtually sold him to the victor, who caused him to be brought in bitter mockery to Hampton Court, where he was treated with ironical respect.  In his reverses Charles would have made any concessions; and the Presbyterians, who first took up arms against him, would perhaps have accepted them.  But it was too late.  Cromwell and the Independents now reigned,—­a party that had been driven into violent measures, and which had sought the subversion of the monarchy itself.

Charles is brought to a mock trial by a decimated Parliament, is condemned and executed, and the old monarchy is supplanted by a military despotism.  “The roaring conflagration of anarchies” is succeeded by the rule of the strongest man.

Much has been written and said about that execution, or martyrdom, or crime, as it has been variously viewed by partisans.  It simply was the sequence of the revolution, of the appeal of both parties to the sword.  It may have been necessary or unnecessary, a blunder or a crime, but it was the logical result of a bitter war; it was the cruel policy of a conquering power.  Those who supported it were able men, who deemed it the wisest thing to do; who dreaded a reaction, who feared for themselves, and sought by this means to perpetuate their sway.  As one of the acts of revolution, it must be judged by the revolution itself.  The point is, not whether it was wrong to take the life of the King, if it were a military necessity, or seemed to be to the great leaders of the day, but whether it was right to take up arms in defence of rights which might have been gained by protracted constitutional agitation and resistance.  The execution proved a blunder, because it did not take away the rights of Charles II., and created great abhorrence and indignation, not merely in foreign countries, but among a majority of the English people themselves,—­and these, too, who had the prestige of wealth and culture.  I do not believe the Presbyterian party, as represented by Hampden and Pym, and who like Mirabeau had applied the torch to revolutionary passions, would have consented to this foolish murder.  Certainly the Episcopalians would not have executed Charles, even if they could have been induced to cripple him.

But war is a conflagration; nothing can stop its ravages when it has fairly begun.  They who go to war must abide the issue of war; they who take the sword must be prepared to perish by the sword.  Thus far, in the history of the world, very few rights have been gained by civil war which could not have been gained in the end without it.  The great rights which the people have secured in England for two hundred years are the result of an appeal to reason and justice.