On the execution of the King, the supreme authority was nominally in the hands of Parliament.  Of course all kinds of anarchies prevailed, and all government was unsettled.  Charles II. was proclaimed King by the Scots, while the Duke of Ormond, in Ireland, joined the royal party to seat Charles II. on the throne.  In this exigency Cromwell was appointed by the Parliament Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

Then followed the conquest of Ireland, in which Cromwell distinguished himself for great military abilities.  His vigorous and uncompromising measures, especially his slaughter of the garrison of Drogheda (a retaliatory act), have been severely commented on.  But war in the hands of masters is never carried on sentimentally:  the test of ability is success.  The measures were doubtless hard and severe; but Cromwell knew what he was about:  he wished to bring the war to a speedy close, and intimidation was probably the best course to pursue.  Those impracticable Irish never afterwards molested him.  In less than a year he was at leisure to oppose Charles II. in Scotland; and on the resignation of Fairfax he was made Captain-General of all the forces in the empire.  The battle of Dunbar resulted in the total defeat of the Scots; while the “crowning mercy” at Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651, utterly blasted the hopes of Charles, and completely annihilated his forces.

The civil war, which raged nine years, was now finished, and Cromwell became supreme.  But even the decimated Parliament was jealous, and raised an issue,—­on which Cromwell dissolved it with a file of soldiers, and assembled another, neither elective nor representative, composed of his creatures, without experience, chiefly Anabaptists and Independents; which he soon did away with.  He then called a council of leading men, who made him Lord Protector, December 13, 1653.  Even the shadow of constitutional authority now vanishes, and Cromwell rules with absolute and untrammelled power, like Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte.  He rules on the very principles which he condemned in Charles I. The revolution ends in a military despotism.

If there was ever a usurpation, this was one.  Liberty gave her last sigh on the remonstrance of Sir Harry Vane, and a military hero, by means of his army, stamps his iron heel on England.  He dissolves the very body from which he received his own authority he refuses to have any check on his will; he imposes taxes without the consent of the people,—­the very thing for which he took up arms against Charles I.; he reigns alone, on despotic principles, as absolute as Louis XIV.; he enshrouds himself in royal state at Hampton Court; he even seeks to bequeath his absolute power to his son.  And if Richard Cromwell had reigned like his father Oliver, then the cause of liberty would have been lost.