He had looked forward to a Treaty at Turin in which his own envoys, Morland and Downing, and D’Ommeren, as envoy from the United Provinces, would have taken the leading part, and he somewhat resented Mazarin’s too rapid interference and the too easy compliance of the envoys of the Cantons.  The Treaty of Pignerol contained conditions that might occasion farther trouble.  Still, as things were, he thought it best to acquiesce.  Downing, who had arrived at Geneva early in September, was at once recalled, leaving Morland and Pell still there, to superintend the distribution of the English subscription-money among the poor Vaudois, instalment after instalment, as they arrived.  The charitable work was to detain Morland in Geneva or its neighbourhood for more than a year, nor was the great business of the Piedmontese Protestants to be wholly out of Cromwell’s mind to the day of his death.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Morland, 605-673; Guigot, II. 220-225; Council Order Book, July 17.]

Just at the date of the happy, though not perfect, conclusion of the Piedmontese business, came almost the only chagrin ever experienced by Cromwell in the shape of the failure of an enterprise.  It was now some months since he had made up his mind in private to a rupture with Spain, intending that the fact should be first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn’s command.  The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth.  It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena on the South-American mainland, where the treasures of Peru were amassed, for annual conveyance across the Atlantic.  Much discretion was left to Penn and Venables, but on the whole St. Domingo, then called Hispaniola, was indicated for a beginning.  Blake’s presence in the Mediterranean with the other fleet had been timed for an assault on Spain at home when the news should arrive of the disaster to her colonies.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Guizot, II. 184-186; Godwin, IV. 180-194.]

Penn and Venables together were not equal to one Blake.  They opened their sealed instructions at Barbadoes, one of the two or three small Islands of the West-Indies then possessed by the English, and, after counsel and preparation, proceeded to Hispaniola.  The fleet now consisted of about sixty vessels, and there were about 9000 soldiers on board, some of them veterans, but most of them recruits of bad quality.  They were off St. Domingo, the capital of the Island, on the 14th of April, 1655, and from that moment there was misunderstanding and blundering.  Penn, Venables, and the Chief Commissioner who had been sent out with them, differed as to the proper landing point; the