Historical and Political Notes on the Life of Oliver Cromwell

...to him, he distorted into prudence, but at least above the common lot), I will not blush to assert the contrary. For why is he heard as a defender of Divine truth, who never believed anything unless it served his own state? Why a liberator of three nations from slaughter and tyranny, he who pitted them against each other the most, destroyed one, and beheaded the king, so that he might more safely seize tyranny for himself? Why a contemner of glory, pride, and arrogance, he who could never bear an equal in either counsel or power, but rose up against all with the destruction of a thousand souls? Quiet and temperate in spirit, he who, attacked daily by so many conspiracies, was surrounded by grim arms within the chambers of his own house, and at night, bound by fear in uncertain beds, or agitated by the torturer of conscience, could nowhere be safe, nowhere secure, much less quiet? Why does he accuse other princes of ambition, he who served a most foul arrogance with the ruin of the liberty of his country more than anyone of his age? Why a semi-god, without anger or hatred (why not without any human passion), he who stained his hands with so many slaughters of illustrious families so that he alone might possess things, he who always sought the accused with such persistence so that he might have suppliants?

Ad §. IX.

There is ostentation in mere words, nor do I quite grasp what it means to be accompanied to the grave by old men and youths, and yet to have left those well-established in life.

Ad §. X.

It contains at the beginning cabbage cooked and recooked so often that it is tedious to touch. What he added at the end regarding liberality toward maimed soldiers; by Hercules, I am not surprised if one should disburse something from another's property to them, by whose help he attained the whole kingdom, as a token of gratitude, and from thence capture the praise of benevolence. I pass over in silence that it was not in his hand whether to sustain them or not: for, of course, huge kingdoms sought by illicit arts must be animated by a great mind and defended by many hands; Cromwell always made the favor of the soldiers the cynosure of his actions, when...