Oliver Cromwell - 1840 Author:Henry William Herbert Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Behold ! our swords aro-drawn ! Not for the babble fame, nor at thy call, Vaulting ambition, who o'erstrid'st the neck Of prostrate kings, to. mou... more »nt with foot profane Thrones of usurp'd dominion; but for right, For freedom, for our country, for our God ! And think ye they shall e'er be sheathed again, Till that this solemn cause adjudged be, In high heaven's sight, by victory or death 1 The morning was yet gray and gloomy, after a night of frost—felt the more bitterly by those who bivouacked upon the field, since there was neither tree, nor hedge, nor any other covertnigh to fence them from the piercing wind— when Ardenne started from the disturbed and unrefreshing slumbers which had crept upon him beneath the partial shelter of an ammunition tumbrel, overturned and broken. He was up- roused by the loud trumpets of the powerful reinforcement brought up-before the promised hour by Cromwell, consisting of two thousand foot, Hampden's and Grantham's regiments, and his own ironsides, whose presence might, on the preceding day, have turned the doubtful scale, and ended at a single stroke the war, unfortunately destined to no such speedy termination. It was a strange and melancholy, though exciting scene, that met his gaze as he arose; the dark skies scarcely dappled in the east by the first streaks of dawn ; the faint stars waning one by one, as the cold light increased ; the black brow of the neighbouring hills cutting distinct and sharp against the horizon ; the white mist creeping in wreaths along their bases,and curtaining the plain with a thick veil, through which the watchfires of the royal1 host, at scarcely a mile's distance, burned with dull and lurid redness; the foreground heaped with the carriages of the artillery, horses picketed in their ran...« less