The horrors of the campaign made his heart ache, yet if ever war was unavoidable he honestly believed that it was this war, which had only been undertaken after years of patient endeavour to combat by peaceful means the King’s misrule. Again and again, moreover, the disputants had paused during the hostilities and had tried to come to a peaceful settlement, but the fatal bar of the King’s insincerity and the repeated discovery of his underhand dealings while negotiations for peace were yet going on had always frustrated the hopes of the distracted country. Gabriel was ready and willing to lay down his life for the freedom of England and the preservation of the Reformed religion. The recent death of John Hampden the Patriot, had, indeed, filled him with renewed eagerness to sacrifice everything for the cause. And, at the same time, he could not but feel, as his friend Joscelyn Hey worth had felt after the return from Chalgrove Field, a burning desire to call to account the main authors of all this woe. His Majesty and the Archbishop might personally be well-meaning men, but their tyrannical government had filled him with loathing, and he grieved to think of the thousands of homes which their policy had blighted. For Sir Bevil Granville and for the brave Cornishmen who had fallen on the previous day he could only feel admiration, but he would gladly have had in their stead those he deemed the cause of all the misery--the hard and aggressive Dr. Laud and the weak and untrustworthy King. CHAPTER XVII. They say it was a shocking sight, After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that you know must be After a famous victory. --Southey. Never, perhaps, had the hopes of Waller’s army been higher than on the morning of the 13th July as they encompassed the town of Devizes, the attack upon which had been fixed for that evening. Throughout the march from Bath they had been able to harass the rear of Hopton’s army: they had intercepted a convoy of ammunition coming from Oxford; and though Prince Maurice’s convoy had contrived to escape, they held Hopton and all his foot cooped up in Devizes with no match and very little powder. While still suffering terribly from the effects of the explosion, the brave Royalist General had the wit to devise on his sickbed a plan for supplying match. He ordered the townsfolk to give the ropes which held up the sacking of their beds, and these, when boiled in resin, served very well for the emergency. Still, he was heavy-hearted, for he knew that the unfortified town could not long withstand such an attack as Waller was like to make, and in great suffering of body and anxiety of mind he lay musing over the dire misfortunes which had followed this army of the West.