Our present concern is with the fact that this Empire of ours, in a most critical state of its process of making which came very near to one of unmaking, was saved and transformed from weakness to strength by the substitution of the real despotism of the Lord Protector from the sham or histrionic despotism of Charles the First. The fact was that the body-corporate of this infant empire was assailed by the worst of all national disorders, internal disintegration. England, the very heart and centre of it, was about to be rent in twain by the frenzied and pitiless talons of civil war, and that is a war in which the right side--which, of course, is always the best side--must not only win, but utterly crush and pulverise the other unless wreck and chaos irretrievable are to follow. This was the central idea that the Great Oliver grasped just as Edward of the Long Legs had grasped his brilliantly premature idea of the United Kingdom. He was the latest of that series of iron-handed men that had begun with William the Norman. The watchword of his whole public life was “healing and settling.” The wounds of his country had to be healed and its disorders settled, no matter by what means, so long as it was done, and in this deep-rooted conviction we see at a glance his kinship with the other Empire-makers who had gone before him. Of his early life there is little to be said, though it is noteworthy that he was once fined £10 for neglecting a summons to appear at the King’s coronation and receive the honour of knighthood. He little thought then that he would one day find it his duty to refuse the crown and sceptre of England. Every one who has read even the school-books knows that when the war actually began all the apparent advantages were on the side of the Royalists. Though the first battles afforded the extraordinary spectacle of mere conflicts of amateur soldiers, few of whom had ever seen a real fight before, the Cavaliers, trained to horsemanship and the use of arms, and versed in all manly sports, made far finer fighting material than the raw levies of the Parliament. Had this difference continued victory must have remained, as it began, with the Royalists, with results to the nation that could hardly have failed to be of the very worst sort. This is what Cromwell himself says on this all-important subject: “At my first going out into this engagement I saw our men were beaten at every hand. Your troops, said I, are most of them old, decayed serving-men, and tapsters and such kind of fellows, and, said I, their troops are gentlemen’s sons, younger sons and persons of quality. Do you think that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them? You must get men of spirit and, take it not ill what I say--I know you will not--of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be beaten still.”