It is said that at this time there was an idea of sending into France ten thousand of those matchless troops of whom all Europe was talking, as was afterwards done under Morgan. For Monk was reserved the superlative honour of commanding them. But the time was not yet ripe, and instead of figuring as leader of the finest soldiers in the world, for so every one then considered them, Monk went quietly down to Bath to mend his shattered health. CHAPTER VII GENERAL-AT-SEA The waters at Bath completely restored Monk's health, and in July the Council requested Cromwell to order him back to his duty in Scotland, that he might report on the state of the country. Monk did not go. A new act in the drama had begun. With Dunbar, Worcester, and Monk's successes in Scotland, the Presbyterian party was reduced to impotency. The Independents were triumphant, and the factors of which that party was composed began to detach themselves with ominous distinctness. On the one hand was the Parliament, reactionary in spite of its purging; on the other the army, radical in spite of its leader. For the purpose of understanding Monk's relation to them it is unnecessary to enter minutely into the characteristics of both factions. To place ourselves in sympathy with a political situation it is necessary not so much to understand the aims of the several parties which create it, as to grasp the motives which each party attributes to the other. The great body of politicians are moved more by distrust of their adversaries than by confidence in themselves. Monk at any rate, with his soldierly contempt for politics, was incapable of taking a higher view of the situation than this. Parliament credited the army with a desire to establish an arbitrary military government. The army suspected Parliament of an intention to perpetuate itself as a tyrannical oligarchy. The latter idea Monk could endure, the former was for him intolerable. If it came to a question of army or Parliament, Cromwell knew that his incorruptible lieutenant would be obstinately true to his principles and side with the civil power. It is easy to understand that on the eve of his great stroke he preferred that his devoted partisan, Major-General Deane, who was acting in Monk's absence, should continue to command the army in Scotland.