September both commanders appeared before the Council of State to answer the charge of having deserted their posts, and together they shared the disgrace of a month in the Tower.[120] The army of General Venables was composed of very inferior and undisciplined troops, mostly the rejected of English regiments or the offscourings of the West Indian colonies; yet the chief reasons for the miscarriage before San Domingo were the failure of Venables to command the confidence of his officers and men, his inexcusable errors in the management of the attack, and the lack of cordial co-operation between him and the Admiral. The difficulties with which he had to struggle were, of course, very great. On the other hand, he seems to have been deficient both in strength of character and in military capacity; and his ill-health made still more difficult a task for which he was fundamentally incompetent. The comparative failure of this, Cromwell's pet enterprise, was a bitter blow to the Protector. For a whole day he shut himself up in his room, brooding over the disaster for which he, more than any other, was responsible. He had aimed not merely to plant one more colony in America, but to make himself master of such parts of the West Indian islands and Spanish Main as would enable him to dominate the route of the Spanish-American treasure fleets. To this end Jamaica contributed few advantages beyond those possessed by Barbadoes and St. Kitts, and it was too early for him to realize that island for island Jamaica was much more suitable than Hispaniola as the seat of an English colony.[121] Religious and economic motives form the key to Cromwell's foreign policy, and it is difficult to discover which, the religious or the economic, was uppermost in his mind when he planned this expedition. He inherited from the Puritans of Elizabeth's time the traditional religious hatred of Spain as the bulwark of Rome, and in his mind as in theirs the overthrow of the Spaniards in the West Indies was a blow at antichrist and an extension of the true religion. The religious ends of the expedition were fully impressed upon Venables and his successors in Jamaica.[122] Second only, however, to Oliver's desire to protect "the people of God," was his ambition to extend England's empire beyond the seas. He desired the unquestioned supremacy of England over the other nations of Europe, and that supremacy, as he probably foresaw, was to be commercial and colonial. Since the discovery of America the world's commerce had enormously increased, and its control brought with it national power. America had become the treasure-house of Europe. If England was to be set at the head of the world's commerce and navigation, she must break through Spain's monopoly of the Indies and gain a control in Spanish America. San Domingo was to be but a preliminary step, after which the rest of the Spanish dominions in the New World would be gradually absorbed.[123]