Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
wont, I went forth with them, even to the field, where there was
valiant fighting on both sides. Nevertheless, the malignants shooting
their wall-pieces at us, had so much the advantage, that, after
bursting their gates with a salvo of our cannon, Colonel Harrison
ordered his men to advance on the causeway, and try to carry the place
by storm. Nonetheless, although our men did valiantly, advancing in
good order, yet being galled on every side by the fire, they at length
fell into disorder, and were retreating with much loss, Harrison
himself valiantly bringing up the rear, and defending them as he could
against the enemy, who sallied forth in pursuit of them, to smite them
hip and thigh. Now, Colonel Everard, I am a man of a quick and vehement
temper by nature, though better teaching than the old law hath made me
mild and patient as you now see me. I could not bear to see our
Israelites flying before the Philistines, so I rushed upon the
causeway, with the Bible in one hand, and a halberd, which I had caught
up, in the other, and turned back the foremost fugitives, by
threatening to strike them down, pointing out to them at the same time
a priest in his cassock, as they call it, who was among the malignants,
and asking them whether they would not do as much for a true servant of
Heaven, as the uncircumcised would for a priest of Baal. My words and
strokes prevailed; they turned at once, and shouting out, Down with
Baal and his worshippers! they charged the malignants so unexpectedly
home, that they not only drove them back into their house of garrison,
but entered it with them, as the phrase is, pell-mell. I also was
there, partly hurried on by the crowd, partly to prevail on our enraged
soldiers to give quarter; for it grieved my heart to see Christians and
Englishmen hashed down with swords and gunstocks, like curs in the
street, when there is an alarm of mad-dogs. In this way, the soldiers
fighting and slaughtering, and I calling to them to stay their hand, we
gained the very roof of the building, which was in part leaded, and to
which, as a last tower of refuge, those of the cavaliers, who yet
escaped, had retired. I was myself, I may say, forced up the narrow
winding staircase by our soldiers, who rushed on like dogs of chase
upon their prey; and when extricated from the passage, I found myself
in the midst of a horrid scene. The scattered defenders were, some
resisting with the fury of despair; some on their knees, imploring for
compassion in words and tones to break a man’s heart when he thinks on
them; some were calling on God for mercy; and it was time, for man had
none. They were stricken down, thrust through, flung from the
battlements into the lake; and the wild cries of the victors, mingled
with the groans, shrieks, and clamours, of the vanquished, made a sound
so horrible, that only death can erase it from my memory. And the men
who butchered their fellow-creatures thus, were neither pagans from
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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