on that passage first, for with its' breastplate of righteousness and shield of faith' and 'helmet of salvation' it is redolent of the language of the camp; but such tropes evidently had no appeal for the serious anthologist of the Civil War; they were too ethereal for his grim purpose, which was better served by the martial records of the battles and conquests of the Chosen People. The Hebraic idea of war as a duty religious in its inception and execution dominates the pages of 'The 'Souldiers Bible,' for most of the New Testament texts cited are either conveniently truncated or wrested from a spiritual to a militant interpretation. Indeed, the exegete might complain of like violence done to some of the Old Testament texts, as where Samson's supplication for strength that he might satisfy personal revenge is used as an argument to prove that the souldier must pray before he goe to fight.'

In one particular the 'severall heads' quoted above help to date The Souldiers Pocket Bible.' They are suffused with that gloom of possible defeat which hung like a cloud over the Long Parliament during the first year of the war. Hence the iteration and reiteration of the comforting doctrine that God's people sometimes had the worst of the battle, etc. Cromwell subscribed implicitly to that doctrine; a retreat was due to God' no less than a victory, and it was the goodness of God' which mitigated the mortality of an engagement. Wharton, too, was persuaded that the Lord had given' a 'small victory' to the Royalists that they might ' in the day of battle come on more presumptuously to their ' own destruction'; while a terrible rout in the west was thus piously explained: 'We must needs looke upon this as 'the hand of our God, mightily agaynst us, for 'twas he only 'that made us flye.' Such a belief was not merely an inspiration against despondency or doubt as to the righteousness of 'the Cause'; it provided an ample safeguard against recriminations of cowardice or military incompetence. Happy officers to have such an excuse for 'regrettable incidents' !

If the severall heads' were somewhat lacking in robust confidence as to the ultimate issue of the war, no such timorousness afflicted the author of The Souldiers Catechisme,' a twenty-four paged tract which was published in 1644. Com'posed for the Parliaments Army,' as the title-page testifies, and expository of the justification and qualification of the

soldier, this trenchant statement of the Puritan position was expressly offered for the Incouragement and Instruction of 'all that have taken up Armes in this Cause of God and his 'People.' That it was regarded in the Royalist camp as a dangerous publication seems the natural inference from the fact that a scribe on the King's side plagiarised the exact title for a tract charging the Parliament with rebellion and treason. Whoever was the author of 'The Souldiers Cate'chisme '-the only clue to his identity is the phrase 'a 'Lincolnshire minister' used by the printer of the book in his petition to the House of Lords against the disseminator of the rival publication-he was eminently successful in giving virile expression to the views of the Independent party. Indeed it does no violence to probability to suppose he may have been inspired by the leader of that party, especially as by the time the tract was published Cromwell had become something more than the chief figure of the Eastern Association.

What gives these tracts a supreme importance above most of the voluminous literature of the Civil War is that to the understanding eye they reveal the germ of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model, those two vital factors in the creation of Cromwell's indomitable army; for while 'The 'Souldiers Pocket Bible' enlisted the authority of the Scriptures on the side of the Parliament, The Souldiers Catechisme' gave emphatic utterance to Cromwell's conviction that without honest godly men' ultimate victory was impossible. To the question why there were so many lewd and wicked men in the Parliaments Army' the catechism gave a four-fold answer, the chief counts of which were that commandersin-chief were not more careful in choosing godly officers,' and that officers were content to 'press the scumme and 'refuse of men' because it was easier to enlist such. All of which reads like an anticipation of Cromwell's impeachment that the members of Parliament were more concerned to preserve their 'great places and commands' than end the war by efficiency, and his assertion that if the army were not put into another method' the struggle would end in defeat. Had there been no Self-denying Ordinance there would have been no New Model; had there been no New Model there would have been no Protectorate.

For Cromwell carried out his programme-the programme

he had outlined to Hampden on the morrow of Edgehill. That fact militates somewhat against Carlyle's view of his character, a character essentially simple according to the judgment of that hero-worshipping biographer. Doubtless the vulgar historian' is mistaken in crediting the fen-farmer of Cambridgeshire with formulating a scheme of life of which the objective was the governorship of England, yet it is hardly a smaller blunder to regard him as a passive instrument in the hands of destiny. Great men do not achieve fame on such a simple plan, any more than a general wrests victory from fortune without strategy and tactics. One clearly defined purpose may at least be postulated of Cromwell-the overthrow of the papistical Royalist party. And when, from the vantage ground of triumph, he looked back over the road which had led to that summit, he was keenly conscious of the most important factor in his conquest. You very well 'know' he was speaking to the members of the Little Parliamentit pleased God, much about the midst of this War, 'to winnow the Forces of this Nation, and to put them into 'the hands of other men of other principles than those that 'did engage at first. By what ways and means that was brought about, would ask more time that is allotted me to 'mind you of it.' Four years later, too, he recalled his conversation with Hampden at Edgehill and boasted how he had raised such men as had the fear of God before them,' adding as his justification that from that day forward 'they were ' never beaten.' Surely these are proofs enough that Cromwell did map out the method by which he hoped to shape the instrument of his triumph. He had, in fact, a clear vision of his Ironsides from the beginning of the conflict.

And it was the Ironsides who were the deciding factor in the struggle with Royalism. The lovely company' of 1643 became in the New Model a little army of 11,000 irresistible cavalry. At Marston Moor, at Naseby, they 'were never beaten,' and when, with Fairfax resigned, their leader became the general-in-chief of the entire army, their spirit so infected all ranks that the triumphs of Dunbar and Worcester were inevitable. Religion!' was the battle-cry of the Cromwellians in their first victory at Winceby; 'God our Strength!' their watchword at Naseby as they broke the Royalist centre; The Lord of Hosts!' the talisman of

foot and cavalry alike at Dunbar and Worcester. The leaven had leavened the whole lump.

To realise that religious faith did once have such a practical issue seems an insuperable task for so different an age as this, unless indeed the Covenant of Ulster shall make credence possible. Such words as 'election,' 'conversion,' 'day of grace,' ,''coming to Christ,' which, as Froude reminded us, were in Cromwell's days radiant with spiritual meaning, have been so 'pawed and fingered by unctuous hands' as to have lost their bloom. Try as we may, we cannot fully realise what the Bible was to the Englishmen of the seventeenth century. To that generation the pages of that book were blackened with the smoke, and charred with the flames, and stained with the blood of martyrdoms. It came, too, in an age of poignant spiritual tension. The old faith had crumbled to dust, and the eyes of earnest men were straining into the darkness to discover a new temple for the soul. Nor should it be forgotten that those were days when lofty verse and stirring tragedy had created a new hunger in the hearts of men. Coming as the Bible did to a people practically without books and yearning for the accents of the voice of God, it is little wonder that the speech of those people became compact of its very words and phrases, or that to them the volume was not only a lamp to their feet in the narrow path to heaven, but also a beacon to their wanderings in the world that now is. It is unthinkable that a modern general should add an anthology of Scripture to his soldiers' kit, or hope, did he do so, that such a book would increase his chances of victory; but that 'The Souldiers Pocket Bible,' or what it stood for, inspired the Ironsides with dauntless valour admits no denial.

HENRY C. SHELLEY.

NAPOLEON'S LAST CAMPAIGN IN GERMANY

I. Napoleon's Last Campaign in Germany. By F. L. PETRE. Lane. 1912.

2. Napoleon as General. By COUNT YORCK VON WARTENBURG. 2 vols. Eng. edit., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co. 1902. 3. Lettres inédites de Napoléon. By L. LECESTRE. 2 vols. Paris: Plon. 1897.

4. Memoirs of Baron Thiébault. 2 vols. Eng. edit., Smith, Elder. 1896.

5. Correspondance du Maréchal Davout. 4 vols. Paris: Plon. 1887.

6. Correspondance de Napoléon I. 32 vols. Paris. 1858-70.

7. Mémoires: Maréchal Marmont.

9 vols. Paris. 1856-7. 8. Mémoires: Maréchal Gouvion Saint-Cyr.

1856-7.

TAL

4 vols. Paris.

ALLEYRAND'S prophetic comment on the Moscow campaign- C'est le commencement de la fin'— is equally applicable to the events of the autumn of 1813. For in the spring of that year Napoleon restored the prestige of his arms and drove the armies of Prussia and Russia to the upper part of Silesia. By uniting vigour in the field with moderation in the Cabinet he would probably have imposed terms upon those Powers and retained his hold over central Europe. Therefore none of his wars merits closer attention than that which ended in the disaster of Leipzig, and Mr. Petre has done well to continue his studies of the Napoleonic wars by a survey of the two campaigns of 1813. Though marked by care and good sense, his work unfortunately lacks the imaginative insight and literary qualities which would ensure it a wider public; but students of the Napoleonic wars will welcome it as a well-balanced description of very complex movements. The sketch-maps of the chief battlefields are also, in general, adequate. It is impossible here to discuss the subject as a whole; and it may be well to concentrate attention on the chief points of interest at the beginning of the autumn campaign.

The conduct of Napoleon in according the armistice of Poischwitz (June 4, 1813) to Prussia and Russia has been