Monk. Julian Stafford Corbett
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consequence to Monk. The revelation produced a revulsion of feeling which brought Strafford's head to the block, and Lord Leicester, as a favourite with both King and Parliament, was hastily summoned from Paris to succeed him as Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland.
As the truth about the army-plots was allowed to transpire the worst was believed of the King's intentions. The belief even began to spread that Charles was privy to a popish plot, of which the queen was the centre, to bring troops from Ireland for the utter subversion of the Protestant faith. Then into the midst of the growing distrust there burst like a thunderbolt the news of the Irish rebellion, and the smouldering fires of the Reformation, which had slumbered since the great days when they scorched the throne of Spain, burst into a flame. On the heels of the news came down a letter from Scotland in which the King commended to Parliament the care of reducing the rebels to obedience. The Commons voted on the spot an army of eight thousand men and confidently called for volunteers. But that was not all. The weapon was easy to forge, but it must now be placed out of the King's reach. It was not enough that Leicester was made Captain-General. His second in command must also be a man in whose honour and fidelity the House had implicit confidence.
Astley and Conyers were unwilling to serve. It says not a little for the reputation which Monk had won both as a man and a soldier, that his name was the next mentioned.2 It was proposed that he should be given the command as Lieutenant-General, with Henry Warren, his veteran major and devoted friend, as his Adjutant-General, or Sergeant-major-general, as it was then called. It was a splendid chance, but Monk was doomed to disappointment. The Houses were suddenly informed that Ormonde had been chosen for the command and commissioned Lieutenant-General by the King, and the tactics of the Parliament had to be changed. It was determined to raise an army by an Impressment Bill, to which a clause was to be added vesting the control of it in their own hands. As the month of November wore on and it was still in debate, by every post came news of fresh atrocities committed by the Papist rebels upon the English Protestants. Never perhaps again till the story of the Cawnpore massacre set the nation's teeth, did such a frenzy of revenge take possession of the people. More and more troops were voted every week. Every tale, no matter how hideous or improbable, was greedily believed. It was necessary that something should be done at once. Leicester was ordered to raise two regiments of foot and one of horse by voluntary enlistment, and that the Parliament might keep a firm hand on the reins it was further resolved that he should submit the list of officers he proposed to commission to the Houses for approval. Monk was named for lieutenant-colonel and Warren for major of Leicester's own regiment of foot. Both were at once approved; and the nominations of Leicester's two sons, Lord Lisle and Algernon Sidney, as well as that of Sir Richard Grenville, were confirmed for the horse.
On February 21st, 1642, Colonel Monk landed in Dublin at the head of the Lord-General's regiment of foot. It was a splendid body of men, two thousand strong and officered by the flower of the disbanded army of the north. And with him was Sir Richard Grenville, commanding four hundred of Leicester's new regiment of horse. Over the scenes which followed there is no need to linger. In fire and blood the wretched Irish had to do penance for the outburst of savagery to which they had been goaded by Strafford's imperious rule. The most important operation of the campaign of 1642 was the expedition for the relief of the English settlements in Kildare and Queen's County. With two thousand five hundred foot under Monk, five hundred horse under Lucas, Coote, and Grenville, and six guns, Ormonde left Dublin on April 2nd, and by the 9th had successfully relieved Athy, Maryborough, and some smaller settlements. The work was accomplished with all the horrible accompaniments which characterised Irish warfare. "In our march thither," wrote an officer in Monk's regiment, "we fired above two hundred villages. The horse that marched on our flanks fired all within five or six miles of the body of the army; and those places that we marched through, they that had the rear of the army always burned. Hitherto we met not with any enemy to oppose, yet not a mile nor a place that we marched by, that the dead bodies of the rebels did not witness our passage." But the most difficult part of the enterprise yet remained. Some thirty miles beyond the river Nore, in a country swarming with rebels, lay several garrisons yet unrelieved. Ormonde's provisions were running so short that to reach them by a regular operation was impossible; but sooner than abandon them Grenville, Lucas, and Coote undertook to make a dash to their aid with the cavalry, while Monk covered the retreat. On the morning of Saturday the 10th, in the dead of night, the horse sallied from Maryborough, and succeeded in passing the river unobserved. The Irish at once took the alarm, and seized the only two fords by which they could return. That at Portnahinch they barred by an intrenchment, and leaving the other open they laid a strong ambush along the dangerous causeway by which it was approached. There, certain of their prey, they quietly waited to wreak a terrible vengeance on Grenville's ruthless troopers. On Monk rested the only chance of escape. Early on Monday morning, with a party of six hundred musketeers, he attacked a neighbouring castle, which belonged to one of the rebel leaders, hoping to draw to its relief the forces which held the fords; but not a man would they stir. In desperation he determined to force the pass at Portnahinch, but on reaching it he found the river so swollen that it was impassable for foot. The last hope seemed gone, but Monk was not to be beaten. Seizing every point of vantage on his own bank, he placed his musketeers with such skill that the Irish could neither abandon nor reinforce their intrenchments. Assured that the horse must mean to force a passage at this point under cover of Monk's fire, they at last withdrew the whole of their strength from the other ford, and while Monk occupied them with a deadly fusilade, Grenville and his exhausted comrades rode unmolested along the abandoned causeway and reached Maryborough in safety.3
The horse were saved, and, now his object was accomplished, Ormonde began to retire to Dublin. It was in the course of this march that he won his brilliant action at Kilrush. Monk was present with the staff during the general's reconnaissance on the eve of the battle, and we may credit him with at least a share of the masterly tactics by which the victory was obtained. That Ormonde appreciated his services is certain, for on this occasion he was mentioned in despatches "for the alacrity and undaunted resolution" he had displayed.
By the end of June eight more regiments, including Lord Lisle's carbineers, were landed in Dublin, and the Parliament seemed to have exhausted all the resources it could spare for Ireland. The Civil War was beginning. By straining every nerve it could only hold its own against the King in England, and the Irish army was left to shift for itself. Constant forays became a necessity, and indeed were the only operations possible. In these no one was so successful as Monk. He displayed in them all the qualities which endear a commander to his men, and soon no officer in the army was so popular with rank and file as he. No one, they used to say, was too sick or sorry for action, and nobody's boots were too bad for a march, when the word was passed that "honest George" was off foraying again. It became a joke that his regiment was the purveyor for the whole of Dublin.
This was hardly the work that Monk had promised himself when he volunteered for Ireland; but at any rate it was a great relief to him that he was leaving behind the politics which he detested and only half understood for some hard fighting which was his meat and drink. But he was to be sadly disappointed. Lord Leicester, commissioned by the King and paid by the Parliament, was still in England, detained by orders from Oxford. In Ormonde Charles knew he had a representative in every way satisfactory. He was a royalist above suspicion. The advent of Leicester could only strengthen the hands of the Lords Justices, who represented the Lord Lieutenant in his absence. These men were staunch Parliamentarians, and made it their business to oppose Ormonde's influence in every way. Indeed their enemies accused them of deliberately thwarting his operations in order that, by allowing the rebellion to spread, there might be a larger area of land for confiscation. In return for providing money for the suppression of the rebellion an influential body of London capitalists had obtained from Parliament a concession of one quarter of the land which should become liable to confiscation; and it is to be feared the Lords Justices were to some extent interested in this gigantic job. The Lords Justices had their fortunes to make, and they saw them in their power of distributing the forfeited lands. Their interests as well as their opinions were in sympathy with the parliamentary cause. Thus Ormonde represented for them a double danger, and without accusing them of actually fostering rebellion, it is certain that they did their best to discredit Ormonde with the King in order to procure his recall.
To seek Monk's attitude in the strife we