24
LORD HASTINGS
made to undermine the allegiance of the royalist levies. The English, therefore, were merely carrying out the ordinary customs of war, adopted by all belligerents for their own protection, and they had necessarily to punish spies and those who deserted or caused others to desert. Had the commanders not taken effective means to repress this class of perfidy, which occurs too often in all civil wars, they would have failed in their duty; to accuse them of want of humanity is the mere trick of an interested partisan.
