These they pretended to invest with sovereign authority; and they called them a "committee of safety." They spoke every where of summoning a parliament chosen by the people; but they really took some steps towards assembling a military parliament, composed of officers elected from every regiment in the service.[*] * Ludlow.
Throughout the three kingdoms there prevailed nothing but the melancholy fears, to the nobility and gentry of a bloody massacre and extermination; to the rest of the people, of perpetual servitude beneath those sanctified robbers, whose union and whose divisions would be equally destructive and who, under pretence of superior illuminations, would soon extirpate, if possible, all private morality, as they had already done all public law and justice, from the British dominions.
During the time that England continued in this distracted condition, the other kingdoms of Europe were hastening towards a composure of those differences by which they had so long been agitated.

The parliament, while it preserved authority, instead of following the imprudent politics of Cromwell, and lending assistance to the conquering Swede, embraced the maxims of the Dutch commonwealth, and resolved, in conjunction with that state, to mediate by force an accommodation between the northern crowns.

Montague was sent with a squadron to the Baltic, and carried with him, as ambassador, Algernon Sidney, the celebrated republican.

Sidney found the Swedish monarch employed in the siege of Copenhagen, the capital of his enemy; and was highly pleased that, with a Roman arrogance, he could check the progress of royal victories, and display in so signal a manner the superiority of freedom above tyranny.

With the highest indignation, the ambitious prince was obliged to submit to the imperious mediation of the two commonwealths.
"It is cruel," said he, "that laws should be prescribed me by parricides and pedlers." But his whole army was enclosed in an island, and might be starved by the combined squadrons of England and Holland.