Oliver Cromwell

by Theodore Roosevelt

Throughout Europe, at this time, cavalry trusted altogether too much to their clumsy firearms, save when handled by some great natural leader of horse; and, in consequence, on the Continent, the infantry had won the upper hand. But it happened in the English Civil War that the only great leaders developed were cavalrymen; and so the horse retained throughout the mastery over the foot; although, as each arm was always pitted against the same arm in the opposing forces, the struggle frequently wore itself out before the victorious horse and victorious foot, if they belonged to different parties, could fight it out between them.

The Civil War opened with just such blundering and indecisive fighting as marked the opening of the American Civil War two centuries later. There was no hard and fast line, whether geographically or of caste, between the two parties; in every portion of England, and in every rank of society, there were to be found adherents both of the King and of the Commons; but, as a whole, the east and south of England were for the Parliament; the north and west were Royalist. The bulk of the aristocracy stood for the King; the bulk of the lesser gentry and yeomanry were against him. The revolutionary movement—as in America in 1776—received its main strength from the lesser gentry, small farmers, tradesmen, and upper-class mechanics and handicraftsmen. In America in 1776 there was no proletariat. So far as there was one in England in 1642, it took no interest in the struggle. The peasantry, the mass of the agricultural laborers, were inclined toward the King, though the men immediately above them in social position, who represented the lowest rank that had political influence, were the other way. The townsmen were generally for the Parliament.

In comparing the English Civil War of the seventeenth century with the American Civil War of the nineteenth, there are some curious points of similarity, no less than some very sharp contrasts. During the two centuries there had been a great growth in esteem for fixity of principle. In the English Civil War nothing was more common than for a man to change sides, and there was treachery even on the field of battle itself; whereas, in the American Civil War, though many of the leaders, like Lee and Thomas, were in great doubt as to the proper course to follow, yet when sides had once been taken, there was no flinching and no looking back. Moreover, there was far greater intensity of popular feeling in the American Civil War; even the States that were divided in opinion at the outset held no considerable mass of population which did not soon throw its weight on one side or the other; whereas, in the English Civil War there were large bodies of men who strove to avoid declaring for either side. At the very end of the contest, tens of thousands of persons, mainly peasants, organized under the title of Clubmen, with the avowed purpose of holding the scales even between the two sets of combatants, and of looking out for their own interests. The American Civil War was fought for the right of secession, and efforts were made—in Kentucky, for instance—to establish the right of a locality to be neutral. The “state rights” theory reached an almost equal development in some of the English counties during the Cromwellian contest. Yorkshire at one time declared for neutrality. The trained bands of Cornwall, when the Royalist forces were driven back within their borders, promptly turned out and drove off the pursuing Parliamentarians, but refused to obey orders to leave the county in pursuit of their foes, and disbanded to their own homes. Later, they repeated exactly the same course of procedure. There were at times local truces, or agreements as to the conditions of the contest in particular localities.

On both sides “associations” were formed, consisting of special groups of counties banded together intimately for the purposes of defence. The most important of these, the Eastern Association, included Cromwell’s own home, taking in all of the middle East. This region was throughout the contest the backbone of resistance to the King. Its people were strongly Puritan in feeling, and it was they who gave Cromwell his strength: for they gave him his Ironsides; and furnished the famous New Model for the Parliamentary army which finished the war.

At the outset of the war many of the nobles raised regiments from among their own tenants, and the armies were of picturesque look, each regiment having its own uniform. The Guards of Lord Essex adopted the buff leather coat, which afterward became the uniform of the whole Roundhead army. Hampden’s regiment was in green; the London trained bands in bright scarlet. Other regiments were clad in blue or gray. In the Cavalier army there were foot-guards in white and foot-guards in red; and among their horse, the Life Guards of the King—composed of lords and gentlemen who had no separate commands—wore plumed casques over their long curled locks, embroidered lace collars over their glittering cuirasses, gay scarfs, gilded sword-belts, and great-boots of soft leather doubled down below the knee.

The history of the English Civil War, like the history of the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War, teaches two lessons. First, it shows that the average citizen of a civilized community requires months of training before he can be turned into a good soldier, and that raw levies—no matter how patriotic—are, under normal conditions, helpless before smaller armies of trained and veteran troops, and cannot strike a finishing blow even when pitted against troops of their own stamp. In the second place it teaches a lesson, which at first sight seems contradictory of the first, but is in reality not in the least so; namely, that there is nothing sacrosanct in the trade of the soldier. It is a trade which can be learned without special difficulty by any man who is brave and intelligent, who realizes the necessity of obedience, and who is already gifted with physical hardihood and is accustomed to the use of the horse and of weapons, to enduring fatigue and exposure, and to acting on his own responsibility, taking care of himself in the open.

Cromwell’s troops were not regulars, like the professional soldiers of the Thirty Years’ War; they were volunteers. After two or three years’ service they became the finest troops that Europe could then show; just as by 1864 the volunteers of Grant and Lee had reached a grade of perfection which made them, for their own work, superior to any other of the armies then in existence.

Under modern conditions, in a great civilized state, the regular army is composed of officers who have as a rule been carefully trained to their work; who possess remarkably fine physique, and who are accustomed to the command of men and to taking the lead in emergencies; and the enlisted men have likewise been picked out with great care as to their bodily development; have been drilled until they handle themselves, their horses, and their weapons admirably, can cook for themselves, and are trained to the endurance of hardship and exposure under the conditions of march and battle. An ordinary volunteer or militia regiment from an ordinary civilized community, on the other hand, no matter how enthusiastic or patriotic, or how intelligent, is officered by lawyers, merchants, business men, or their sons, and contains in its ranks clerks, mechanics, or farmers’ lads of varying physique, who have to be laboriously taught how to shoot and how to ride, and, above all, how to cook and to take care of themselves and make themselves comfortable in the open, especially when tired out by long marches, and when the weather is bad. At the outset such a regiment is, of course, utterly inferior to a veteran regular regiment, but after it has been in active service in the field for a year or two, so that its weak men have been weeded out, and its strong men have learned their duties—which can be learned far more rapidly in time of war than in time of peace—it becomes equal to any regiment. Moreover, if a regular regiment consists of raw recruits and is officered by men who have learned their profession only in the barracks and the study and on the parade ground, it may be a cause of very disagreeable surprise to those who have grown to regard the word “regular” as a kind of fetich.

Again, a volunteer regiment may have the wisdom to select officers for the highest positions who know how to handle men, who have seen actual soldiering, who possess natural capacity for leadership, eagerness to learn, and the good sense to know their own shortcomings; and the rank and file may be men of adventurous temper, already skilful riflemen, and of great bodily hardihood, accustomed to exposure, accustomed to cook—that is to say, to take care of their stomachs—to live in the open, to endure hardship and fatigue, and to take advantage of cover in battle. Such a regiment, especially if raised on the frontier, may, from the outset, prove itself equal to or better than any ordinary regular regiment—as has recently been shown by our troops in the Philippines, by the Australians and Canadians in South Africa, and, above all, by the Boers; and as was shown nearly a century ago by Hofer’s Tyrolese and Andrew Jackson’s backwoodsmen. Of course, no good traits will avail in the least if men are possessed with the belief that they cannot be taught anything, if they are not eager to obey and to learn; or if they do not possess a natural fighting edge.

So it is with the men in high command. The careful training in body and mind, and especially in character, gained in an academy like West Point, and the subsequent experience in the field, endow the regular officer with such advantages that, in any but a long war, he cannot be overtaken even by the best natural fighter. In the American Civil War, for instance, the greatest leaders were all West Pointers. Yet even there, by the end of the contest both armies had produced regimental, brigade, and division commanders, who though originally from civil life, had learned to know their business exactly as well as the best regular officers; and there was at least one such commander—Forrest—who, in his own class, was unequalled. If in a war the regular officers prove to have been trained merely to the pedantry of their profession, and do not happen to number men of exceptional ability in their ranks, then sooner or later the men who are born soldiers will come to the front, even though they have been civilians until late in life.