A Higher Standard of Godliness

Abstract

Oliver Cromwell is one of the greatest soldiers in European history. With little or no military experience until his early forties, he quickly rose from his rank of Captain, the leader of eighty men, to become the general in command of one of the finest armies England has ever produced. Within a few years, he had conquered most of Great Britain and Ireland, and had made England's armed forces an object of fear and envy throughout Europe. The speed alone with which he was able to do this are enough to justify his prominent place among the great generals, but Cromwell achieved much more. Cromwell used, or was used by, his army to seize political power in England. He is one of the first non-aristocratic soldiers to do so in a major state. Other men have ridden on the backs of the soldiers to political power, but few for the reasons Cromwell did. He, and many of his men, claimed that the army was more in tune with national sentiment than were the political leaders, and that the army was a repository for much of the greatness of England. His soldiers wrote that they were not merely soldiers but men who fought for a cause and who would not put down their arms till that cause became a reality. Cromwell is a phenomenon because he did not start with a strong standing army behind him, nor even with a citizenry raised in military discipline and willing to follow its generals. England was considered a military backwater at the beginning of the Civil War. Cromwell's famous New Model Army was a creation not only of the military situation but of the political and religious beliefs of the times. More important, it was an army that was a creation of Cromwell's own military, political, and religious beliefs.