Endeavour reprint
Cromwell: Portrait of a Soldier by John Gillingham
Oliver Cromwell was a man of outstanding gifts and forceful intellect, he saw more keenly than any other Civil War general the need for a new kind of warfare.
He saw that the rules of seventeenth-century warfare, as practised on the continent, were inappropriate to conditions in England and, with a politician's eye, he saw the importance of bringing the war to a swift conclusion.
Decisive in seeking battle and ruthless in pursuit, Cromwell's aggressive, Napoleonic style of warfare quickly established his reputation as a military commander of genius.
The early years of the Civil War witnessed not only his military apprenticeship - for unlike most of his colleagues and opponents he had no experience of war - but also the forging of the instrument with which the Civil War was won.
The cavalry regiments of the Eastern Association and the New Model Army were largely Cromwell's work. With these hand-picked, well trained and disciplined troops Cromwell was possessed of an advantage denied to otherwise skilled commanders like Waller.
John Gillingham is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at LSE. His other titles include `The Wars of the Roses'.
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