English Civil Wars - Part 2 (new model army)

This week, we continue our series on the English Civil Wars and discuss the rise of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of Kings Charles 1.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to An Hour of Our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it and come back to
tell you what we've learned. Today, we're doing the second
of three parts about the British Civil Wars. Today we're
going to talk about the Second British Civil War. We're
going to cover the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the formation
of a new kind of army, and the execution of

(00:21):
King Charles the first.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm Joe and I'm Dave.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
All right, well, we're we're back talking more English Civil War.
How you doing this week, Dove good.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm in my new new studio space, so just kind
of getting used to new digs and you know, I
may have to just raise some taxes to pay for
this space, and people are going to be kind of
pissed about it.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
So it's going to be you're gonna be asking for
a ship money to pay for the An Hour of
Our Time podcast studios.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm gonna I'm gonna ask my wife for alone, and
then I'm not gonna call her for eleven years. Yeah,
I and scene.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
That's a great, great transition. I often joke of folks
about my basement are actually like the corner of my
basement is also where I like build lego sets and
play D and D over discord. I often talk about
this being the an hour of our time podcast studio,

(01:43):
semi jokingly, Dave, obviously this is a great podcasting because
you folks can't actually see this. We talked to each
other at a zoom.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, Dave actually some pictures on on social media, but.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, Dave. Dave actually has a recording studio in his
house and recently has making some improvements and moved it
to the basement.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So yeah, to kind of explain, I was in a bedroom.
I had like a studio in an extra bedroom, and
it was wired into the basement because that's where the
drum set was and where we would do some rehearsals.
Now we're trying to turn that bedroom into the nursery,
so we are finishing our basement and so now I
have a larger space in the basement that is sort

(02:26):
of divided in half, big plexiglass window. Getting different things
installed right now and getting everything set up. Joe was
around on Monday helping me set up or carry down
a desk and a couch, and we've dubbed this this
studio Maple catacombs because of the street that I live
on and that it's in the basement. So if you are,

(02:48):
you know, one of our listeners that is a musician
or needs to do any other sort of audio recording,
I have a fully functional studio in my home.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yeah, and if you want to see some sick ass
lego sets, uh, that's what That's what I got over here,
right all right. So we we already last time covered
our usual thing of like what what you already knew
about this topic? But I my wife asked me what

(03:22):
was our topic for for this time, and I told
her we were talking about the English Civil War and
and she was like, yeah, I really don't think that
I ever learned anything about that. And I was like, well,
you know, it's interesting because I you know, it's it's
kind of like not talked about as much as maybe
you think, especially in terms of like compared to the

(03:45):
American Civil War or or the French Revolution. And she
was asking me if I knew why, And so that
kind of got into the speculation that we had talked
about last time, and I positive what I'd heard from
some historians, which is that maybe it has to do

(04:06):
the fact that the monarchy was eventually restored. So that's
sort of the punchline of all this. But there's a
really really interesting and wild trip that it's going to
take us to get there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Well, I thought about this this week because I said
last time, like something to the effect of, you know,
I think it's maybe not taught in schools as much
because it didn't ultimately really matter. But if you think
about it, this predates the American in French revolutions by
you know, over one hundred years, and I think without

(04:38):
this happening, I don't know that you get those things
because what was sort of set up before Cromwell like
you know, really becomes basically king sort of sets up
that idea of liberty amongst the people. So I think

(04:58):
it is really important that that way.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, uh,
even the idea that the that there would be like
a parliament and that the king wouldn't have you know,
complete like complete total rights was uh, you know interesting

(05:21):
because this is the era of absolutism throughout much of Europe,
which is like king's rule by divine right. They they
rule like you know, sort of rule absolutely. Hence the
name so they're already like there already was a trend

(05:42):
towards uh more power or less power for the monarch
leading up to this. So yeah, Dave, I think you're
right that it did did kind of set the stage
for some of these these other things. Yeah, I think. Yeah.
So actually, like at the time or a little bit

(06:02):
before this, a lot of people in England started to
be started to become really interested in or or sort
of rediscover the Magnet Carta or some of you might
have heard of, which is a basically a charter of
rights that the King of England, King John, agreed to
which did give some or did enumerate some rights that

(06:27):
the aristocracy had, which is you know, does nothing for
the common folk, but at least it's you know, sort
of taking some power away from the king.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
So anyway, yeah, and that's and that's three hundred and
fifty years before the you know, the end of the
English Civil Wars, so yeah, we're pretty we're so you know,
there's still a lot of time between those two things
as well.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
So yeah, so there's kind of a trend. But anyway,
wanted to recap what we talked about last time, So
for those of you hopefully you're not joining us halfway
through here or one third of the way through, because
this will be probably deeply confusing, I guess, but I
do want to try to make sure that each of
these episodes are kind of kind of self contained. But

(07:11):
certainly you should go back and listen to part one.
We are doing three part episode about the English Civil Wars.
So they were actually sort of three separate but related conflicts,
and last time we talked about the first one, and
then during each of these episodes we've been talking about
issues that relate to it. So today we're also going

(07:31):
to talk about some of the One of the major
outcomes of these wars was the reorganization of the British military,
which I'm going to talk about, and then we're going
to talk about the most important historical figure from this
time period, Oliver Cromwell. But to give you a little
bit of I'm going to give you now a little
bit of a recap of the First English Civil War.
So this is went on from about sixteen forty two

(07:54):
to sixteen forty six. So there in some you know,
conflict between the Parliament and the King prior to this,
but in August the people the Royalists are the cavaliers

(08:16):
as they were called, controlled like the north and the
west part of England, while the Parliamentarians or the roundheads
named after their kind of like bowl cut that they had, yeah,
controlled like the south and the east. So it looked
like the you know, the Royalist forces will look like

(08:38):
they were kind of winning, especially after they got an
alliance with the Irish Catholics, which in exchange for ending
the Irish Rebellion which England had been fighting just before this.
But then that sort of led to the Parliamentarians gaining

(08:59):
an alliance with the Scottish and so the Scottish Army
joined the war on the parliament side in January sixteen
forty four. So that we also talked about the biggest
battle which happened during the First Civil War, which was
the ballot Marston Moore, which happened on July second, sixteen

(09:20):
forty four. So we're actually getting close to that anniversary here.
July second, not not an anniversary that's pedrian much attention
to in the US, considering two days later we we
have a whole, a whole holiday. This is like, fuck

(09:41):
the British right and Marston Moore is near the modern
day city of York there was. That was a huge
victory for the Parliamentarians, which at this time, it's really
important we mentioned this last time. They almost always often
had were larger forces. It's about twenty eight thousand versus

(10:07):
eighteen thousand for the Royalties. So that basically ended the
King's control of northern England. By sixteen forty five, this
is very important and we'll talk about it quite a
lot in a little while. Parliament created both of the
At this time, both of these armies were basically amateur
armies like conscript armies. In sixteen forty five, Parliament created

(10:27):
a permanent standing army which they called the New Model Army.
And then that newly created army scored a basically like
the you know, the decisive victory of the First Civil
War in June sixteen forty five in the Battle of Naseby,
which basically ended the control of England by the Royalists

(10:54):
and ended the First Civil War. And who was commanding
that army was Thomas Fairfax and an officer who had
worked his way up through the ranks named Oliver Cromwell. Yeah,
so that gets us to the second well, not not

(11:17):
quite they're not quite warring just yet, but the issues
that caused the First Civil War were never worked solved,
but they're not actively worn with each other at this point.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
All right, Okay, so let's talk Oliver Cromwell here for
a second. Yeah, So Oliver Cromwell. He was the born
in fifteen ninety nine, only son of Robert Cromwell and
his second wife, Elizabeth Stewart. He is born into a

(11:56):
family with some prestige. So his one of his descent,
Thomas Cromwell, which I believe is his paternal great grandfather,
served as Henry the Eighth's chief minister, and his family
owned a decent amount of land. And you know, at

(12:20):
the time of his birth, he wouldn't necessarily call them wealthy.
To my understanding, they were more middle class. I heard
one historian say that, like it was a wealthy family
like the time of Henry the Eighth, and through the
generations the wealth sort of dried up, Like they still
owned land, but their wealth and their prestige shrank a

(12:42):
little bit with each generation.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, they they were kind of on hard times by
the tent but by the time we get to the
Civil War period.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Right, you know, he is fairly well educated. At one
point his father died and he goes home to take
care of his sisters and his you know, now widowed mother.
While there he does study a bit more, and I
think studies law a bit. He eventually gets married, has

(13:15):
a number of children, and I know I'm kind of
speeding through his life, but what's important here is that
he suffers from what is essentially described as depression, and
whether it be from different medications at the time that
he was taking to try to ward off the plague
or other circumstances. He only comes out of this kind

(13:38):
of depressive state by having kind of a religious epiphany.
You could, I would describe him as being born again.
He becomes a very intense Puritan, and if you don't
remember the stance of the Puritans, I think he could
be best described as I think people look at them

(14:01):
as like anti Catholic, but no, they're They're within a
Protestant England, but they the Church of England at the
time still had a lot of trappings of Catholicism, the
Catholicism that came before it, Like they have bishops and
they have a lot of different rituals that tie into

(14:22):
the Catholic Church, and so the Puritans want to really
cleanse the Church of England of those things and kind
of purify the practices. Is that that's a fair description
of the Puritans.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Well, yeah, for the record, they did, in fact hate
Catholics and Quakers and basically everybody else. They did, but
so did the Protestants. So did the Protestants that weren't Puritans,
you know what I'm saying. Puritans were, Well, yeah, so
they they were. But they were particularly radical. Yeah, yeah,
they were also super not fun they were.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, they definitely would have not been fun at parties.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
And I it is often said that the United States
has a deep Puritan streak that goes all the way
back to our founding and I I firmly believe that.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's very evident.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Now, so again a little bit of pop history, I think,
but I do think there's rings a little bit true.
But yeah, So marrying his wife, Elizabeth Borcher and joining
the Puritan Church was a big turning point for him.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Now, prior to this, he had served as
a Member of Parliament from his hometown, which is Huntingtondon.
In sixteen twenty eight, but as he becomes a more
prominent Puritan, he has chosen to represent Parliament from Cambridge,
you know, who represent Cambridge because the heavily Puritan population

(16:04):
there felt that he would best represent their interests. And
when he speaks out in Parliament against the King, it's
pretty important, I think, to recognize that a lot of
people are speaking out about his tyrannical practices, his kind
of getting England into conflicts that were unnecessary, his raising

(16:28):
of taxes. Cromwell's speaking against him has nothing to do
with those things. It's all about religion. It's all about
the he's got a Catholic wife. They're pushing these Catholic practices,
so he's not quite as like hardcore against the king
on all those things. It's that it's that major issue

(16:48):
for him.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Well. I think that's something that we mentioned, we talked
about or discussed a little bit last time, was that,
you know, while there were these two sides to the conflict,
people joined each side for various different reasons. For some
of them, you know, they felt that they were fighting
on the parliamentarian side, they thought that they were fighting

(17:09):
for freedom against the tyranny of the king. For others,
it was about religion. For others they were simply that's
the side that was paying them. And for some of
it was like, you know, a mix of different things,
so these were not like monolithic causes.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
You want to hear something really crazy, of course I do. Okay,
there is I couldn't find concrete evidence of this, so
take it with a grain of salt. But I've heard
I've seen reference to this in multiple sources that supposedly
Cromwell and Charles I did meet as children, and Cromwell

(17:49):
gave him a black eye while playing. This is because
with the connection with Henry the eighth and the standing
of the family, one of his and it might have
been his grandfather, which sometimes host King James's hunting party,
and at one of these meetings King James, who was
along for this, brought his son. I know it sounds

(18:11):
like this couldn't possibly be true, and it does seem
like a rumor, but I've seen it mentioned in multiple sources.
Those sources tend to say like there isn't necessarily concrete
proof of this would be crazy if it were true,
But I would be remiss if I didn't at least
mention that because it's bonkers.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
That strikes me as the kind of thing that would
be a story that would get told amongst the you know,
the parliamentarian cause you know, to sort of like you know,
rile them up against the king and everything like that.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the funny thing about
it is that it's not like it's not super far fetched,
given like the connections to some of the people here,
and I have read with evidence things, you know, more
coincidental things that actually did happen, Like wasn't there a
story about one of a Labraham Lincoln's sons saving John

(19:13):
Wilkes Boot's brother on a train or vice versa.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Oh, I had not heard that.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
I'm gonna look this shit up in second, but that
actually happened, so you know, who knows. But I just
want to put it out there.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
I don't feel bad about saying it, and you can't
make me.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I don't feel bad. Good, all right, I don't think
you should blood. So it's interesting you know that like
Cromwell before the English Civil War he didn't have any
formal military training.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Oh no, not at all. But also like I got,
I gotta, I gotta stop you here, because in eighteen
sixty three or eighteen sixty four. The date is unsure,
but Robert Todd Lincoln was saved on a train platform
when he was pushed saved from being hit by a

(20:14):
train by Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth.
That did happen. Wow, So I'm just saying there are
strange coincidences within history, stranger than what I suggested. So
take that for what you will.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
No, I mean, yeah, that's one of the reasons why
I love to learn about history. So yes, so well
beck to Cromwell, like we said, he had no formal
military training, but he he kind of worked his way
up through the ranks. And as we mentioned, these were

(20:54):
not professional armies, but each side had a different units
that were often led by aristocracy, especially on the parliament
I'm sorry, on the royalist side, really the only people
that had any training were the like the lords, right, yeah,

(21:17):
and so they're using like, you know, badly trained or
troops that didn't have very much training. And then on
the parliamentary in side, they also you know, really didn't
have much training either, and they they started off as
like kind of this like you know, somewhat like you know,
ragtag group, although they often had more people that they

(21:37):
were able to rally to their cause. As we've mentioned,
but Cromwell led troops in some of the key victories
that happened in sixteen forty two, which is the Battle
of edge Hill was one of the key battles, which
was like basically like the first large scale battle.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
Of Would that make him an edge lord?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
He was kind of an edge lord.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
He got all the puritids are reals.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
We watched some like maybe it was like do you
remember any the channel, the cable channel. I do, any
It was probably like any or History Channel back when
they actually like showed history stuff and things like that.
But there was an actual like uh not like a
docu dramas that what I'm thinking of. I'm about Cromwell

(22:34):
in our European history class in high school, and they
just got a guy I got. We're to we might
have to watch this, Dave. We went to find and
watch this. But it's just basically like the stage direction
that they gave this actor to play Cromwell was like,
look like you smelled something bad at all time, because
he's just like.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
We see part of this And I think I mentioned
this a couple of weeks ago to you, Joe, is that,
like Cromwell's a peer prints was distorted by his enemies.
He was a big, broad shouldered dude who had like
a couple of worts like above one eye and like
beneath his lip, and so he was often portrayed by

(23:14):
his enemies as an ogre.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, we did talk last time about how
there were broadsheets basically the equivalent of newspapers on either side,
and they would, yeah, draw little coal cartoons that made
the other side look bad. You can still find a
lot of these things. A lot of great websites run
by the the English Heritage Association have like a lot

(23:43):
of like news clippings and things like that, and all said,
the yeah, the that's what I'm thinking. It was a
really great web resource. But I digress back to Cromwell.
He also helped win a decisive battle also in sixteen
forty two in East Anglia. So by sixteen forty four

(24:06):
he had risen to the rank of lieutenant general and
then he was helped lead the forces of the Parliamentarians
to victory at the important Battle of Navvy which I mentioned.

(24:26):
But in like the there's a Catholic fortress basing House,
which is like one of the last like bastions of
like you know, hold out Royalist forces. October in sixteen
forty five, he led an attack on basing House and
allegedly killed one hundred men after they had already surrendered,

(24:50):
executed them.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, and we're going to talk next week about what
he did in Ireland, and so you know, do you
hear that? You might go, yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, So he you know, he kind of like you
want to with Mike in our modern sensibilities, you want
to like portray him as a hero sort of because
he was like, you know, fighting the monarchy. And I
think most people, especially in America, like we don't like
the idea of having a king, right, but this guy was,
like he was kind of a kind of a bad

(25:25):
dude too.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, we'll get into some of the things that people
have said throughout history about him, but there definitely is
a line in the sand as to whether you see
him as a hero or a villain, even in modern England.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah. Well, we can keep talking more about Cromwell as
it is, it becomes relevant. But let's let's pick up
the the the threat of the timeline, so to speak,
for the Second Civil War, shall we, oh please, as
you're called, The King had the King's forces head surrendered

(26:06):
to the Parliamentarians and their Scottish allies in late October
early November sixteen. For about a year, from sixteen forty
six to sixteen forty seven, was something called the Putney Debates.

(26:27):
There's something called the General Council of the Army which
was made up of representatives of the soldiers from each
regiment and then the senior offers as senior officers of
the army. They met in Putney, which is why it's
called the Putney Debates with the King to try to,

(26:49):
you know, figure out how we were going to settle
the differences, right some of them, and this is why, like,
you know, the parliamentarians weren't like, you know, a monolog right.
Some of them wanted to negotiate with Charles. Some of
them some people actually wanted to do things like universal

(27:10):
male suffrage, like give everyone the right to vote, and
then other on the other side, some people wanted to
completely remove the King from power entirely. So there was
you know, like all different kinds of sides to this debate,
and you know, they couldn't really agree with one another, right,

(27:31):
but so the king during this time are actually a
little bit after that, in December he escaped, Yeah he did, yeah,
but then he was then he was recaptured and sent
to Karasbrook Castle on the way.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Wait second, so let's say what happened here. He escaped
and he went north and met up with the Scottish
Army and was like, hey, if you reinstate me as king,
I'll make all of England Presbyterian. And they were like,
oh sure, and then basically betrayed him and gave him

(28:10):
back to the Parliamentary Army.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yes, but that did so the seeds, Oh it did. Well.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Here's the thing it it pissed people off because like Cromwell,
for example, he was on the side of maintaining the
monarchy but setting up restrictions a new constitution with the
monarchy and Charles the first in place. But after he
did this, Cromwell had to kind of be on the
side of like, we're gonna have to kill him.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah. A lot of people, like I said, they were like, well,
let's just negotiate with the king now. If you remember
last time I had said that, they kept like in
a prior proposal from Parliament, they had proposed some like
you know, things that the reforms that the King was
not gonna like. That they would be respond Parliament, would

(29:03):
be responsible for educating the King's children, and they would
be controlled the army and just some other things like that.
So there were still some people that, yeah, let's negotiate,
but then you know, by him escaping and trying to
negotiate with the Scotts, it's obviously clear that he's not
really a good faith negotiator here. So then they captured

(29:25):
him and sent him to Karrisbrook Castle in the Isle
of Wight. Isle of Wight, very interesting place. There are
actually fossils dinosaur fossils from the Isle of Wight. It's
one of the other places as dinosaur fossils in England.
The rest of the fossils there are marine organisms. But
I digress. But while he was imprisoned, he started more

(29:50):
negotiations with the Scots and in December sixteen forty seven
they signed something called the Engagement. So the engagement was
just an agreement that the king was going to implement
the Scottish system of church government, which is Presbyterianism. And

(30:11):
then in return, the Scots would join Charles in you
know fighting, you know, reinstating himself and fighting off the parliamentarians. Right,
so now you start some like sort of like I guess,
smaller scale skirmishes. In sixteen forty eight, there were small

(30:35):
rebellions that started in favor of the king and that
broke out all over England and Sir Thomas Fairfax put
down the rebellions by the English Royalists and Cromwell defeated the.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Scots yep, pretty easily too, despite the fact that Cromwell's
army was smaller. He went up there and just fucked
them up.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, which we can go into a little bit more
detail here about like you know, how how do they
do that and everything, and we'll also talk a little
bit about the army next. But so, yeah, the king

(31:27):
is basically like yeah, like just kind of like stalling
for time, like we said, and not really like negotiating.
So you had all these uprisings, and some of them
were actually over things like you know, people being mad

(31:48):
about taxes. Some people started to become actually like disillusioned
with how Parliament was running the government in this sort
of intern warp. And then also like you have to
remember that, like the country was really devastated by the
Civil War, so there was just unrest around that. So
there was actually a naval revolt near Kent and Fairfax

(32:17):
brought seven thousand soldiers crushing the Kentish Royalists on the
first in June. So, but then some of those Royalists
from Kent escaped to Essex where they fortified the town

(32:38):
and then the parliamentarians had to lay siege to it.
So siege warfare is something that was part a big
part of the English Civil wars. I mentioned last time
that they even they did a lot of like made
fortifications even to like you know, manor houses and stuff
like that.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Can you describe siege warfare.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, So rather than armies, you know, meeting each other
on the field of battle, you have one force that
digs into a fortified position like a castle or a
fort or you know, a fortified position of some kind,
and then the other side has to do different things.

(33:21):
They did things like tunnel under the walls to make
them structurally unsound. They would build fortifications of their own,
like dig trenches and things like that so that they
could get their artillery pieces close enough to the walls
to basically blow them up, or they did things like

(33:42):
just wait out and basically wait until the people inside
the fortified structure or fortified town starved death. M Yeah,
we talked.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
About some of that kind of warfare in our Crusades episodes.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, there's a lot of siege warfare there. Cromwell's forces
often did not like to engage in siege warfare. If
they could avoid, they would rush the walls and try
to end a conflict quickly because a lot of their

(34:19):
while they were well trained, a lot of they were
not as well trained in siege warfare. So sorry, so
that siege lasted until August of sixteen forty eight. Meanwhile,

(34:44):
now that like naval revolt spread onto the land and
the Royalists were occupying the towns of Dover, Deal, Walmer,
and sand Down and then each of them with a castle,
because usually each town would have like a fortified castle
or a fort and so then but then eventually they

(35:04):
were all recaptured. After sieges up north, Oliver Cromwell took
an army about eight thousand into Wales and put down
the revolt there, and then he really quickly marched south
to fight a Scottish army of ten thousand. So that's

(35:27):
that's where, like you said, he had a smaller force
which he defeated at the Battle of Preston. So by
the so, so sixteen forty eight is pretty much the
the the bulk of the Second Civil War after after this,
the parliamentarians were no longer going to negotiate with uh

(35:53):
with the Royalists. They completely seized power. The leaders of
all the uprisings were executed and some of the more
radical people in the parliament actually expelled the moderates from
parliament and something that was called the Pride's Purge.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Some of those people that did the expelling were cousins
of Cromwell, though he was he wasn't there at that time.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, and that led to something called the Rump Parliament.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
So, oh, the Rump Parliament.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah. So I think that was a pretty good time
before we get into this Pride's Purge and and the
next the you know, the aftermath of this war to
kind of switch gears a little bit and talk about
this new model army.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, So, as we.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Mentioned the prior to the or at the first most
of the First Civil War, you had and also like
all the armies eployed during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms,
which is this sort of like larger series of conflicts

(37:08):
in what would become the United Kingdom, was you had
mainly mainly you did not have professional armies. And actually
I think the English army was a little bit backwards

(37:30):
compared to some of the armies from the continent at
this time, which is what caused them to lose some
battles against the Spanish that we sort of briefly mentioned
last time.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
What do you what do you mean by backwards?

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Well, they had not adopted a lot of the modern
tactics yet, okay, which which we'll get into. And those
tactics a lot of that surround combined arms, so combining infantry, cavalry,
and artillery into flexible units that can move quickly. Yeah,

(38:08):
so that's that's what And I know we think of
like battles during this like late Renaissance in like early
modern period is like, you know, a bunch of dude
and I've even described it this way as a bunch
of dudes stand over here, and a bunch of dudes
stand over here, and then they kind of like run
at each other and shoot at each other Yeah, it's
it's obviously a little bit more complicated than that. And

(38:31):
then they started to adopt some of those tactics and
more importantly a standing army. So in sixteen forty five
Parliament establish a professional officer corps, and then they also
ruled that the army's leaders were prohibited from having seats

(38:53):
in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons,
either the houses of Parliament. Interestingly, one of the people
that they made in next I'm exception for was Cromwell himself.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yes, it was.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, So the new model army was the officer corps
came from veteran soldiers, most of them who were Puritans.
So the new model army like actually became like the
the more radical wing of the parliamentarian cause. And then

(39:26):
they also had conscripts who didn't necessarily share the beliefs
of their officers. So what was the new own army. So,
like I said, they had these you know, like one
of the problems with one of the problems with the

(39:52):
army as it was before was that the garrisons that
were formed on in England, they often like didn't really
want to fight away from their home area. MM because
the The way that these armies were raised is they

(40:16):
were raised by h taking people from you know, the
like the countryside of where the garrison would be, and
they were sort of like defending their home area. But
they didn't really want to like go off and fight

(40:36):
you know, a distant battle somewhere across the country. Sure,
and this is often why conflicts around this time actually
employed mercenaries, because you could pay a mercenary and they'll
go where you tell them as long as the check clears.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Right, that's the idea.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah. So anyway, so how did this uh, how did
this arm work? So you had it organized as the
the three kind of like or like four kind of
main units or types of units. You had the horse,

(41:16):
they called it the Order of the Horse, but it
would just be what we might call cavalry, which as
the name suggests, would be horse mounted soldiers. Then you
had so when the person who was in charge of
the horse, which was cromwell, he was the commander of

(41:38):
the horse. And then you had the commander of the
foot should be the foot soldiers. And then you had
sort of a mixed group called dragoons, which could fight
on horse or on foot. And then you had cavalry. Hmm,

(42:01):
so let's start with the regiment of the horse. So
cavalry was probably the most important because horse drawn or
horse mounted soldiers could move really fast. So the the
troops that were riding on I should take a step back.

(42:21):
So for a professional army, they actually drilled them, so
they were well trained and because of this, they would often,
you know, fight more in a more disciplined manner. Okay,
so you have the the regiments of the horse. So

(42:45):
they were armed and equipped in a style of the
time known as harkabusiers, which I am possibly mispronouncing.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
It's not not a very flattering word.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, so I actually have some good resources for like
what kind of like weapons and armor they would have.
So the harkbus here armor would be like they would
wear a breastplate and then they might have some leg guards,

(43:18):
and they also might have armor covering one of their arms,
the one that was holding the bridle like the basically
controlling the horse, and then their other arm, whichever was there.
Usually I think their dominant hand would be unarmored so
that they could more effectively wield their pistol or their sword.

(43:41):
So they often the harkbussiers had they might carry a pistol,
or they might carry a carbine or carbine which is
basically like a shortened long gun, because when you're riding
on a horse, it's harder to get like a long rifle.

(44:02):
I always say a rifle. They weren't rifled, but you know,
like think of like a like a long hunting rifle
and trying to like swing that up while you're on
a horse. It's hard to do and it's hard to
do with one hand because you had to be controlling
the horse. So they had carbines, which would be a
shortened version of that, or they would use pistols. And
again these are single shot things, so they usually carry

(44:23):
two pistols and they'd fire them at very close range.
The pistols. I'm looking at resources from the Royal Armory
for the record. The swords that they used were called
a hangar sword, which were sort of brought over from Germany.

(44:48):
But they had like a guard over the hand and
then they're like a long curved sword for like slashing
and some stabbing.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
M okay.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
So they're a little bit of a curve to the blade.
It's only sharp on the leading edge except at the tip,
and then the tip.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
It's it's sharp on both sides.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
The tip is sharp both sides. Yeah, okay, so they
would have the pistols, would be a flint lock, which
was a newer technology and it would have been more expensive.
But a flint lock, what that is is you actually
have like sort of cock it back, and then you
have a plate of powder that's like fine grain powder,

(45:38):
and then you have a flint like a flint, and
steel like a fire starter. And when you pull the trigger,
that flint, which is like spring loaded, flips forward, strikes
the or the metal piece strikes the flint, makes a
spark which goes down into the pan of of uh

(46:01):
powder ignites it. That then goes down through a hole
into the barrel and ignites the main powder charge that
propels the busketball. So if you if you've seen like
depictions of like quote unquote pirate guns, that's a flint lock.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Okay, all right, I can I can picture the mechanism
in my head, probably just because I've seen it replicated
in movies.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
Well, I will contrast that with the match lock which
the foot soldiers were using, and that will make a
little bit more sense. Okay, Okay, So that's the that's
the cavalry, the the hark bussy, and they, like I said,
they were much more disciplined than their Royalist counterparts. Cromwell

(46:56):
specifically forbid his men to gallop after a fleeing enemy
and demanded that they stay and hold the battlefield, because
what would happen is untrained regiments would chase after fleeing soldiers.
But now they've left the battlefield and they've left their
foot soldiers unprotected from a cavalry charge from the other

(47:18):
posing army and things like that. So because he was
they were disciplined, the new model Armony could army. They
could charge, they could regroup and charge again at a
different objective. Now, on the other hand, when it was
time time to go after a fleeing force and pursue,

(47:38):
they could do that again in a disciplined manner, instead
of breaking ranks to loot like corpses are abandoned supplies
like the royalists cavalry often did. Okay, then you had

(47:58):
the dragoons. So the new Old Army had just only
one regiment of these, and they were under the Colonel
John Oakie, so they were mounted infantry. They basically were
the same uniform as the musketeers. And then but then
they can They also had horses that they could mount,

(48:19):
so they were like kind of like flexible, and they
had a special kind of flintlock called a snap chance
snappants or a snap pumps, which is a type of flintlock.
It's a type of flintlock long gun. Okay, so now

(48:40):
you have the the foot soldiers. So this is they
had a mixed group. So for every two musketeers. Now
it's interesting, apparently, like we have documents that say that
for every two musketeers they had one pikeman. But if
you look at like I don't know, cartoons or whatever,

(49:03):
they show these in equal numbers. But that's apparently not
what actually happened. So why do you if you in
a world of guns, why would you have pikemen and
a pike is a like a twelve foot stick.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
I'm guessing it's it's like when it's it takes a
while to reload a gun, and if you're up against
like a charge of horses, you can use the pikes
to stab upward at the horses.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yep. The pikemen were there to present a like a
spiky you know, hedgehog of points of spearheads to protect
the musketeers from the cavalry while they reloaded. Then they
also would lead the advance when they would push forward
on foot. And then when two regiments or two armies

(49:55):
would get in meet each other, then you'd get into
something called a push of pike, which is literally just
a shoving match, and the people at the center would
often get crushed or suffocated rather than being poked by
a pike or shot by a gunner or or stabbed
by a sword.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
That checks out.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
So the people at the back are just shoving. They're
not there's nothing, there's no one for them to stab.
They're just shoving the guys in front of them. And
then the people in the middle of the melee are
like stabbing each other with swords slash, like I said,
just getting crushed.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
The origin of the tush push.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Yeah, sure. Apparently the Italian mercenaries saw this kind of
battle and they called it bad war. They which, yes,
it is.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Fucking idiots very well.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, oh, I think we talked about this in one
of our other episodes. These guys are mercenaries and they
really didn't want to fight a big pitched battle like that.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Oh, yeah, no, they a fight in a battle that
they might not die.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, they would often like do a lot like a
game of cat and mouse maneuvering because yeah, they they
super didn't want to get into one of these pike
push of pike matches. Yeah, so you got these so
both the so the musketeers, oh so sorry. The pikemen,
they are wearing a helmet and if you look at

(51:27):
like any of the like stuff from the time, this
is like the pot helmet that they're wearing. They have
a breastplate and a backplate over like a padded coat
called a buff coat. And they also might have tassets,
which are like armor that goes over the top of
your legs. They had I said, twelve foot I'm sorry,
they carried sixteen foot pike. Now, interestingly, that pike is

(51:50):
heavy as shit. Now, they did drill them to keep them,
make them so that they had practiced with carrying this thing.
But sometimes they would discipline guys for like secretly sawing
off a foot or two from the bottom of their
pike to make it a little bit lighter.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
That's like the uh, the origin of the shank.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah, and then then have to well, no, just to
like discard that. So it was and then then I
have to give them they you know, they would get
like lashed or whatever for doing that. The musketeers didn't
wear any armor, although they might have sometimes wore a helmet.
Is it really interesting? So they had a match lock musket.

(52:36):
So has that done from a flintlock? Ain't match lock? Oh?
I'm so sorry? Uh to going back to a pike.
The pikes did have like a there were wood like
a metal spear at the tip. It wasn't just a
wooden stick.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Okay, yeah, yeah, so these.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Flint arms, sorry, these match lock muskets, these were what
a what a match lock did was you actually had
like a burning cord that when you pulled the trigger,
it lowered it down into the flashpan. Now, Dave, I

(53:20):
think we're gonna do if we got to do a
bonus episode or an episode adendum where we do idioms,
because the idiom a flash in the pan comes from this.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, I'm looking at images of and it.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Became popular in the English Civil War, but well we'll
leave that aside. So you loaded it from the barrel,
shoved the musket ball and a piece of cloth, and
the gunpowdered charge into the barrel. Then you lit your

(53:56):
fuse basically, and then when you pulled the trigger, it
would push it down and ignite the the uh priming powder,
the fine powder in the pan, and then that burning
powder would travel down and ignite the main charge to
shoot the musket. Now, each of these guns could be

(54:18):
fired somewhere between ten and twelve times period before they
clogged and could not be used again until they were,
you know, very thoroughly cleaned.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Okay, So yeah, each of these.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Guys carried a bandalier and I find this fascinating. They
had this bandalier that just like what went around their
neck and shoulders, and it had twelve of these I'm sorry,
eleven wooden bottles called charging bottles, which had the powder.

(54:55):
They had a little leather bag that had the musket balls,
and then they had another brown bottle that had the
priming powder, which was finer, and that's what would go
into their priming pan. And so what they would do
is the first row of guys would shoot, and then
they would either the front row would then go to

(55:17):
the back and you'd cycle through that way, or they
would basically do the opposite. But either way you're shooting
and then getting another guy in front of you, and
then that guy's shooting, and they were six rows deep,
and by the time you got the six yeah, six
guys deep, and by the time you got back up

(55:38):
to the front you had to be ready to shoot again.
And then once you got done, you were carrying enough
for eleven shots and that's it. And then by the
time you either like got into a like a scrum,
like that push of the pike, they were either they

(56:02):
were pretty much they were supposed to be using swords,
but apparently their swords were shitty and they would ruin
them by using them the cut firewood, so oftentimes they
would just use the butts of their muskets like clubs
if it came to like close quarters melee, goddamn, I know,

(56:23):
brutal as fuck, right. They called those containers that they
wore around them, those twelve containers, the eleven and then
the twelfth one with the priming powder, the twelve apostles Jesus, Yeah,
pretty pretty interesting. So when they're those terms for when

(56:45):
they're maneuvering in and out after they fire was called
countermarch or retroduction. So it's basically like which direction you're moving,
and they trained them to do that so that they
could do that very efficiently. So that is one of
the reasons why the new model army and the Parliamentarians
were able to beat the Royalists because they had this

(57:07):
trained army. There were also artillery, and the artillery the
people firing the cannons were protected by firelocks or fusilier which. Oh,
and also I should mention that the the guys carrying

(57:35):
the matchlocks, the the regiments of foot, they wore red coats.
This is the origin of the red coats. Red coats, okay,
And and do you know why they chose red?

Speaker 2 (57:50):
I don't know something about and not being evident when
you were hit, that was the legend.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
But it's because red was the cheapest die, and that
that die came actually from Venice called Venetian red. Oh,
originally it came from Venice, but it was a fairric oxide,
which is basically like crushed up ironstone, which is also

(58:16):
a way to make a cheap paint, which is all
while the barns in Ohio and Pennsylvania are red.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Oh. Oh, that's right, you know I had heard that before.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Yeah, because you can make a cheap red paint out
of it. But I diggress. So that's why where you
get started the red coats. But yeah, you have the artillery. Artillery.
They're protected by guys, armed men who would go around
with the artillery pieces. Yeah, okay, so that's basically the
that's the New Model Army. Getting back into the timeline here,

(58:49):
December sixth, sixteen forty eight, the New madel Army was
kind of having a falling out with Parliament because you
remember the New Model Army is now basically the officers
are populated with these kind of hardcore puritans who were

(59:09):
among the more radical of the Roundheads, and they were
kind of pissed because the Parliament were still trying to
negotiate with Charles and also they were they were not
paying the soldiers. It is very important. When Parliament tried

(59:31):
to enter the House of Commons on December sixth, sixteen
forty eight, they were stopped by soldiers led by Colonel
Thomas Pride, who had a list of basically enemies of
the State or enemies of the New Model Army. About
eighteen of them were prevented from entering Parliament, and then

(59:52):
forty one were known to have been arrested and imprisoned,
so that is known as Pride's Purge, which leads to
something called the rump Parliament, so that's like a smaller parliament.
So then that gets us to January sixteen forty nine

(01:00:13):
and the trial of King Charles. So Charles was charged
with quote making war on Parliament and the people of England.
The House of Lords, which is like the Upper House,
which now is like basically a ceremonial institution, they refused

(01:00:34):
to put Charles on trial, so the House of Commons
gave itself the ability to pass laws without the King
and without the House of Lords. The trial began on
January twentieth, sixteen forty nine. They did not allow Charles
to speak during the trial. During the trial because Charles

(01:00:56):
refused to enter a plea, so you know, basically both
being a little bit stubborn. On January twenty sixth he
was declared guilty, and on January twenty seventh Charles was
condemned as a quote tyrant, trader, murderer and public enemy

(01:01:18):
to the Commonwealth of England. And then on that same
day the death warrant for King Charles the First was signed.
Sir Thomas Fairfax, who is the commander of the army
or well he was the commander of the foot did

(01:01:41):
not support execution. But Cromwell sure a fucking bid.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Yeah, yeah he did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
They said that England can never be at peace while
Charles remained alive, whilst I should say so. He was
charged with high treason and then on January thirtieth, sixteen
forty nine, Charles the First was executed. Over one hundred

(01:02:09):
years before the French Revolution, a monarch was put to
death by beheading, which obviously made a lot of the
other monarchs in Europe quite nervous. Yeah, did you have

(01:02:30):
anything you wanted to say about the execution?

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Yeah, just a couple a couple of things.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
If you listen to this this podcast, you know that
Dave likes maccobshit so well. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
The reason I like this kind of stuff is that
I think you learn a lot about people, like historical figures,
in how they act in these moments. And a couple
things I thought were interesting about this execution. One Charles

(01:03:09):
he hadn't seen his children for like fifteen months, so
his two of his children were brought to him. He
was able to see them, and then before he went
to where they had erected the space for the execution.
He asked for a second shirt because it was cold
and he didn't want to be shivering because it would
look like he was scared. When he got to the platform,

(01:03:33):
there were so many soldiers in front of it that
you know, they gave him a chance to speak, but
nobody could hear him except for the people on the platform.
But there was bishop Bishop Jackson, William Jackson, who was
Charles's companion and was there on the scaffold. He recorded

(01:03:54):
what Charles said in shorthand, so we have a pretty
good idea of what he said. And he was pretty
steadfast in his feelings of being innocent. He said that
he was a martyr of the people. He talked about
going to heaven. I go from a corruptible to an

(01:04:17):
incorruptible crown where no disturbances can be I die a
Christian according to the Profession of the Church of England,
of the Church of England, as I found it left
me by my father. He declared himself innocent, but he's
he says one really interesting thing. So at one point

(01:04:39):
he says something about his view. You know, we talked
in the first episode about how Charles the First you know,
definitely was very much of that opinion that a king
is divinely appointed to rule. And he said, and this
is this is the shorthand quote by William Jackson, as

(01:05:00):
for the people, truly, I desire their liberty and freedom
as much as any whosoever. But I must tell you
that their liberty and freedom consists in having of government
by those laws by which their lives and their goods
may be most their own. It is not for them
to have a share in government. That is nothing, sirs

(01:05:22):
appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean
different things. And therefore, until that be done, I mean,
until the people be put into that liberty which I
speak of, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
That's like the uh, it's like every like you know villain,
like conk book villain is like I have to or
like video game villain. Actually, it's like people will have
real freedom once I mind control everyone and turn them
into my slaves and take away their free will, and
then they'll have true freedom.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Ah so so yeah, he sort of stated that he was,
you know, a defender of the people, and he was
innocent but at the same time, remember, like I'm the
king and you're you're not the king, so like that's
just the way it is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, Like why why are you why are you being
crazy about this? I'm the king and I rule you,
and you'll be so much happier if you just let
me do that, right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Apparently, you know, if you think about when people will
go to the gallows during the French Revolution, often you
would kneel, right, But the way that this platform was built,
and it was sort of looked at as like a
final indignation, it was set up so that the king
essentially had to almost lay flat. So beyond just making

(01:06:50):
him kneel, they made him basically lay on his stomach.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
And this is, for the record, not this is not
a guillotine, this is not like, this is not a
is adu with a big s ax.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
And to that point, who was the executioner, Well, we
don't know. There was a lot of speculation as to
who it was. Apparently the chief executioner in London at
the time was offered a good deal of money but
supposedly turned it down. The person who was the executioner
wore a mask and some sort of cheap wig to
disguise their appearance. After he cut the king's head off,

(01:07:26):
he held it up as was traditional, but he didn't
say the traditional thing to say, which is behold the
head of a trader. Some people think this is because
he was trying to disguise his own identity didn't want
his voice to be heard. Some think it's because that
was just a bridge too far for him. There are
people that suggested that it was either Cromwell or Fairfax themselves,

(01:07:50):
though that's most certainly not true. Once he cut the
head off, he dropped it down to the soldiers, and
the soldiers and other people crowd dipped handkerchiefs into the
blood as a souvenir, and ultimately Charles's head was sewn
back onto his body. And then they wouldn't allow him

(01:08:11):
to be buried at Westminster. He had to be buried
in the same tomb as Henry the Eighth, which they eventually.
I think he exhumed his body in the nineteenth century
and it's moved, but I will say when they exhumed
his body, you know, a couple hundred years later. They

(01:08:31):
did also determine that the cut was very clean, one
clean stroke, which tells you that the executioner was probably experienced. Yeah, yeah,
which points more to this like one guy that they
tried to pay and then he turned it down, but
maybe he did it anyways, So just sort of, you know,
some interesting information there. And also there is supposedly, and

(01:08:53):
there's a famous painting of this that Cromwell visited Charles's
body kind of solemnly afterward, you know, I who knows.
Apparently he visited it and sighed and said cruel necessity.

(01:09:14):
We don't know if that's true or not, but yeah,
that is another rumor, well awfully romanticized thing, but it does.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
I mean a lot of people really, yeah, didn't We're
not into they did not want to execute the king.
This was called an unthinkable act, but.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, yeah, to that point, Joe, there was somebody, a
spectator in the crowd, a royalist named Philip Henry, that
wrote that the crowd led out a a loud groan,
quote such a groan as see what did he say?
Such a groan as I never heard before, and I
desire I may never he again. But it was also

(01:10:02):
pointed out that a groan was not reported by any
other contemporary accounts of the execution. So yeah, it might
be a Royalist putting a slant on it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds like it. But yeah, well, so
that's the end of the Second Civil War. After this,
after Charles was put to death, England was declared a Commonwealth,

(01:10:36):
with Scotland and Ireland becoming part of the Commonwealth in
sixteen fifty two, which will talk about that how that
happened next time. So this would be the Commonwealth would
be a republican government, so Ministers of Parliament or MPs

(01:11:00):
who ruled England, so they represented their given area and
ruled England without a monarch. That Commonwealth period would last
from sixteen forty nine to sixteen sixty. But we will
talk about there's there's still one more civil war. Charles

(01:11:23):
the first will not be leading the Royalists. We'll have
to see who picks up the cause next time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Absolutely, but until.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Then, I don't know. Drill your formation so you can
load your matchlock, I guess yeah, because the fighting fighting
will continue.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
All right, We'll talk to you all next time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Thank you for listening to an hour of our time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog over
two hundred episodes and rate and review us on your
platform of choice, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
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