Cromwell

[oohbadknee]

What are the answerbanker's opions on Cromwell, hero or villain?

[tartanwiz]

Hero to begin with, turned villain later. He started off enlightened and progressive, sweeping away the old monarchy, but was rotten to the Scots and Irish and seized absolute power, effectively ending the democracy he fought for in the first place. The Robert Mugabe of his day.

[Ray the DJ]

If he was invented tomorrow, we'd call him a terrorist!

[MFM]

With all due respect, an obscure country gentleman with the personality to dominate a Civil War Parliament partly made up of religious fanatics of the worst sort, push through the creation of the first British Regular army, win battles, execute his monarch, and then have the strength of character to refuse the crown himself was no ordinary man. The Marxist view that the underlying 'process of history' drives events, has surely been exploded by now. There are a few times in history where one remarkable individual can make a difference. For instance, what would South Africa be like if Nelson Mandela had not been a remarkable man? Cromwell was one of these. Possibly a bit too much backbone for the modern school, but not a man to back away from what he thought was needed. For shifty pragmatists, I suggest you look at the careers of his contemporaries, Charles Stuart, later Charles II, and the 'Kingmaker' George Monck, who arranged the Restoration. Neither of those two would recognise a moral position if you hit them with it.

Incidentally, the Irish and Scots atrocities were simply the way they all did things then. Compared to the horrors in Germany during the Thirty Years War, and the French Wars of Religion, where a lot of the English generals had learned their trade, the English Civil War was somewhat genteel. Don't make the mistake of judging these people by your standards. As the old saying goes. "The Past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. "

[sprogglin]

just a side issue, but the English Civil War was the most bloody war for the UK, with the highest percentage of population dying, far higher than either World War.