Third English Civil War - English Militia

English Militia

About this time there occurred in England two events which had a most important bearing on the campaign. The first was the detection of a widespread Royalist-Presbyterian conspiracy, how widespread no one knew, for those of its promoters who were captured and executed certainly formed but a small fraction of the whole number. Major-General Harrison was ordered to Lancashire in April to watch the north Welsh, earl of Derby on the Isle of Man and Border Royalists, and military precautions were taken in various parts of England. The second was the revival of the militia. Since 1644 there had been no general employment of local forces, the quarrel having fallen into the hands of the regular armies by force of circumstances. The New Model, though a national army, resembled Wellington's British Peninsular army more than the soldiers of the levée en masse of the French Revolution and the American Civil War. It was now engaged in prosecuting a war of aggression against the hereditary foe over the border strictly the task of a professional army with a national basis. The militia was indeed raw and untrained. Some of the Essex men "fell flat on their faces on the sound of a cannon." In the north of England Harrison complained to Cromwell of the "badness" of his men, and the lord general sympathized, having "had much such stuff" sent him to make good the losses in trained men. Even he for a moment lost touch with the spirit of the people. His recruits were unwilling drafts for foreign service, but in England the new levies were trusted to defend their homes, and the militia was soon triumphantly to justify its existence on the day of Worcester.