re: #258 HappyWarrior

Cromwell was a brutal fanatic. The reason he does still get some praise from historians is because, to use David Weber’s words “a fanatic, in his own twisted way, is also an honest man.” Oliver Cromwell did what he did out of conviction, not simply to enrich himself. And that gave him incredible strength.

Cromwell also was the cause of the lasting fear of a large standing army in the Anglosphere nations, as well as their collective dislike of using the military for internal matters. The “This Must Not Happen Again!” reaction to Cromwell’s New Model Army and its atrocities has never truly died, remaining in the civic culture of the United Kingdom and her daughter countries even to this very day.