SYNOPTICAL CHARTS. 
475 
he may have . . . cautiously avoided all study of the previous ex¬ 
periences of others. During those years before the meeting of the 
Long Parliament, which Cromwell spent quietly on his farm, all Europe 
was ringing with the exploits of one of the most brilliant of all leaders 
of war Some of the best accounts of his mode of fighting, and of his 
battles which we even now possess, had been published in England. 
Five hundred Englishmen, almost all of them naturally of Cromwell’s 
religious party, many of them Cromwell’s acquaintances at least, had 
served in the armies of the great “ Lion of the North.” 
It may have been the case, of course, that just at the moment when 
everything was looking in England as if only the sword would decide 
the issue, Cromwell carefully abstained from interesting himself in the 
story of those wars of Gustavus Adolphus, of Wallenstein, and of 
Tilly, with which everyone else was absorbed. 
Neither his letters, nor his speeches, nor his conduct of battles look 
to me as if that were true. I find him at the very first entrance into 
the war acting on principles which past experience had established, 
following closely upon just that stage which the art of war had reached 
under Gustavus. It is certainly more than likely that Cromwell’s 
ideas on the employment of cavalry were derived from a study of the 
tactics of Gustavus.” 
Anyhow, Cromwell’s use of cavalry was by far the most striking 
military feature of the Civil War. 
It is in recognition of the supreme position attained by Cromwell’s 
“ Ironsides ” and Light Cavalry, that a band of colour showing the 
predominance of cavalry extends over the latter half of the seventeenth 
century. The supremacy of cavalry was not, however, destined to 
last long. In Colonel Hime’s words: “ The introduction of the 
bayonet marks the end of mediaeval and the beginning of modern war. 
Possessing the defensive properties of the pike, it drove this weapon 
from the field ; turned the pike-men into musketeers; increased the 
volume of fire ; and gave rise to new formations of which those now in 
use are only developments. Tactics were revolutionised by a dagger 
some twelve inches long, attached to the muzzle of the musket.”— 
C Stray Military Papers,” page 23). 
Before the pike was definitely driven from the field by the socket 
bayonet, which doubled the volume of infantry fire by dispensing with 
the use of pikemen,—each musketeer being now provided with a ser¬ 
viceable weapon against cavalry at close quarters, in the shape of his 
fixed bayonet—several solutions of the problem of infantry efficiency 
had been proposed. Of these the most promising had been the dag¬ 
ger or plug bayonet. The obvious disadvantages of this weapon soon 
however made themselves felt. 
“ The defeat of the Royal troops at Killiecrankie in 1689 was un¬ 
doubtedly to some extent due to the defects of a bayonet which 
screwed into the muzzle of the musket. ‘ The Highlanders are of 
such quick motion ’ says the defeated General ‘ that if a battalion keep 
up his fire till they be near to make sure of them, they are upon it be¬ 
fore our men can come to the second defence, which is the bayonet in 
the musle of the musket’ ” 
