English statesman

Cromwell was the fifth son of a small country squire. He made his studies in Cambridge, then hearth of the puritanism; after studies of right to London (and its marriage with a girl of merchants which will give him eight children), Cromwell devoted itself to the exploitation of its grounds and its load of police-court magistrate, which made him contact social realities. At 28 years, he was elected appointed after having overcome a religious crisis which its faith left strengthened.

From 1629 to 1640, the king Charles I controlled England as an absolute monarch. But the attempt of the archbishop of Canterbury Laud to found the Anglicanism in Presbyterian Scotland started the Scottish revolt; Charles had to convene the Parliament to obtain subsidies necessary. Cromwell, elected official appointed of Cambridge to Short then at the Long Parliament, showed especially his determination to defend the purest Protestantism. He joined the most determined deputies to be opposed to the king and to the hierarchy Anglican.

In fact, it was a man much more at ease in the action: at the beginning of the civil war which opposed the king and the Parliament (1642), Cromwell raised to his expenses a regiment of cavalry, on which it imposed a strict military and religious discipline.

In a few years, he became a strategist of first order, knowing to make give his reserves to the convenient period and crushing the enemy overcoming thanks to the continuation of the cavalry. Thus the “iron Coasts” had a dominating influence at the time of the royal defeat of Marston Moor, on on July 2nd, 1644. As a result, Cromwell, escaping the common rule (there remained appointed), was charged to reorganize the army. He could insufflate his heat with his troops and organized “democratically” the new regiments, where the Council of the officers took a dominating place. The religious spirit animated these soldiers who struck up psalms before the attack. The crushing of the royal army with Naseby, on on June 14th, 1645, put an end to the civil war.

Charles I sold to the English by the Scot (1647), more than two years ran out before his execution. This time is explained by the contradictory currents which agitated the Parliament. Indeed, Presbyterian the, in favor ones of a strongly structured Church, supported by the Scot, were opposed to independent, in favor of freedom within Protestantism; this religious conflict doubled of a political conflict which opposed royalist and republican.

The winners had divided, and of the negotiations took place between the Parliament, frightened political options of the army, which had not been paid and which refused to separate, and the king. Cromwell, convinced of the duplicity of the king, who plotted with the Scot repented, crushed the latter, eliminated from the Parliament the partisans of the king (1648) and obtained from an extraordinary High court the death sentence of the king, who was carried out on on January 30th, 1649. The republic was then proclaimed.

Monarchy was abolished and the Parliament reduced to the Parliament tail (Rump). The Commonwealth, parliamentary republic, were established. Cromwell, member of the Council of State, took the direction of it. He had to initially face with the Irish revolt, crushed since 1649, then on the attempt at Charles II, who was supported by the Scot, beaten in Worcester in 1651.

At the same time, it eliminated the “levellers”, who dreamed of a social and levelling democracy. But Cromwell put up itself badly with the claims legalists of the middle-class men of Rump. Being pressed on the army, it dispersed the Parliament tail (1653). The Council of the officers then worked out the “instrument of government”, left constitution which instituted a military dictatorship; Cromwell, installed with the royal residence of Hampton Court, took the title of “Lord Protector of the Republic of England, Scotland and Ireland”. The convened Parliaments had only one short existence.

This military dictatorship doubled of a puritan dictatorship: strict observance of the dimanches, prohibition of the spectacles, the races, the cockfights. In the external field, the Act of navigation (1651) prepared the English maritime preponderance; alliance with France against Spain made it possible England to seize Jamaica and Dunkirk. Cromwell had to refuse, in 1657, the crown that one offered to him, by fear of the reaction of the regiments, his only support.

The Lord Protector designated his son to succeed to him, but the gasoline of its power was very personal; Richard could not be maintained: Charles II found his throne since 1660. Taxed a long time with hypocrisy, Cromwell rather seems the man of contradictions: at the same time revolutionary and preserving, fanatic monk but tolerant towards the Jews, concerned of justice but persecuting of the levellers, rigorous but combined Protestant of catholic king de France and adversary of Holland calvinist, it showed opportunism political.