Question 6

In this essay I will discuss why parliament won the English civil war, I will discuss factors
like a larger army and a better commander then summarise it all in a conclusion where I will
disclose my own thoughts.

Was Charles just a bad leader?

So, Charles the first could have been the cause for his own defeat because he made bad
choices when in battles (i.e. like at the end of the battle of Naseby he thought he could go and
fight again but had to be pulled back by one of his lords because he would have been killed.
From the quote 'Will you go upon your death, my lord?') Also, he was greedy and I think
cruel as shown in the way he raised taxes to only give money to himself.

Was it because parliament had a larger and better army?

In the battle of Edgehill both sides had about 14000 troops this shows not much of a
difference in army size though this all changes in the battle of Naseby where the royalists had
9000 men and the parliamentarians had 13500 men heavily outnumbering them this could
have been because of the battle of Edgehill or because Cromwell was better at recruiting
troops. Also, Cromwell ran the new model army which would have been a lot stronger and
probably better than Charles’s. (The new model army was better than Charles’s because it
recruited people based on strength and how good they were compared to other army’s which
recruited based of social status.)

Was it because the people sided with the parliamentarians?

This is a short point but an important one because I assume that the British public would have
been very angry after years of taxes going up and adding the ship tax I would think people
would be more willing to fight for Cromwell than to fight with Charles because of this.