The Cavalry Colonel

This chapter takes a look at Oliver Cromwell's attempts to make a command, and a military following, and reputation, from scratch. It traces Cromwell's commission as the colonel of a horse regiment in the new regular Eastern Association defence force to his establishment as the force's leading horse commander. He had also raised a very large, effective, and loyal regiment and extended a more general, if as yet informal and ad hoc, authority over the other horse units in Manchester's new army. He had begun to build himself a network of clients in that army and in the region. He had also acquired considerable and consistent acclaim in the parliamentarian press. However, none of this had made him, as yet, more significant than many other local parliamentarian leaders or given him any national weight as a soldier.