The lists of the two opposing armies of 1642 are still extant: the King's, of fourteen regiments of foot and eighteen troops of horse, and the Parliament's, of eighteen regiments of foot, seventy-five troops of horse, and five troops of dragoons; but it would be unprofitable to linger over them, for except on paper they were not armies at all. Two names however must be noticed. The first is that of the commander of the royal horse, Prince Rupert, a son of the Winter-King. He had now been domiciled in England for seven years, in the course of which he had found time to serve the Dutch, as we have seen, at the siege of Breda in 1639, and the Swedes in the following year, commanding with the latter a regiment of horse in more than one dashing engagement. He was now three-and-twenty, not an unripe age for a General in those days, as Condé was presently to prove at Rocroi. The second name is that of the Captain of the Sixty-Seventh troop of the Parliamentary horse, Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman of Huntingdon, not inconspicuous as a member of Parliament but unknown to military fame. He was already forty-three years of age, and so far was little familiar with the profession of arms.[160] On the 23rd of October these two men met at Edgehill, the first important action of the war, on which I shall not dwell further than to notice the part that they played therein. Rupert, knowing the deficiency of fire-arms in the royal cavalry, before the battle gave his horsemen orders to keep their ranks and to attack sword in hand, not attempting to use their pistols till they had actually broken into the enemy's squadrons. Here was an improvement on the Swedish system, a step nearer to shock-action, which was crowned by complete success. Oliver Cromwell having seen the havoc wrought by the Royalist cavalry, sought and found after the battle the cause of the inferiority of the Parliament's. "Your troops," he said to John Hampden, "are most of them old decayed serving-men and tapsters: their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. Do you think the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen who have courage, honour, and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or you will be beaten still." Hampden heard and shook his head; he was a wise and worthy person, but he had probably an idea that no men except such as those which had been swept into the ranks by the King and the King's father could possibly be induced to become soldiers. So he said that it was a good notion but impracticable. Captain Cromwell set to work to show that it was not impracticable, and began to raise men who, in his own words, made some conscience of what they did, and to teach them discipline. [Sidenote: December.]