Against the wild, impetuous Rupert the primitive armies of the Parliament were powerless. From the first engagement Cromwell perceived that such high-mettled dare-devils could be beaten only by men who took their profession seriously, who made some conscience of what they did, who drew no distinction between moral and military virtues, who believed that a bad man could not be a good soldier, nor a bad soldier a good man, who saw in cowardice a moral failing and in vice a military crime. Cromwell's system is generally summed up in the word fanaticism; but this is less than half of the truth. The employment of the phrase, moral force, in relation to the operations of war, is familiar enough in our language; but the French term _morale_ is now pressed into the service to signify that indefinable consciousness of superiority which is the chief element of strength in an army. Such narrowing of old broad terms is in a high degree misleading. It should never be forgotten that military discipline rests at bottom on the broadest and deepest of moral foundations; its ideal is the organised abnegation of self. Simple fanaticism is in its nature undisciplined; it is strong because it assumes its superiority, it is weak because it is content with the assumption; only when bound under a yoke such as that of a Zizka or of a Cromwell is it irresistible. Cromwell's great work was the same as Zizka's, to subject the fanaticism that he saw around him to discipline. He did not go out of his way to find fanatics. "Sir," he once wrote, "the State in choosing men for its service takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies." In forming his original regiment of horse he undoubtedly selected men of good character, just as any colonel would endeavour to do to-day. But Fairfax's was by no means an army of saints. One regiment of the New Model mutinied when its colonel opened his command with a sermon, and the Parliament with great good sense prohibited by Ordinance the preaching of laymen in the Army. It is time to have done with all misconceptions as to the work that Cromwell did for the military service of England, for it is summed up in the one word discipline. It was the work not of a preacher but of a soldier.