These wise words, which, by the way, were said to no less a man than John Hampden himself, form a key to all the battles of the Civil War. No sooner did Oliver come on to the field as a plain captain of yeomanry horse than his keen, if untaught, eye instantly recognised the one great virtue and strength of the Royalist party. They had an Idea, a devotion, a principle for the sake of which men were ready to sell their lands, melt their plate, beggar their families, and lose their own lives, and men so equipped could only be successfully met and withstood by men who, as he himself put it in that quaintly eloquent phraseology of his, “made some conscience of what they did,” and thereupon he set himself to find such men and make soldiers of them. How well he succeeded the following extract from a contemporary news-letter written some ten months after the outbreak of war will sufficiently tell: “As for Colonel Cromwell”--promotion, it will be seen, was somewhat rapid in those stormy days--“he hath two thousand brave men, well disciplined. No man swears but he pays his twelve pence. If he be drunk he is set in the stocks, or worse. If one calls the other Roundhead he is cashiered; insomuch that the countries where they come leap for joy of them and come in and join with them. How happy it were if all the forces were thus disciplined!” On the field of Marston Moor, Prince Rupert nicknamed Cromwell “Old Ironsides,” and from that day to this the most invincible troops that ever marched to battle have been named after him. Years afterwards, when his work and theirs was done, their leader was able to say of them: “From that day forward they were never beaten and wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat continually.” This is literally true. Whether in skirmish or battle, at home or abroad, whether pitted against the disorderly chivalry of the Loyalists or the rigid discipline of the finest Continental troops; whether storming a breach or bearing the brunt of a half-lost battle, these psalm-singing, hard-hitting Crusaders of the new Church Militant not only were never beaten, but never once failed to hurl the enemy back in confusion and disaster. In them, in short, that stubborn English valour which has since pushed its way all over the world was first _disciplined_. They formed the first model ever seen of an English regiment, a combination of many units of strength and valour moving and fighting as one, and the fact that “Old Ironsides” was the first man thus to add discipline to valour is in itself no small portion of his title to fame as an Empire-Maker.