At first, therefore, the former afforded far the best fighting material. They were largely--and entirely, as far as their leaders were concerned--gentlemen and men accustomed to the use of arms, but there they remained, and showed little aptitude of infusing into their natural martial ardour the stern and necessary tonic of discipline. On the other hand, the early armies of the Parliament were “hirelings whom want and idleness had reduced to enlist.” Even Hampden’s regiment, one of the best of any, was described by Cromwell as a “mere rabble of tapsters and serving-men out of place.” No one saw this more than Cromwell, and it is that instinct which makes him stand out among the leaders of the Civil War. No one more fully recognised than he that “you must get men of spirit: of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still.” The metal might be there, but it wanted tempering, and the opportunity for this the “self-denying ordinance” gave. By means of this the army was purged of all its weaker parts. As Cromwell had organised his own special regiment, so did he infuse into the rest of the force some of the stern enthusiasm that made his Ironsides “very devils”[13] in battle, fearless and fearful factors in the fight. They “prospered because they were much in prayer and reading Scripture, an exercise that till of late soldiers have used but little.” They “were constant, conscientious, sober, strict, and thus conquered much upon the vanity and looseness of the enemy. Men fought on principle as well as for pay; they were little mutinous in disputing commands, fair in their marches, to friends merciful in battle, and in success to their enemies.” Finally their commissioners were “wise, provident, active, faithful in providing ammunition, arms, recruits, of men’s clothes, and that family must needs strive that hath good stewards.” It was inured to war, therefore, by a series of campaigns in which strategical as well as tactical conditions were beginning to be foreshadowed. Its organisation was more complete and thorough than heretofore, its men were imbued with the stern religious enthusiasm which has ever rendered such armies dangerous. It knew its strength and had gauged it by its continued success; what it had had to do had been God-directed (so its leaders and rank and file thought, or professed to think), and bore the imprint of immediate divine direction. Thus it was, when the great Protector died, that the army he left was probably the most formidable body of armed men the world had ever seen.