Does Oliver Cromwell get a bad rap?

I’ve been taking a break from ancient history to read The Logic of Violence in Civil War, by Stathis Kalyvas, which was recommended to me by my sensei on such subjects, Abu Muqawama. But it is such heavy academic going that I’m taking a break from it to read another book about civil war, Antonia Fraser’s massive warts-and-all biography of Oliver Cromwell.

I’m reading about Cromwell for two reasons. First, I wonder about the extent to which the American Civil War was to a large extent an amplified, industrialized echo of the English conflict two centuries earlier, with England’s eastern Puritan vs. western Cavalier split replaced by our own New England Puritan vs. Virginia Cavalier divide. Second, I’ve been told that the spiritual roots of the U.S. Army are in Cromwell’s professionalized, well-disciplined New Model Army. And until the prices of the two best studies of that force come down, I’m stuck with my second-hand copy of Lady Antonia’s book.

As she tells it, Cromwell has gotten a bad rap. As a commander, he cared more about military effectiveness than ideological purity. Generally, while he was no party animal, he seems somewhat less rigid that the Cromwell I learned about in school. (No, I haven’t yet gotten to his invasion of Ireland.) And the average Roundhead seems to have dressed somewhat more colorfully than today’s black-clad hip New Yorker.

NB: Lady Antonia wrote this book before she nearly got blown up by the IRA, and also before she married Harold Pinter. She has led an interesting life.