Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/31

CIVIL WARS Macdowell, just before the battle of Bull Run, asked for a longer time to discipline his men before attacking the Confederates, he was answered, "You are green, but they are green too." In these masses of volunteers, both in England and America, discipline was at first absolutely lacking. "Out of my seven regiments," wrote Sherman in August 1861, "three are in a state of mutiny, and yesterday I had my regulars all ready with shotted guns to fire on our own troops." In the same way Cromwell complained to the Suffolk committee that the horse it had raised "are so mutinous that I may justly fear they would cut my throat, were it not that I have honest troops to master them." Cromwell's great achievement was that he solved the difficulty of converting raw volunteers into drilled and disciplined soldiers with more success than any other general of his time.

At the beginning of the war the Parliamentary cavalry was overmatched by the Royalist. Cromwell attributed this inferiority 23