THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

name “Ironsides” to Cromwell’s troops. As the civil war
dragged on, Cromwell became more and more prominent.
He even led a movement for remaking the parliamentary
army as a whole on the model of his own Ironsides. He
again won an important and decisive victory over the
king’s forces at Naseby in June 1645. King Charles, left
almost defenseless, gave himself up early in the following
year to the Scots. Because Charles was a Scot, he thought
he could come to some agreement with them. The Scots,
however, turned Charles over to the English.
England was now ruled by the army, its great leader,
and the part of the Parliament of 1640 that was loyal to
the Puritan ideals. This remnant, the “sitting” members of
Parliament, was jokingly called the “Rump.” Both the
Rump and the army came to feel that Charles was so
untrustworthy and autocratic that he must be eliminated.
Cromwell was finally won over to this belief, and the king
was tried and beheaded in 1649. The Rump thereupon
proclaimed the whole of the British Isles a republic under
the name of the Commonwealth. The Scots, however, now
wanted Stuart rule and crowned Charles II, the young son
of Charles I. The Irish, who were largely Roman Catholic,
also resisted Parliament’s authority.
Cromwell served as the first chairman of the Council
of State, Parliament’s executive body. During the first
three years following Charles I’s execution, however, he
was chiefly absorbed in campaigns against the Royalists
in Ireland and Scotland. He also had to suppress a
mutiny—inspired by a group known as Levellers, an
extremist Puritan party said to be aiming at a “levelling”
between rich and poor—in the Commonwealth army.
As commander in chief and lord lieutenant, he waged a
ruthless campaign against the Irish. In June 1650 Cromwell
led an army into Scotland, where Charles II had been