ABSTRACT
Parliament won the Great Civil War when it did for two reasons: first, the Committee of Both Kingdoms’ success in gathering together its scattered brigades in north Buckinghamshire, thus giving Sir Thomas Fairfax’s New Model Army a distinct numerical advantage over the king’s army; and, second, the performance at Naseby of the cavalry motivated and trained by Oliver Cromwell. Charles lost the war because of strategic errors and a battle plan predicated on the idea that the New Model was indeed the ‘New Noddle’. 1 Thus it was operational factors that made the difference between the two sides. In the summer of 1645, the disparity in resources between them was not such that the allies were bound to have won. Indeed, if the Royalists had behaved with greater circumspection in the days immediately before the battle, the war could have continued for much longer, particularly if widening divisions within the allied ranks had coincided with worsening administrative problems.
