{"id":62381,"date":"2023-07-03T01:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-07-03T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=62381"},"modified":"2023-07-02T10:12:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T14:12:48","slug":"qotd-the-key-weakness-of-the-royal-cause-in-the-english-civil-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/07\/03\/qotd-the-key-weakness-of-the-royal-cause-in-the-english-civil-war\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The key weakness of the royal cause in the English Civil War"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><em>Behemoth<\/em> is Hobbes&#8217;s account of the outbreak of the Civil Wars, and it&#8217;s a perfect illustration of why people listened to Thomas Hobbes in the first place. Hobbes is a penetrating observer of human nature. He has a rare ability to boil things down to their essence, and to express that essence memorably:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>[T]he power of the mighty hath no foundation, but in the opinion and belief of the people.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A king whose knights won&#8217;t ride out to battle on his behalf is just a weirdo in funny clothes. Charles I lost for a lot of reasons, but far from the least of them was that his &#8220;foundation&#8221; was badly cracked. However attached one might be to the notion of monarchy in the abstract, it \u2013 monarchy \u2013 is always intimately connected to the personality of the monarch &#8230; and Charles I was a real piece of work, even by the world-class standards of Renaissance princes. Parliament was outgunned, often outmanned, and suffered from what should&#8217;ve been a critical shortage of experienced leadership. But all those massive advantages were offset by the fact that the Royalist forces were fighting for Charles I, personally.<\/p>\n<p>(This is not the place for a long discussion of the course of the English Civil Wars \u2013 and I&#8217;m not qualified to give you one in any case \u2013 but a quick look at the top commanders of the opposing sides will illustrate the point. Prince Rupert was arguably the equal, <em>mano-a-mano<\/em>, of any Parliamentary general, up to and including Cromwell. But he was still a Prince, and carried on like one (like a <em>young<\/em> one, to boot) &#8230; and even if he weren&#8217;t, he was still running the show on behalf of his uncle. Cromwell, on the other hand, inspired fanatic loyalty, not least because he embodied a cause that was much higher than himself).<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"https:\/\/foundingquestions.wordpress.com\/2020\/12\/12\/hobbes-iii\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Hobbes (III)&#8221;, <em>Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2020-12-12.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Behemoth is Hobbes&#8217;s account of the outbreak of the Civil Wars, and it&#8217;s a perfect illustration of why people listened to Thomas Hobbes in the first place. Hobbes is a penetrating observer of human nature. He has a rare ability to boil things down to their essence, and to express that essence memorably: [T]he power [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,7,5,41],"tags":[650,570,572,396,1414,1462,1405],"class_list":["post-62381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-civilwar","tag-england","tag-leadership","tag-monarchy","tag-olivercromwell","tag-severian","tag-thomashobbes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ge9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62381"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83283,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62381\/revisions\/83283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}