English Civil War

The English Civil War began on Aug. 22, 1642, when the Royalist forces under Charles I raised the King's standard at Nottingham.

City streets were barricaded during the early weeks of the Civil War. Later, the war was mainly fought in country areas.

By December 1643, Charles I and his supporters controlled Northern and West­ern England and Wales. His armies had won three major battles.

By December 1645, the Scots and the forces of Parliament—especially the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell- had taken control of most of England.

By September 1651, Cromwell had put down Royalist uprisings in Ireland and Scotland. He defeated Prince Charles at Dunbar and again at Worcester.

Officers on both sides wore armour to protect themselves and Parliamentary armies, wore much simpler uniforms.

At his trial, Charles I, shown above facing the table and mem­bers of the special court, was convicted of treason.

Civil War fighting started in Dublin. Government troops, above, outnumbered irregulars and were better equipped. They drove the Irregulars from Dublin in about 10 days.

City streets were barricaded during the early weeks of the Civil War. Later, the war was mainly fought in country areas.

The Four Courts building was held by the Irregulars before the Irish Civil War started. It was damaged early in the fighting.

English Civil War

Civil War, English, was fought between the forces of King Charles I and those of the English Parliament. The War took place in two parts. The first part lasted from 1642 to 1646, the second from April to November, 1648.

It led to the execution of Charles i in 1649 and the defeat and exile of his son, later Charles II, in 1651.

Causes of the Civil War

Before the Civil War, the English monarch ran the na­tional government with the aid of ministers. Parliament took a less important part in state affairs than it does now. The first Stuart king, James I, reigned from 1603 to 1625. He wanted to rule as an absolute monarch. But Parliament did not share his views. His son, Charles I, called three Parliaments between 1625 and 1628, and had trou­ble with each. After dissolving (ending) the third in 1629, he ruled without Parliament at all until 1640.

Economic causes. Inflation forced up prices in all parts of Europe between 1530 and 1640. It drastically re­duced the value of the monarch's income. James I spent money lavishly, but Parliament refused to give him more. He responded by levying new import duties.

In 1625, Parliament refused to grant Charles I tonnage and poundage (the customs duties that normally pro­vided much of the monarch's income). Charles forced property owners to lend him money and imprisoned those who refused. In 1628, Parliament passed the Peti­tion of Right, forbidding the King to raise any taxes with­out its consent. Charles accepted the Petition, but in­sisted that it did not apply to customs duties. In the 1630s, he evaded the Petition by collecting ship money (see Ship money).

Religious causes. For many years, a radical group within the Church of England, the Puritans, sought to do away with bishops and revise the Prayer Book. James I resisted the Puritans. Charles fought against them, work­ing with a reactionary group of churchmen led by Wil­liam Laud. He made Laud Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. The Puritans accused Charles and Laud of leaning towards Roman Catholicism. Charles's wife, Henrietta Maria, was unpopular because she was Catholic and be­cause she was the sister of Louis XIII of France. Laud was also unpopular because he encouraged Charles's belief in the divine right of kings (the idea that kings were ap­pointed by God and ruled on God's behalf).

War with the Scots. In 1638, the Scots rebelled against Charles when he tried to impose the English Prayer Book on their Presbyterian Church. Charles mounted an expensive campaign against the Scots in 1639, but it failed. His most able minister, the Earl of Strafford, advised him to summon a Parliament to raise money for another campaign in Scotland. The Short Par­liament met in April 1640, but refused to vote further taxes until the King dealt with its complaints. Strafford advised Charles to dissolve it after only three weeks. The Scots then invaded northern England and forced Charles to buy a truce. To do so, Charles had to recall Parliament

The first session of the Long Parliament lasted from November 1640 to September 1641. Led by John Pym, it passed laws making ship money illegal and abolishing the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. It im­peached Strafford, and he was executed in 1641. The session also forced Charles to agree to call Parliament every three years, with the further provision that he could not dissolve it without its own consent

The final crisis began with the outbreak of a rebel­lion of Roman Catholics in Ireland in November 1641. Charles wanted to raise a new army to reconquer Ire­land, but Parliament did not trust him to command it In­stead, Parliament passed the Grand Remonstrance, at­tacking the King's policies for the past 10 years, calling for radical reform of the Church and demanding the right to control the appointment of ministers. In January 1642, Charles ordered the impeachment of five mem­bers of Parliament, including John Pym and John Hampden. When Parliament refused to surrender the five, Charles invaded the Commons chamber in person—a breach of parliamentary privilege. The five had already left to take shelter in the City of London.

Surrounded by enemies in London, Charles left the capital to seek support in the provinces. In March, he re­fused to give up control of the army. In June, Parliament began raising its own army. It also sent Charles Nine­teen Propositions, a document that amounted to terms for his surrender.

Charles raised his standard at Nottingham in August The first clash had already taken place at Manchester in July. By September, fighting had broken out between Royalists— supporters of the King—and supporters of Parliament in all parts of the country.

Cavaliers and Roundheads

The word Cavalier meant a chevalier (horseman). It shows that the Royalists were at first superior in cavalry. The term Roundhead originally referred to the Parlia­mentary infantryman, with his hair cut short to fit his casque (steel helmet). By the end of the English Civil War, the armies of Parliament were superior in cavalry and infantry.

Many people imagine that the Cavaliers were all merry, dashing figures with long, flowing hair and luxu­rious clothes. They also think that the Roundheads were stern, pious, pleasure-hating people with close-cropped hair and dark, unadorned uniforms. A few individuals of each type certainly existed, but only as a minority on ei­ther side.

The two sides were not based on differences in class. Parliament could call on as many nobles and gentry as could the King. Many families included supporters of both sides.

Parliament's control of London and most of the other important towns gave it a distinct advantage. It raised war funds through taxation. The King had to rely on vol­untary contributions. But Parliament won because it able to finance a professional army that could fight any­where; any time.

The first phase, 1642-1646

The Parliamentary army assembled at Northampton in September 1642, under the Earl of Essex. Leaving Not­tingham, Charles marched through Chester and Shrews­bury, recruiting an army roughly equal to Essex's. The two armies clashed at Edgehill, in Warwickshire, on Oc­tober 23. The King's nephew, Prince Rupert, led the cav­alry brilliantly, and the King won. But his attack on Lon­don in November failed when it reached Tumham Green. Charles pulled back to Oxford.

In 1643, the Parliamentary army under Essex spent most of the summer trying to advance on Oxford. In the north, a Royalist army under the Earl of Newcastle smashed a Parliamentary army under Ferdinando and Thomas Fairfax at Adwalton Moor, near Leeds (June 30). Then, in the west, a Royalist army under Sir Ralph Hop- ton defeated Sir William Waller at Roundway Down, in Somerset (July 13).

Leaders in Parliament feared that Hopton and New­castle would join forces with Charles and attack London. They decided to turn to the Scots for help, signing the Solemn League and Covenant in September. The docu­ment was a league (treaty) against the King and a cove­nant (promise) of Church reform. The Scots crossed the border in January 1644.

The Royalist armies never joined forces. The Earl of Newcastle's army was blocked by Parliament's East An­glian forces, called the Eastern Association, commanded by the Earl of Manchester. Flopton's army captured Bris­tol, but could do no more. Charles besieged Gloucester for a time and then lost the first Battle of Newbury (Sept 20,1643).

In 1644, Royalist forces defeated Waller at Cropredy Bridge, near Banbury, in Oxfordshire (June 29). But, in the north, the Scots drove the Royalists under the Earl of Newcastle into York. Parliamentary forces under the Fairfaxes and the Eastern Association army, commanded by Oliver Cromwell, joined the siege. Charles ordered Prince Rupert to relieve York. On July 2, though outnum­bered 3 to 2, the Royalists fought the Parliamentarians and Scots on Marston Moor. They lost the bloodiest bat­tle of the war mainly because Cromwell defeated the Royalist cavalry under Lord Goring.

The Earl of Essex led a Parliamentary army into Corn­wall, but was trapped at Lostwithiel. He escaped by boat, leaving most of his army to surrender. The Earl of Manchester marched south, but was outmanoeuvred by a much smaller Royalist army. Charles won the second Battle of Newbury (October 27).

Montrose. The chronic bad feeling between the Scots and the English led to endless disputes. The Scots moved no farther south than Newark. Then they had to send a large part of their army back north to deal with the Marquess of Montrose. He persuaded the Highland clans to rebel against the Scottish government in the King's name in September 1644. He then conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign, occupying Glasgow in Au­gust 1645. But he was defeated at Philiphaugh (Sept 13, 1645). His army broke up and he fled abroad.

The New Model Army. In the winter of 1644 to 1645, Cromwell led a fierce campaign to purge the high com­mand. Parliament passed the Self-Denying Ordinance, which required all members of both Houses to resign their commissions. The ordinance seemed designed to keep politics out of the military command. But Crom­well's friends in Parliament had him reappointed. They also persuaded Parliament to establish a full-time pro­fessional army, the New Model, under Sir Thomas Fair­fax, with Cromwell as general of horse.

The New Model Army was irresistible. At the Battle of Naseby, in Northamptonshire (June 14,1645), it de­stroyed the King's main field army. It then destroyed the western army under Goring at Langport, in Somerset (July 10). Rupert surrendered Bristol, and organized Roy­alist resistance collapsed. In April 1646, Charles left Ox­ford in disguise and surrendered to the Scots army at Newark (May 5). The Scots retreated with him to New­castle.

The second phase

No peace treaty was signed, because both Parliament and the Scots had always claimed that they were fight­ing to free the King from his wicked advisers, not fight­ing the King himself. They proposed constitutional safe­guards to restrict the King's choice of ministers and his control of the army.

The Scots withdrew from northern England and sur­rendered Charles to the Parliamentarians in January 1647, in return for a large sum of money. Parliament was by then having trouble controlling the New Model Arny, which objected to being demobilized without full pay and an amnesty. The army had been infiltrated by a group of extreme radicals, the Levellers. Led by John Lil- bume, the Levellers wanted to abolish the kingship and the House of Lords and to create a republican govern­ment They also wanted radical social reform.

Army officers kidnapped Charles in June, and in Au­gust, the army occupied London and expelled its chief opponents from Parliament Cromwell tried to persuade Charles to accept a compromise scheme, called the Heads of the Proposals, which made concessions to him as well as the Levellers. But in November, Charles es­caped to Carisbrooke Castle, on the Isle of Wight There he sought help from dissident Scots nobles. War broke out again in the summer of 1648, but it was speedily over. Cromwell routed the invading Scots at Preston (August 17), and the army put down Royalist risings else­where.

Many people held the King personally responsible for this second civil war. The victorious army demanded that he be punished. In December, it again occupied London, and Colonel Thomas Pride removed all MP's still favouring negotiations (Pride's Purge, December 6).

Charles stood trial before a special High Court of Jus­tice in January 1649 and was convicted of high treason against the people of England and the constitution. He was executed on Jan. 30,1649.

The Commonwealth. England became a republic, called the Commonwealth, and the monarchy and House of Lords were abolished. But no one moved to replace the Rump of the old House of Commons, which had been reduced from more than 500 to less than 150 members. The Levellers objected to the new govern­ment, but were firmly suppressed. Cromwell led the army against Ireland in 1649, finally ending the rebellion that began in 1641. His men treated the Irish with great brutality.

The Scots bitterly condemned the King's execution, pointing out that he was also King of Scotland. They rec­ognized his son as Charles II and invited him to Edin­burgh. Cromwell invaded Scotland in July 1650, and de­feated the Scots at Dunbar, near Edinburgh (September 3). Montrose returned to support the young Charles, but he was defeated and executed. In the next summer, Charles II himself led the last Scots invasion of England. Cromwell defeated him at Worcester (Sept 3,1651). After six weeks in hiding, the King escaped to France. Scotland came under military rule, and the English Civil War ended.

The Protectorate. For all its military success, the Commonwealth could not secure the loyalty or respect of the English people. In 1653, Cromwell staged a military coup, dissolved the Rump Parliament, and ruled as Lord Protector. His son Richard succeeded him in 1658, but fell in another coup. The leaders of this revolt quar­relled among themselves.

Finally, in January 1660, George Monk restored order. He recalled the Rump Parliament, but forced it to take back the MPs excluded in 1648. The Long Parliament promptly dissolved itself, calling for a general election in April. The new Parliament at once recalled Charles II from exile.

Results of the war

The Restoration seemed to turn the clock back to 1641. Parliament restored the Church of England and es­tablished complete religious uniformity by statute. Charles II controlled the army and appointed ministers without consulting Parliament at all. The divine right of kings was confirmed.

But despite the Restoration, Parliament—not the king—controlled the Church, and Parliament legalized religious dissent in 1689. Parliament also kept its control of taxation, won in 1641. The power and prestige of the Crown had so declined that, in 1688, Parliament was able to remove one king, James II, and substitute an­other, William III. The Crown's power was further lim­ited by the Act of Settlement of 1701. This brought the Hanoverian dynasty to rule Britain and helped in the evolution of the present constitution. Related articles: See History of United Kingdom, and the following articles: Charles (I); Laud, William; Clarendon, Earl of; Pym, John; Cromwell, Oliver; Strafford, Earl of; and James (I)

Irish Civil War 

Civil War, Irish,was fought between supporters and opponents of the Anglo-Irish treaty of December 1921. The war lasted from June 1922 until May 1923. Protreaty government fortes won the war, supported by a major­ity of the Irish people. Their victory ensured the survival of parliamentary democracy, and removed the threat of a military dictatorship favoured by some of the antitreaty forces. The Civil War left bitter memories, which have influenced Irish party politics ever since.

Causes of the war

In July 1921, a truce was arranged that ended more than two years of bitter warfare between British govern­ment forces and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The British government had been ruling Ireland, and the IRA was a volunteer guerrilla force dedicated to establishing an Irish Republic After the truce was declared, the Brit­ish and Irish tried to devise a form of Irish self- government agreeable to both sides.

There were three main Irish leaders at this time. Eamon de Valera was president of Sinn Fein, the parlia­mentary representatives of the Republican movement Sinn Fein had won a big majority in the general election of 1918. Arthur Griffith was vice president of Sinn Fein. Michael Collins was the IRA's most important military leader.

All three men accepted the need for compromise with the British, but they differed on the degree of com­promise that they considered acceptable. A delegation headed by Griffith and Collins signed the treaty on Dec. 6,1921, in London. De Valera chose to remain in Ireland and did not sign the treaty.

The terms of the treaty

The treaty's main terms called for British forces to withdraw from southern Ireland. The 26 southern coun­ties were constituted the Irish Free State and given the status of a dominion (self-governing country) of Britain. The parliament of the six counties of Northern Ireland was entitled to withdraw from the Irish Free State and remain part of the United Kingdom, which it immedi­ately did.

A Boundary Commission was established to deter­mine the proper border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. Most Sinn Fein representatives be­lieved that the commission would transfer so much ter­ritory to the south that the rest of Northern Ireland would not be able to survive and would have to join with the Irish Free State. Also under the treaty, Britain retained naval bases in southern Ireland, along with the right to demand further facilities in time of war.

The main cause of the Civil War was neither Ireland's partition (separation of north and south) nor Britain's naval bases. Instead, it was the oath of fidelity that all members of the new Free State parliament had to take to the King of England, who was head of the Common­wealth. The oath and the presence of a governor gen­eral as the king's representative in Ireland were evi­dence that the Free State was not the republic for which the IRA had fought.

A majority of the active IRA opposed the treaty. But DailEireann (the Sinn Fein parliament) accepted the treaty by a vote of 64 to 57 in January 1922. A provisional government was then established with Michael Collins as chairman. Collins enjoyed the support of Griffith, but de Valera assumed the political leadership of the antitreaty minority.

Collins felt that the IRA lacked the resources to con­tinue its fight and that the treaty could be used as a step­ping stone to complete freedom. But Collins was reluc­tant to take arms against his old comrades. De Valera also hoped for a political solution rather than a military one. But he was quickly pushed aside by the antitreaty IRA, under Rory O'Connor, who despised civilian rule. This group seized the Four Courts building in Dublin in April.

The outbreak of war

In the general election of June 1922, antitreaty candi­dates won only 30 per cent of the seats. The Civil War began shortly after this election. The precise origins of the outbreak of hostilities are still uncertain. Collins came under British pressure to clear the Four Courts after the assassination of Field Marshal Sir Flenry Wilson by the IRA in London on June 22. Wilson was closely as­sociated with Ulster Unionists (those who wished to keep strong ties with the government of the UK) who were then engaged in bitter conflict with nationalists (those who desired reunion with southern Ireland) in Northern Ireland. Ironically, it may have been Collins himself who ordered the assassination. After the kidnap­ping of one of his senior officers on June 27, Collins im­mediately ordered an attack on the Four Courts.

Collins captured the Four Courts when Rory O' Con­nor surrendered after three days of fighting. The anti­treaty forces, called the Irregulars, were driven from Dublin in another week. During the next month, the main provincial cities of Limerick, Waterford, and Cork were also captured by government troops. By mid- August, the Irregular forces had retreated into the small towns and the countryside, where they resorted to

The Four Courts building was held by the Irregulars before the Irish Gvil War started. It was damaged early in the fighting.

guerrilla warfare. It was only a matter of time until they were crushed by the much bigger and better-equipped government army of more than 50,000 men.

On Aug. 12,1922, Griffith died suddenly. Collins was killed in an ambush on August 22.

Collins had continued to hope for conciliation until his death. His successor as chairman of the provisional government, William Cosgrave, had little sympathy for his opponents. Cosgrave's government resorted to a policy of executing prisoners after their trial by military court The most prominent victim of this policy was Rob­ert Erskine Childers, publicity director for the antitreaty forces. Childers was shot in November 1922. Four senior antitreaty prisoners, including Rory O'Connor, were summarily executed on December 8 in reprisal for the assassination the previous day of a protreaty Member of Parliament. Historians disagree on the effects of the pol­icy that led to the execution of 77 prisoners during the war. Some historians believe that the executions re­inforced the Irregulars' will to resist Others think that only the fear of reprisal executions prevented more widespread assassination of civilians.

The Irregulars were gradually ground down by gov­ernment forces in an extended series of small-scale but bitter operations. There were atrocities on both sides.

De Valera recognized the futility of the continuing strug­gle. But he exerted no influence over the antitreaty mili­tary leaders, many of whom despised him as a mere pol­itician. Only when Liam Lynch, the main antitreaty commander, was killed in April 1923 did de Valera re­cover some of his influence over the military element On April 27,1923, the Irregulars announced the suspen­sion of the conflict There was no formal surrender by the Irregulars, only a dumping of arms to await more fa­vourable circumstances.

Results of the war

The war's immediate result was the imprisonment of more than 10,000 Irregulars, including de Valera. Cos- grave proceeded with the historic task of state building. But his government suffered a setback in 1925 when Boundary Commission, contrary to nationalist expecta­tions, recommended virtually no change in the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. De Va­lera finally entered the Dail in 1927 and took the oath that he had earlier denounced, regarding it as an empty formula. De Valera won the 1932 general election. Over the next six years, he abolished the oath, eliminated the office of governor general from the constitution, intro­duced his own new republican constitution in 1937, and, after negotiations with Neville Chamberlain in 1938, re­covered the ports held as naval bases by the British.

The government's victory in the war prevented a mili­tary dictatorship from emerging. It allowed the state to be founded on a democratic tradition. However, in the long run, the real winner was de Valera His most dan­gerous enemies and his most dangerous friends either died or were killed during the war. This enabled him to build later on Cosgrave's achievement But the bitter­ness caused by the Civil War lasted for decades. The main division in Irish politics, between de Valera's Fianna Fail Party and Cosgrave's Fine Gael Party, was rooted in the war and still exists today.

Related articles: Childers (Robert Erskine), Griffith, Arthur; Collins, Michael; History of Ireland; Cosgrave, William Thomas; Sinn Fein; and De Valera, Eamon.

Civilization

Civilization is a way of life that arose after people began to live in cities or in societies organized as states. The word comes from the Latin word civis, which means citizen of a city.

A civilization consists of the art, customs, technology, form of government, and everything else that makes up the way of life in a society. In this respect, civilization is similar to culture. But culture refers to any way of life and includes both simple and complex life styles. The word civilization refers only to life styles that feature complex economic, governmental, and social systems. Therefore, although every human being lives within a culture, not everyone lives within a civilization. See Culture.

Throughout history, individual civilizations have arisen and collapsed, but the basic features of civiliza­tion do not disappear. Ideas and inventions spread from one civilization to another. In many cases, similar devel­opments occur independently in different civilizations.

How civilizations develop. During most of the pre­historic period, people lived in small groups and moved from place to place in search of food. They hunted, fished, and gathered wild plants. These early people had a simple social organization based on family ties.

About 9000 B.C, people in the Middle East began to cultivate cereal grasses and other plants. They also do­mesticated goats and sheep at about this time, and they later tamed cattle. In Southeast Asia, people had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C People living in what is now Mexico also learned to grow crops by about 7000 B.C..

The rise of agriculture was a major step in the devel­opment of civilization. Farmers settled in permanent vil­lages, where they could grow enough food to support a few craftworkers and priests. Periodic food shortages led to increased trade among villages. The villagers ex­changed grain, pottery, and various raw materials.

By about 3500 B.C, people in the Middle East had learned to smelt copper and make bronze tools and weapons. The demand for metal ore increased, and priests and chieftains gained greater control over trade. Gradually, villages in the Middle East grew into cities. Religious shrines and sacred places, which flourished as ceremonial sites, became the centres of economic and political power in the emerging cities.

Several civilizations developed independently in vari­ous parts of the world. The first one arose about 3500 B.C in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East Others developed in the Nile Valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in what are now Pakistan and northwestern India, the Huang He Valley in China, and the Andes Mountains of present-day Peru. These ancient civilizations grew up in widely different natural environments. The people de­veloped systems of writing and new forms of govern­ment, made advances in science and technology, and excelled in crafts and art For a description of these and other early civilizations, see History of the world.

Why civilizations rise and fall. Philosophers, histo­rians, and archaeologists have suggested many reasons for the rise and fall of civilizations. Georg W. F. Hegel, a German philosopher of the early 1800's, compared so­cieties to individuals who pass the torch of civilization from one to another. During this process, according to Hegel, civilization develops through three stages: (1) rule by one person, a dictator; (2) rule by one class of society; and (3) rule by all the people. Hegel believed the proc­ess eventually results in freedom for all people.

The German philosopher Oswald Spengler thought civilizations, like living things, are born, mature, and die. In The Decline of the West (1918-1922), he wrote that Western civilization is dying and will be replaced by a new Asian civilization.

The British historian Arnold Toynbee proposed his theory of challenge and response in A Study of History (1934-1961). Toynbee believed that civilizations arise only where the environment challenges the people, and only when the people are ready to respond to the challenge. For example, a hot, dry climate makes land unsuitable for farming and represents a challenge to people who live there. The people may respond to this challenge by building irrigation systems to improve the land. Toyn­bee suggested that civilizations collapse when the peo­ple lose their creativity.

Most archaeologists attribute the rise of civilizations to a combination of causes, including the structure of political and social life, the ways people modify their en­vironment, and changes in population. In many cases, civilizations may have appeared because local chieftains took deliberate steps to strengthen their own power. Many scientists believe that political forces and the mis­use of land and other natural resources resulted in the economic and political collapse of early civilizations. For a discussion of the history of civilization, see History of the world.