This War Without an Enemy

This War Without an Enemy Book Description

“The English Civil Wars exercise a fascination upon both the historian and the common reader that is perennial and unique. Was the struggle in essence over religion, over law, over politics or over constitutional development? And were its causes primarily social and economic or are they to be found in the conflict of principles or the clash of personalities? Between the autumn of 1640, when the Long Parliament met, and the spring of 166o, when Charles II was restored, the King's Chief Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury were beheaded, the country divided and ravaged by two civil wars, the King himself tried and executed, the House of Lords abolished, and even the Commons them-selves, in spite of all that purging and packing could do, turned out to make room for a military dictatorship. Richard Ollard's book takes a fresh view of the unparalleled series of events that led up to Cromwell's astonishing period of ascendancy at home and abroad. He concentrates on what life was like during the war and how the impact of these national shocks was felt in family and neighborhood, in social and professional life. The portrayal of individuals is given prominence, for whatever it may or may not have been, the civil war was not faceless. It took place in the great age of English portrait painting and was followed by the flowering of English biography and memoirs, including the masterpiece that contains a matchless gallery of likenesses taken from the life: Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion. The personalities that emerge may have been polarized by their political beliefs, but even families that were divided often respected their members' choice of sides, and friendships were maintained across the gulf. As the Parliamentarian general Sir William Waller wrote to his Royalist opponent Sir Ralph Hopton, "Certainly my affections to you are so unchangeable, that hostility itself cannot violate my friendship to your person. God knows with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy'.”-Publisher.