Cromwell's army supplied a naval doctrine of decision

Corbett challenges the idea that concentration on the enemy's main force was invented by Frederick or Napoleon or imported into Britain. He locates the method in the English Civil War, where Cromwell and the New Model Army made it a defining feature of their campaigning. Soldier-admirals then carried the same approach into war against the Dutch. Napoleon, in turn, owed much of his strategy to Cromwell. This lineage explains how army practice became naval doctrine before that translation encountered the special limits of maritime war.