A revolutionary army will be a democratic organisation as the officers would be appointed by consensual agreement among the men who had to follow them. This appointment might be by formal election or general agreement.If they appoint an incompetent then the revolution is lost and possibly even forgotten in history.
An ancestor of mine, a conscript in the Army of Parliament in 1643, found himself extracted from a garrison in Northamptonshire and placed in the New Model Army to boost the infantry numbers for the pending battle against Charles Stuart that was eventually fought at Naseby. His only consent was to trail his pike under Skippon whom he had followed into combat before. Thanks to Cromwell's second charge he walked alive off the battlefield but then, until he became a Quaker in 1655, lived in fear of arrest by Cromwell's government for his previous political associations with the Wellingborough Diggers. The entire episode of Naseby and what happened next is a remarkable statement of revolution, hope and aspiration. The victors failed at the democracy they might have achieved as the collective imagination was just not there. A complicated picture of both consent, agreement and military discipline. My ancestor, Ralfe was a remarkable man with an extraordinary life.
