‘The righteous judgement of God’: Cromwell

During the summer of 1647 the green fields of Ireland were once more drenched red with blood. At least 3,000 Irishmen were cut down at Dungan’s Hill in Co Meath and another 4,000 died at Knockanuss Hill in Co Cork. And these were only two battles out of an endless series of armed engagements.

By the end of 1648 the Catholic Confederation of Kilkenny had joined with Presbyterian Scots in Ulster and Royalists, both English and Irish. These men, bitter enemies until recently, now united behind their King. But in England the cause of Charles I was lost. Soon he was on trial for his life and on 30th January 1649 the King was executed.

Parliament, after setting up the Commonwealth in May, could now concentrate resources on crushing opposition across the Irish Sea. Oliver Cromwell, Parliament’s greatest general, relished his appointment as Commander-in-Chief and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He had at his disposal a war chest of £100,000, a great train of artillery and 12,000 ‘Ironsides’ – seasoned veterans of many victories.

As the invading army prepared to board more than a hundred vessels at Milford Haven, Irish Royalists made a desperate attempt to seize Dublin to deny Cromwell a safe landing. They got to within less than a mile from the city centre but they were driven back in what is now Baggot Street and routed at Rathfarnham.

Cromwell faced no opposition when he stepped ashore from his frigate on 15th August 1649. From the outset he made it clear that he intended to avenge the 1641 massacre of Protestants in Ulster:

'You, unprovoked, put the English to the most unheard of and most barbarous massacre without respect of sex or age, that ever the sun beheld, and at a time when Ireland was in perfect peace.'

He opened his campaign by besieging the walled port of Drogheda. For an entire week Cromwell positioned his cannon with infinite care. Then, on three sides, the guns battered the walls, some firing cannon balls weighing 64 pounds each. After almost two days the breaches in the walls were judged large enough for an assault. Cromwell reported that he drove most of the garrison

'into the Mill-mount, a place very strong and of difficult access… the governor, Sir Arthur Aston, and divers considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them were ordered by me to put all to the sword; and, indeed, being in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that there were in arms in the town.'

Cromwell’s own estimate was that some 2,000 were put to the sword. Governor Aston was clubbed to death with his own wooden leg. Only 64 parliamentary troops had fallen in the fighting. The killing didn’t stop there. A hundred took refuge in the tower of St Peter’s: Cromwell ordered the church to be set on fire and all inside were burned to death. All priests and friars found in the town were killed – or as Cromwell put it, their ‘heads were knocked promiscuously together’. With Cromwell at Drogheda was Lieutenant-General Edmund Ludlow: he observed:

'The slaughter was continued all that day and the next, which extraordinary severity, I presume, was used to discourage others from making opposition. And truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood.'

For Cromwell the slaughter was more than this – it was God’s revenge for the Ulster massacres of 1641:

'I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.'

Cromwell sent Robert Venables to the north. The Royalist Colonel Mark Trevor inflicted severe losses with a cavalry attack at night outside Lisburn, but these Ironsides were not to be deflected. Soon only Charlemont, Enniskillen and Coleraine remained in Royalist hands.

The Lord Lieutenant himself then forged his way southwards, down the coast to the port of Wexford. Cromwell lost only about twenty men taking the town but another massacre followed – the total number of soldiers and townspeople slain was not far short of 2,000. Next he besieged the walled town of New Ross at the junction of the Barrow and Nore Rivers. After enduring two days of bombardment, the people of the town sued for terms. One of their requests was for freedom of worship. Cromwell gave this famous reply:

'For what you mention concerning liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of.'

Cromwell’s subjugation of Ireland would take more than another two blood-soaked years.