The Commonwealth. page 3

The war in Ireland being now undertaken by Cromwell, we must take a brief retrospective glance at what had been passing there. Perhaps no country was ever so torn to pieces by different factions, religious and political. The catholics were divided amongst themselves: there were the catholics of the pale, and the old Irish catholics, part of whom followed the faction of Rinuccini, the pope's nuncio, who was at the head of the council of Kilkenny, and others, general Preston and viscount Taafe. The Irish royalists ranged themselves under the banner of Ormond, consisting chiefly of episcopalians. The approach of Cromwell warned them to suppress their various feuds and unite against the parliament. To strengthen the parliament force, Jones, the governor of Dublin, and Monk, who commanded in Ulster, made overtures to Owen Roe O'Neil, the head of the old Irish in Ulster. Ormond had arrived in Ireland, and Inchiquin and Preston, the leaders of the forces of the Irish council, which had now repudiated the pope's nuncio, joined him; but O'Neil held back, not trusting Ormond, and he sent a messenger to Charles in France, offering to treat directly with him. But Ormond ordered the earl of Castlehaven to attack O'Neil, which he did, and speedily reduced his garrisons of Maryborough and Athy. Enraged at this whilst he was offering his services to the king, O'Neil listened to the proposals of Monk, who was himself hard pressed by the Scottish royalists, and had been compelled to retire from Belfast to Dundalk. Monk supplied O'Neil with ammunition, and O'Neil undertook to cut off the communication betwixt the royalists of the north and Ormond in the south. Monk sent word of this arrangement, and the "grandees," as they were called, or members of the great council, entertained the plan in secret, publicly they dared not, for these followers of O'Neil were those Ulster Irish who had committed the horrible massacres of 1641. No sooner, however, did the rumour of this coalition become public, than the greatest excitement prevailed. The army and the public at large were filled with horror and indignation. They appealed to the solemn engagement of the army to avenge the blood of their fellow protestants slaughtered by these savages; they reminded the council and the parliament of the invectives heaped by them on the late king for making peace with these blood-stained natives; and now, they said, you expect us to become the allies and associates of these very men. The parliament saw how vain it was to strive against the feeling, and annulled the agreement. Hugh Peters harangued the public from the pulpit, excusing the council on account of the real facts of the case having been concealed from them, and the whole weight of the transaction fell on Monk, who was just then in London, and who was assured that nothing but his past services saved him from the punishment of his indiscretion.

Whilst matters were in this position, and the parliament was compelled to reject a very useful ally, Ormond advanced to besiege Jones in Dublin. He advanced on both sides of the Liffey, and cast up works at Bogotrath, to cut off the pasturage of the horses of the parliamentary force in Dublin, Jones, however, made a sally an hour before sunrise, and threw the enemy into such confusion, that the whole army on the right bank of the river fled in headlong panic, leaving their artillery, ammunition, tents, and baggage. In vain did Ormond hasten to check the route, his men followed the example. Two thousand prisoners were taken by Jones, of whom they are said to have slaughtered three hundred in cold blood. Such was the defeat, and such the inequality of the forces, that it cast great disgrace on the generalship of Ormond, and the royalists made great questionings of treason; but Charles himself would not listen to any such surmises: he hastened to send Ormond the order of the garter, and to assure him of his unshaken favour. The most exaggerated statements were made of the forces of Ormond, and of the number of his men killed and taken. Ormond himself says that he had only eight thousand; but Cromwell, no doubt from the statements of Jones, states the number to have been nineteen thousand against five thousand two hundred of Jones's, and that Jones killed four thousand on the place, and took two thousand five hundred and seventeen prisoners, of whom three hundred were officers. The battle was fought at a place called Rathmines, on the 2nd of August, 1649, and contributed to quicken the movements of Cromwell, who was collecting his forces for the passage at Milford Haven.

Cromwell had twelve thousand veterans, with whom he sailed on the 13th of August, and arrived in Dublin with the first division on the 15th, Ireton following with the main body. He was received with acclamations by the people of Dublin, and made them a speech in the streets, which greatly pleased them. He then allowed the army a fortnight to refresh themselves after the voyage, before leading them to action. At this period, the only places left to the parliament in Ireland were Dublin and Derry. On the 9th of September he besieged Drogheda, and summoned it to surrender. The governor of the place was Sir Arthur Ashton, who had about three thousand troops, foot and horse, commanded by Sir Edmund Varney, whose father was killed at Edge Hill. Ashton, who had acquired the reputation of a brave and experienced officer, refused to surrender, and the storm commenced, and on the second day a breach was made. A thousand men entered by the breach, but were driven back by the garrison. On this, Cromwell placed himself at the head of his men, and made a second assault. This time, after some hard fighting, they succeeded in getting possession of the intrenchments and of a church. According to Ormond, Carte, and others, Cromwell's officers then promised quarter to all who would surrender. "All his officers and soldiers," says Carte, "promising quarter to such as would lay down their arms, and performing it as long as any place held out, which encouraged others to yield. But when they had done all in their power, and feared no hurt that could be done them, then the word 4 no quarter' went round, and the soldiers were, many of them, forced against their wills to kill their prisoners."

This has always been regarded as a great reproach to Cromwell. He himself, of course, does not confess that he broke his word, or forced his officers to break theirs; but he does something very like it. He tells us plainly, in his letter to Lenthall, the speaker, that "our men, getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, being in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about two thousand men." That some of them escaping to the church, he had it set fire to, and so burnt them in it; and he records the exclamations of one of them in the fire. The rest of the fugitives, as they were compelled to surrender, were either slaughtered, or, to use his own words, "their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes." He says that one thousand people were destroyed in the church that he fired. He adds that they 44 put to the sword the whole of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives; those that did are in safe custody for Barbadoes."

This is, perhaps, the most awful confession that ever was made by a man in cool blood, for these letters were written about a week after the assault, and by a man undoubtedly of a thoroughly religious mind. Nay, so much so, that he attributes the whole "to the spirit of God;" says "This hath been a marvellous great mercy;" and prays that "all honest hearts may give the glory to God alone, to whom indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." And this he says at a time when he had given no mercy to three thousand men! Nay, it is asserted by trustworthy historians, that for five days Drogheda was given up to the wild fury of the soldiers, who considered that they were doing God service in exterminating papists, and that neither sex nor age was spared. That the thousand people in the church were almost wholly innocent inhabitants who had fled there for refuge; indeed, Cromwell himself says they were the people, not soldiers, and that " all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously except two, and these two, one the brother of Lord Taafe, were by the soldiers put to death."

Cromwell endeavoured to justify this horrible massacre by this plea, " that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future;" and Thomas Carlyle, in his " Letters and Speeches of Cromwell," has been at much pains, in a medley of very strange language, to excuse his hero on that ground. But the business of the historian is not to erect men into demigods, but to represent them as they are, with all their power and weakness, their virtues and defects; and we are bound to say no amount of reasoning, much less of grotesque and rampant imagery, can ever wipe the blood of Cromwell's bloody campaign in Ireland out of memory. Even had it been warrantable to do evil that good might come of it, it is unfortunately not true that Cromwell's massacre here prevented the future effusion of blood. We shall find him immediately repeating the monstrous cruelty at Wexford, and his conduct producing its certain effect, that of making his opponents defend their towns and garrisons with a desperation which not only greatly increased the bloodshed, but the difficulty and length of the campaign. Whitelock, the parliamentary historian, relating the siege of Clonmel, on the 9th of the following May, eight months afterwards, says "that they found in Clonmel the stoutest enemy this army had ever met in Ireland, and that there was never seen so hot a storm of so long a continuance, and so gallantly defended, either in England or Ireland."

Thus the butchery of Cromwell had not frightened men into surrendering their towns at his summons, and thereby preventing effusion of blood. In fact, great as were the merits of Cromwell, his barbarous mode of warfare in Ireland cannot be defended on any principals of reason, much less of Christianity or humanity. In England he had been noted for his merciful conduct in war, but in Ireland a deplorable fanaticism carried away both him and his army. They were now fighting against a papist population, and deemed it a merit to destroy them. They confounded all Irishmen with the wild savages of Ulster, who had massacred the protestants in 1641; and Cromwell, in his letters from Drogheda, plainly expresses this idea, calling it "a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood."

From Drogheda Cromwell returned to Dublin, and then marched on Wexford, taking and burning minor places by the way. On the 1st of October he summoned Wexford to surrender, and though the governor refused, the officer who commanded the castle traitorously yielded it, and the soldiers then perceiving the enemy quit the walls of the town, scaled them with their ladders, and encountering the forces in the market place, they made a stout resistance; but Cromwell informs the parliament that they were eventually all put to the sword, "not many less than two thousand, and I believe not twenty of yours from first to last of the siege. The soldiers got a very good booty; and the inhabitants," he says, "were either so completely killed, or had run away, that it was a fine opportunity for honest people to go and plant themselves there." According to various historians, no distinction was made between the soldiers and the innocent inhabitants; three hundred women, who had crowded around the great cross, and were shrieking for protection to Heaven, were put to death with the same ruthless ferocity. Some authors do not restrict the numbers of the slain like Cromwell to two, but calculate them at five thousand.

Ormond now calculated greatly on the aid of O'Neil, to create a division in the north, and divide the attention and the forces of Cromwell, for that chieftain had begun to justify the treaty made with him through Monk, by compelling Montgomery to raise the siege of Londonderry, and rescuing Coote and his small army, the only force which the parliament had in Ulster. But the cry in London against this alliance with the Irish papist, had done its work, and after the victory of Rathmines, the parliament refused to ratify the treaty made with O'Neil. Indignant at this breach of faith, he had listened to the offers of Ormond, and was on his march to join him at Kilkenny. O'Neil died at Clocknacter, in Cavan, but his son took the command. By his assistance, the operations of Cromwell's generals were greatly retarded at that place, and at Duncannon and Waterford.

On the 17th of October, Cromwell sate down before Ross, and sent in a trumpeter, calling on the commander to surrender, with this extraordinary statement, "Since my coming into Ireland, I have this witness for myself, that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood;" which must have been read with wonder, after the recent news from Drogheda and Wexford. General Taafe refused. There were one thousand soldiers in the place, and Ormond, Ardes, and Castlehaven, who were on the other side of the river, sent in fifteen hundred more. Yet on the 19th the town surrendered, the soldiers being allowed to march away. O'Neil had now joined Ormond at Kilkenny with two thousand horse and foot, and Inchiquin was in Munster. Soon after Cork and Youghall opened their gates, admiral Blake cooperating by water. In the north, Sir Charles Coote, lord president of Connaught, took Coleraine by storm, and forming a junction with colonel Venables, marched on Carrickfergus, which they soon after reduced. Cromwell marched from Ross to Waterford, his army having taken Innerstioge, Thomastown, and Carrick. He appeared before Waterford on the 24th of November. Here, too, he received the news of the surrender of Kinsale and Bandon Bridge, but Waterford refused to surrender, and Cromwell was compelled to march away to Cork for winter quarters. His troops, however, took the Fort of Passage near Waterford; but they lost lieutenant-general Jones, the conqueror of Rathmines, by sickness at Dungarvon.

Cromwell did not rest long in winter quarters. By the 29th of January he was in the field again, at the head of thirty thousand men. Whilst major-general Ireton and colonel Reynolds marched by Carrick into Kilkenny, Cromwell proceeded from Youghall over the Blackwater into Tipperary, various castles being taken by the way, and quartering themselves in Fethard and Cashel. On March 28th he succeeded in taking Kilkenny, whence he proceeded to Clonmel. In this campaign the royalist generals accuse Cromwell of still perpetrating most unnecessary cruelties, though they endeavoured to set him a different example. "I took," says lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the same to me, if any of mine should fall into his power. But he little valued my civility, for in a few days after he besieged Gouvan, and the soldiers mutinying and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the governor Hammond and some other officers to be put to death." Cromwell avows this in one of his letters. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commissioned officers were shot to death; all but one, who, being very earnest to have the castle delivered, was pardoned." And this, he admits, was because they refused to surrender at his first summons. He seemed to consider a refusal to surrender, at once and unconditionally, a deadly crime, and avenged it most bloodily. Were all war to be carried on on this principle, it would be a war, not of saints, but of devils. On the other hand, Ormond, in one of his letters, says, "Rathfarnham was taken by our troops by storm, and all that were in it made prisoners; and though five hundred soldiers entered the castle before any officer of note, yet not one creature was killed; which I tell you by the way, to observe the difference betwixt our and the rebels' making use of a victory."