Cromwell’s Ireland Campaign

This series has four easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: War of Protestant Versus Catholic.

Introduction
The brutality of Cromwell’s Irish campaign is remembered with bitterness in Ireland and controversy in England.

The English Civil War had produced a strongman. Oliver Cromwell led the army for Parliaments side of the war. . As a member of the High Court he had signed the death-warrant of Charles I, and on the establishment of the Commonwealth, early in 1649, his preëminence in both military and political leadership gave him almost absolute control of the English government.

In 1641 there had been a Catholic uprising in Ireland which had considerable success, won at the cost of slaughter often characterized as massacre. Although Charles I made peace with the insurrectionists in 1643, and soon afterward most of them became Royalists, disorders in Ireland still continued. At last the English Parliament resolved to put an end to these tumults, and in March, 1649, Cromwell was appointed to the supreme command in Ireland.

Among the many able writers on Oliver Cromwell none has treated this portion of his career with greater clearness and impartiality than Frederic Harrison, whose history of the campaign in Ireland has been selected, particularly for the sake of these merits, for presentation here.

This selection is from Oliver Cromwell by Frederic Harrison published in 1888. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Frederic Harrison (1831-1923) was a British jurist and historian.

Time: 1649

The reconquest of Ireland was by all felt to be the most urgent interest of the young commonwealth; there was almost as much agreement to entrust Cromwell with the task; and after some consideration, and prayerful consultations in the army, he accepted the duty. The condition of England was precarious indeed; service in Ireland was not popular in the army; and an ambitious adventurer would have been loath to quit England while the first place was still unoccupied. It was at great risk to the cause, and at much personal sacrifice, that Cromwell accepted the difficult post in Ireland as his first duty to his country and to religion.

His campaign and the subsequent settlement in Ireland are among those things which weigh heaviest on Cromwell’s memory, and which of his stoutest admirers one only has heartily approved. Fortunately, there is no part of his policy where his conduct is more simple and his motives are more plain. The Irish policy of Cromwell was the traditional policy of all Englishmen of his creed and party, and was distinguished from theirs only by his personal vigor and thoroughness. He was neither better nor worse than the English Puritans, or rather all English statesmen for many generations: he was only keener and stronger. When he, with Vane, Fairfax, Whitelocke, and other commissioners, went to the Guildhall to obtain a loan for the campaign, they told the common council that this was a struggle not between Independent and Presbyterian but between papist and Protestant; that papacy or popery was not to be endured in that kingdom; and they cited the maxim of James I: “Plant Ireland with Puritans, root out papists, and then secure it.”

To Cromwell, as to all English Puritans, it seemed a self-evident truth that one of the three realms could not be suffered to become Catholic; as little could it be suffered to become independent, or the open practice of the Catholic religion allowed there, any more than in England; finally, that peace and prosperity could never be secured in Ireland without a dominant and preponderating order of English birth and Protestant belief. By Cromwell, as by the whole Puritan body — we may fairly say by the whole body of Protestants — the Irish rebellion of 1641 was believed to have opened with a barbarous, treacherous, and wholesale massacre, followed during nine years by one prolonged scene of confusion and bloodshed, ending in an almost complete extinction of the Protestant faith and English interests.

The victorious party, and Cromwell more deeply than others, entered on the recovery of Ireland in the spirit of a religious war, to restore to the Protestant cause one of the three realms which had revolted to the powers of darkness. Such was for centuries the spirit of Protestant England.

Five months were occupied in the preparations for this distant and difficult campaign. Cromwell’s nomination was on March 15, 1649. On the same day Milton was appointed Latin secretary to the council. During April Cromwell arranged the marriage of his eldest son with the daughter of a very quiet, unambitious squire. On July 10th he set forth from London with much military state. His lifeguard was a body of gentlemen “as is hardly to be paralleled in the world.” He still waited a month in the West, his wife and family around him; and thence wrote his beautiful letter to Mayor about his son, and the letter to “my beloved daughter Dorothy Cromwell, at Hursley.”

At length all was ready, and he set sail on August 13th with nine thousand men in about one hundred ships. He was invested with supreme civil, as well as military, command in Ireland; amply supplied with material and a fleet. Ireton, his son-in-law, was his second in command.

On landing in Dublin, the general made a speech to the people, in which he spoke of his purpose as “the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish, and all their adherents and confederates, for the propagating of the gospel of Christ, the establishing of truth and peace, and restoring that bleeding nation to its former happiness and tranquillity.” His first act was to remodel the Irish army, making “a huge purge of the army which we found here: it was an army made up of dissolute and debauched men”; and the general issued a proclamation against swearing and drunkenness, and another against the “wickedness” that had been taken by the soldiery “to abuse, rob, and pillage, and too often to execute cruelties upon the country people,” promising to protect all peaceable inhabitants, and to pay them in ready money for all goods. Two soldiers were shortly hanged for disobeying these orders.

Having made a general muster of his forces in Dublin, and formed a complete body of fifteen thousand horse and foot, he selected a force of ten thousand stout, resolute men, and advanced on Drogheda (in English, Tredagh). Drogheda is a seaport town on the Boyne, about twenty-three miles due north of Dublin. It was strongly fortified, and Ormonde,* as Clarendon tells us, had put into it “the flower of his army, both of soldiers and officers, most of them English, to the number of three thousand foot, and two or three good troops of horse, provided with all things.” Sir Arthur Ashton, an English Catholic, an officer “of great name and experience, and who at that time made little doubt of defending it against all the power of Cromwell,” was in chief command.

[* James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde, was now head of the Irish Royalists. — ED.]

Cromwell’s horse reached Drogheda on September 3rd, his memorable day; some skirmishes followed, and on the 10th the batteries opened in earnest, after formal summons to the garrison to surrender. A steeple and a tower were beaten down the first day; all through the 11th the batteries continued, and at length effected “two reasonable breaches.” About five in the evening of the second day the storm began. “After some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hundred men; the enemy disputing it very stiffly with us.” But a tremendous rally of the garrison — wherein Colonel Castle and other officers were killed — drove out the column, which retreated disheartened and baffled. Then the general did that which as commander he was seldom wont to do, and which he passes in silence in his dispatches.

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