The Drogheda Massacre

The lurid light of this great crime burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland.

Continuing Cromwell’s Ireland Campaign,
our selection from Oliver Cromwell by Frederic Harrison published in 1888. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Cromwell’s Ireland Campaign.

Time: 1649

“Resolved,” says Ludlow, “to put all upon it, he went down to the breach; and calling out a fresh reserve of Colonel Ewer’s men, he put himself at their head, and with the word ‘our Lord God,’ led them up again with courage and resolution, though they met with a hot dispute.” Thus encouraged to recover their loss, they got ground of the enemy, forced him to quit his entrenchments, and poured into the town. There many retreated to the Millmount, a place very strong and difficult of access; “exceedingly high and strongly palisaded.” This place commanded the whole town: thither Sir Arthur Ashton and other important officers had betaken themselves. But the storming party burst in, and were ordered by Cromwell to put them all to the sword. The rest of the garrison fled over the bridge to the northern side of the town; but the Ironsides followed them hotly, both horse and foot, and drove them into St. Peter’s Church and the towers of the ramparts.

St. Peter’s Church was set on fire by Cromwell’s order. He writes to the speaker: “Indeed, being in the heat of 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.” Next day the other towers were summoned, and the work of slaughter was renewed for two days, until the entire garrison was annihilated. It was unquestionably a massacre. “That night they put to the sword about two thousand men.” In St. Peter’s Church “near a thousand of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety.” “Their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously.” “I do not think we lost a hundred men upon the place.” Such are a few passages from Cromwell’s own dispatches.

The slaughter was indeed prodigious. The general writes: “I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives.” “The enemy were about three thousand strong in the town.” “I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one lieutenant.” He subsequently gives a detailed list of the slain, amounting to about three thousand. Hugh Peters, the chaplain, reports as follows:

“Sir, the truth is, Drogheda is taken, three thousand five hundred fifty-two of the enemy slain, and sixty-four of ours. Ashton the governor, killed, none spared.” It is also certain that quarter was refused. “I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town.” It is expressly told us that all officers and all priests taken were killed. From the days of Clarendon it has been repeated by historians that men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, and there is evidence of an eye-witness to that effect; but this is not believed to have been done by the order, or even with the knowledge, of the general. The Royalist accounts insist that quarter was promised at first; and that the butchery of men in cold blood was carried on for days. Here again the act must have been exceptional and without authority.

To Cromwell himself this fearful slaughter was a signal triumph of the truth. “It hath pleased God to bless our endeavors.” “This hath been a marvelous great mercy.” “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment 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 to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.” “It was set upon some of our hearts, That a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God.” In the same sense it was received by Parliament and council of state, by some of the noblest spirits of their age.

Ludlow says simply that this “extraordinary severity was used to discourage others from making opposition.” It had always been the policy of Cromwell in battle to inflict a crushing defeat; at Marston, at Naseby, and at Preston he had “taken execution of the enemy” for hours and over miles of country. At Basing and elsewhere, after a summons and a storm, he had slaughtered hundreds without mercy. And such was the law of war in that age, practiced on both sides without hesitation. But the item of numbers and of time tells very heavily here. The killing of hundreds in hot blood differs from the massacre of thousands during days.

There was no such act in the whole civil war as the massacre — prolonged for days — of three thousand men enclosed in walls entirely at the mercy of their captors, to say nothing of the promiscuous slaughter of priests, if not of women and unarmed men.

In England such a deed could not have been done; and not in Ireland, but that they were Catholics fighting in defense of their faith. The fact that the garrison were Catholics, fighting on Irish soil, placed them, to the Puritan Englishman, out of the pale. No admiration for Cromwell, for his genius, courage, and earnestness — no sympathy with the cause that he upheld in England — can blind us to the truth, that the lurid light of this great crime burns still after centuries across the history of England and of Ireland; that it is one of those damning charges which the Puritan theology has yet to answer at the bar of humanity.

The tremendous blow at Drogheda struck terror into Ormonde’s forces. Dundalk and Trim were abandoned in haste. O’Neil swore a great oath that as Cromwell had stormed Drogheda, if he should storm hell he should take it. One fort after another yielded; and in a fortnight from the taking of Drogheda Cromwell was master of the country north of Dublin. Marching from Dublin south, on September 23d, his army took forts in Wicklow, Arklow, and Enniscorthy; and on October 1st the general encamped before Wexford, an important seaport at the southeastern corner of the island. The town was strong, with a rampart fifteen feet thick, a garrison of over two thousand men, one hundred cannon, and in the harbor two ships armed with fifty-four guns.

More information here and here, and below.

We want to take this site to the next level but we need money to do that. Please contribute directly by signing up at https://www.patreon.com/history