The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Who shall describe that loyalty? After Ormond had met with the defeat he deserved in the field; after the cities had fallen one after another into the hands of the destroyer, who seldom thought himself bound to observe the conditions of surrender; after the chiefs, who might have protracted the struggle, had disappeared either by death or exile, the doom of the nation was sealed; yet it shrank not from the consequences.

The barbarities of Cromwell and his soldiers had depopulated large tracts of territory to such an extent that the troops marching through them were compelled to carry provisions as through a desert. The cattle, the only resource of an agricultural country, had been all consumed in a ten years' war. It was reported that, after every successful engagement, the republican general ordered all the men from the age of sixteen to sixty to be slaughtered without mercy, all the boys from six to sixteen to be deprived of sight, and the women to have a red- hot iron thrust through their breasts. Rumors such as these, exaggerated though they may be, testify at least to the terror which Cromwell inspired. As for the captured cities, there can be no doubt of the wholesale massacres carried out therein by his orders. Of the entire population of Tredagh only thirty persons survived, and they were condemned to the labor of slaves. Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Fairfax, wrote after this barbarous execution: "We are masters of Tredagh; no enemy was spared; I just come from the church where I had gone to thank the Lord."

The same fate awaited Wexford, and, later on, Drogheda. Cromwell, when narrating those bloody massacres, concluded by saying, "People blame me, but it was the will of God."

The Bible, the holy word of God, misread and misunderstood by those fanatics, persuaded them that it would be a crime not to exterminate the Irish, as the Lord punished Saul for having spared Agag and the chief of the Amalekites. Whoever wishes for further details of these sickening atrocities, committed in the name of God, may find them in a multitude of histories of the time, but chiefly in the "Threnodia" of Friar Morrison.

Certain modern Irish historians would seem not to understand the heroism of their own countrymen. "Bitterly," says A. M. O'Sullivan, "did the Irish people pay for their loyalty to an English sovereign. Unhappily for their worldly fortunes, if not for their fame, they were high-spirited and unfearing, where pusillanimity would certainly have been safety, and might have been only prudence."

But the verdict of posterity, always a just one, calls such a high-spirited and unfearing attitude true heroism, and spurns pusillanimity even when it insures safety and may be called prudence, if its result is the surrender of holy faith and Christian truth. Safety and prudence characterized the conduct of the English nation under the iron rule of Cromwell, as under the tyranny of the Tudors. Can the reader of history admire the nation on that account? Who shall affirm that the result of the craven spirit of the English was the prosperity which ensued, and that of Irish heroism destruction and gloom? The history of either nation is far from ended yet; and bold would be the man who dare assert that the prosperity of England is everlasting, and the humiliation of Ireland never to know an end.

However that may be, this at least is undeniable: the opinion current of the Irish character is demonstrated to be altogether an erroneous one by the incontrovertible facts cursorily narrated above. Determination of purpose, adherence to conscience and principle, consistency of conduct, are terms all too weak to convey an idea of the magnanimity displayed by the people, and of their heroic bearing throughout those stirring events.

At last, after a bloody struggle with Cromwell and Ireton, on May 12, 1652, "the Leinster army of the Irish surrendered at Kilkenny on terms which were successively adopted by the other principal bodies of troops, between that time and the September following, when the Ulster forces came to composition." Then began the real woes of Ireland. Never was the ingenuity of man so taxed to destroy a whole nation as in the measures adopted by the Protector for that purpose. It is necessary to present a brief sketch of them, since all that the Irish suffered was designed to punish them for their attachment to their religion, and, be it borne in mind, their devotion to the lawful dynasty of the Stuarts.

First, then, to render easy of execution the stern and cruel resolve of the new government, the defenders of the nation were not only to be disarmed, but put out of the way. Hence Cromwell was gracious enough to consent that they be permitted to leave the country and take service in the armies of the foreign powers then at peace with the Commonwealth. Forty thousand men, officers and soldiers, adopted this desperate resolution.

"Soon agents from the King of Spain, the King of Poland, and the Prince de Conde, were contending for the service of the Irish troops. Don Ricardo White, in May, 1672, shipped seven thousand in batches from Waterford, Kinsale, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry, for the King of Spain. Colonel Christopher Mayo got liberty in September to beat his drums, to raise three thousand more for the same destination. Lord Muskerry took with him five thousand to the King of Poland. In July, 1654, three thousand five hundred went to serve the Prince de Conde. Sir Walter Dungan and others got liberty to beat their drums in different garrisons for various destinations."—(Prendergast.)