The King’s execution further swelled the royalist ranks; for whilst a portion of the Ulster Presbyterians openly declared for Ormond, and proclaimed Charles II., the rest threw off all semblance of obedience to the Parliament. Only Owen Roe and the Ulster Irish, dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty, stood aloof from the coalition, and, negotiating first with Ormond, then with the parliamentary officers, maintained for some time a neutral attitude. In Londonderry, Sir Charles Coote still held out for the Parliament, Colonel Monk held Dundalk, and Colonel Michael Jones, ever vigilant and energetic, maintained himself in Dublin. Jones had been made Governor of Dublin, in June, 1647, when Ormond gave it up to the Parliament. He had won a signal victory over the Irish at Dungan’s Hill in August, 1647, and could be trusted to fight to the last. But unless help came from England, the preservation of these last strongholds was only a question of months.
It was not merely a question whether Ireland should be separated from England, for it was certain that Ireland in royalist hands would be used as a basis for an attack upon England. The young King’s messengers announced his speedy coming to Ireland, and nothing but the lack of money hindered his journey. Already Prince Rupert, with a squadron of eight ships, was in the harbours of Munster. It was at this juncture that the Council of State nominated Cromwell to command in Ireland (March 15, 1649). The speech which Cromwell made to the officers of the army a week later showed his appreciation of the crisis. “Your old enemies,” he told them, “are again uniting against you.” Scotland had proclaimed Charles II.; a great party in England was ready to co-operate with the Scots; all parties in Ireland were joined together “to root out the English interest there and set up the Prince of Wales.” “If we do not endeavour to make good our interest there, and that timely, we shall not only have our interest rooted out there, but they will in a very short time be able to land forces in England, and put us to trouble here.” All the national pride of an Englishman rose up at the thought of Scottish or Irish interference.
“I confess,” he continued, “I have often had these thoughts with myself which perhaps may be carnal and foolish: I had rather be overrun by a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest, I had rather be overrun by a Scotch interest than an Irish interest, and I think that of all this is the most dangerous.... If they shall be able to carry on their work they will make this the most miserable people in the earth, for all the world knows their barbarism.... The quarrel is brought to this state: that we can hardly return to that tyranny which formerly we were under the yoke of, but we must at the same time be subject to the kingdom of Scotland or the kingdom of Ireland for the bringing in of the king. It should awaken all Englishmen.”
At bottom, as Cromwell truly said, the quarrel was a national quarrel, and the question was whether the growth of English freedom should be checked by Irishmen and Scotchmen, seeking, for their own ends, to replace the Stuarts on the throne they had lost. There was little real danger of this so long as the army remained united. “There is more cause of danger from disunion amongst ourselves than by anything from our enemies.... I am confident we doing our duty and waiting upon the Lord, we shall find He will be as a wall of brass round about us, till we have finished that work that He has for us to do.” But with all this faith in divine assistance, Cromwell did not underestimate the difficulty of reconquering Ireland, and left nothing undone that was necessary to secure success.
Cromwell refused to accept the command until he was certain of adequate support from the Government, and after accepting it (March 30th) declined to lead his soldiers across the sea until he was provided with money for their payment. Parliament entrusted him for three years with the combined powers of Lord-Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief, granting him a salary for the two posts of about thirteen thousand pounds a year, and giving him an army of twelve thousand men, well officered and well equipped. The organisation of his army, the collection of ships to transport it, and, more than all, the difficulty of raising money to maintain it, delayed his start for more than four months, and it was not till August 13th that Cromwell landed at Dublin.
If Ormond had been a great commander, or if Owen Roe had abandoned his neutrality in March instead of in August, every English garrison might have been taken before Cromwell’s coming. Inchiquin, Ormond’s lieutenant, took Dundalk and Drogheda in July, and Ormond himself blockaded Jones in Dublin. But Cromwell reinforced Jones with three regiments from England, and on August 2nd the garrison of Dublin surprised Ormond’s camp at Rathmines, and defeated him with a loss of five thousand men. “An astonishing mercy,” wrote Cromwell, “so great and seasonable that we are like to them that dreamed.” Its result was that Ormond could bring together no army which was sufficient to face Cromwell in the field, and was driven to rely on fortresses to check the invader till he could gather fresh forces. Into Drogheda, the first threatened, Ormond threw the flower of his army. Cromwell stormed Drogheda on September 10th, and put the twenty-eight hundred men who defended it to the sword. “I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives,” he wrote. Then sending a detachment to the relief of Londonderry, he turned his march southwards, and on October 11th took Wexford by storm. Some fifteen hundred of its garrison and its inhabitants fell in the streets and in the market-place, and, as at Drogheda, every priest who fell into the hands of the victors was immediately put to death.
At Drogheda the order to spare none taken in arms had been deliberately given by Cromwell after his first assault had been repulsed. At Wexford the slaughter was accidental rather than intentional. Cromwell showed no regret for this bloodshed. He abhorred the indiscriminating cruelties practised by many English commanders of the time in Ireland, and no general was more careful to protect peaceable peasants and non-combatants from plunder and violence. “Give us an instance,” he challenged Catholic clergy, “of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or the destruction of whom justice has not been done or endeavoured to be done.” But when towns were taken by storm, the laws of war authorised the refusal of quarter to their defenders, and on this ground Cromwell justified his action at Drogheda and Wexford. He justified it both on military and political grounds. He had come to Ireland not merely as a conqueror, but as a judge “to ask an account of the innocent blood that had been shed” in the rebellion of 1641, and “to punish the most barbarous massacre that ever the sun beheld.” Of the slaughter at Drogheda he wrote:
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those 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 of such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.” Of Wexford he said: “God, by an unexpected providence, in His righteous justice brought a just judgment upon them, causing them to become a prey to the soldiers who in their piracies had made preys of so many families, and with their bloods to answer the cruelties which they had exercised upon the lives of divers poor Protestants.”
Cromwell, in short, regarded himself, in Carlyle’s words, as “the minister of God’s justice, doing God’s judgments on the enemies of God!” but only fanatics can look upon him in that light. His justice was an imperfect, indiscriminating, human justice, too much alloyed with revenge, and, as St. James says, Ira viri non operatur justitiam Dei. Politically these massacres were a blunder—their memory still helps to separate the two races Cromwell wished to unite. From a military point of view, however, they were for a short time as successful as Cromwell hoped, in saving further effusion of blood.