Oliver Cromwell

by Theodore Roosevelt

Said Cromwell: “We put to the sword the whole number of the defendants.... This hath been a marvellous great mercy. I wish that all honest hearts may give glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.... 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. The officers and soldiers of this garrison were the flower of their army.”

Cromwell’s defenders say simply that he acted from a fervent belief in the righteousness of what he was doing, and, further, that the terrible vengeance he took here and at Wexford upon all who withstood him in arms cowed the Irish and prevented further resistance. Neither defence is tenable. If on the ground of their sincerity the deeds of Cromwell and his soldiers at Drogheda and Wexford can be defended, then we cannot refuse the same defence to Philip and Alva and their soldiers in the Netherlands. Of course, we must always remember that under Cromwell there was no burning at the stake, no dreadful torture in cold blood; and, therefore, at his worst, he rises in degree above Philip and Alva. But in kind, his deeds in Ireland were the same as theirs in the Netherlands; and though the Puritan soldiers were guiltless of the hideous licentiousness shown by the Spaniards, or by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein, yet the merciless butchery of the entire garrisons and of all the priests—accompanied by the slaughter of other non-combatants, in at least some cases—leave Drogheda and Wexford as black and terrible stains on Cromwell’s character. Nor is there any justification for them on the ground that they put a stop to resistance. The war lingered on for two or three years in spite of them; and in any event the outcome was inevitable. It does not seem to have been hastened in any way by this display of savagery. There had been many such butcheries during the war, before Cromwell came to Ireland, without in any way hastening the end. Cromwell and his lieutenants put down the insurrection and established order because they gained such sweeping victories, not because Cromwell made merciless use of his first victories. It was the fighting of the Puritan troops in the battle itself which won, and not their ferocity after the battle; and it was Cromwell who not merely gave free rein to this ferocity, but inspired it. Seemingly quarter would have been freely given had it not been for his commands. Neither in morals nor in policy were these slaughters justifiable. Moreover, it must be remembered that the men slaughtered were entirely guiltless of the original massacres in Ulster.

Immediately after Drogheda, Cromwell sent forces to Dundalk, which was held by the Irish, and to Trim, which was held by the Scotch; but the garrisons deserted both places at the approach of the Cromwellians. In October, Cromwell himself advanced on Wexford and stormed the town. Very little resistance was made, but some 2,000 of the defenders were put to the sword. This time the soldiers needed no order with reference to refusing quarter; they acted of their own accord, and many of the townspeople suffered with the garrison. Practically, the town was depopulated, not one in twenty of the inhabitants being left.

Then Cromwell moved to Ross. In spite of the slaughter which he made in the towns he stormed, he exercised such strict discipline over his army in the field, and paid with such rigid punctuality for all supplies which the country people brought in, that they flocked to him as they feared to do to their own armies, and in consequence his troops were better fed and able to march more rapidly than was the case with the Irish. He soon took Ross, allowing the garrison to march out with the honors of war, and gave protection to the inhabitants. When asked to guarantee freedom of religion he responded: “For that which you mention concerning liberty of conscience, I meddle not with any man’s conscience. But, if by liberty of conscience, you mean liberty to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of.”

St. Lawrence’s Gate, Drogheda.

Three months after he landed, Cromwell had possession of almost all the eastern coast. One of the remarkable features of his campaign had been the way in which he had used the army and the fleet in combination. He used his admirals just as he had used his generals and colonels, and they played a very important part in the operations against Wexford and Ross, and in securing the surrender of both. When he moved away from the coast his task was very difficult; there were no roads, the country had been harried into a wilderness, and was studded with castles and fortified towns, every one held by an Irish garrison. Ormond and O’Neil were in the field with a more numerous force than his; and though they dared not fight a pitched battle, they threatened his detachments. The service was very wearing, and in December Cromwell went into winter quarters, the weather being bad, and his men decimated by fever. The triumphs won by his terrible soldiership rendered the conquest of the whole island only a question of time.

Having now a little leisure, Cromwell published, for the benefit of the Irish, a “Declaration,” as an answer to a polemic issued in form of a manifesto at Kilkenny by the high Irish ecclesiastics. In this Declaration, which is very curious reading, he exhorted the Irish to submit, and answered at great length the arguments of their religious leaders, with all the zeal, ingenuity, and acrimony of an eager theological disputant, and with an evident and burning sincerity to which many theological disputants do not attain. The religious side of his campaigns was always very strong in his mind, and no Puritan preacher more dearly loved setting forth the justification of his religious views, or answering the arguments of his religious opponents, whether Catholics or Covenanters.

So far as Puritanism was based upon a literal following of the example set in the Old Testament, it had a very dark, as well as a very exalted side. To take the inhuman butcheries of the early Jews as grateful to Jehovah, and therefore as justification for similar conduct by Christians, could lead only to deeds of horror. When Cromwell wrote from Cork, justifying the Puritan zeal which he admitted could not be justified by “reason if called before a jury,” he appealed to the case of Phineas, who was held to have done the work of the Lord, because he thrust through the belly with his javelin the wretched Midianitish woman. No such plea can be admitted on behalf of peoples who have passed the stage of mere barbarism.

Drogheda and Wexford could not be excused by pointing out that the priests of the Jews of old had held it grateful to the Lord to kill without mercy the miserable women and children of the tribes whom the Israelites drove from the land. Such a position was in accord with the mediæval side of Cromwell’s character, but was utterly out of touch with his thoroughly modern belief in justice and freedom for all men. Queer contradictions appear in the above-mentioned “Declaration,” written, as he phrased it, “For the undeceiving of deluded and seduced people.” He showed that he was a leader in the modern movement for social, political, and religious liberty, when he wrote: “Arbitrary power men begin to grow weary of, in Kings and Churchmen; their juggle between them mutually to uphold civil and ecclesiastical tyranny begins to be transparent. Some have cast off both; and hope by the Grace of God to keep so. Others are at it.” But when he came to reconcile his own declarations for religious liberty with his previous refusal to permit the celebration of the mass, he was forced into a purely technical justification of his position. He announced that he would punish, with all the severity of the law, priests “seducing the people, or, by any overt act, violating the laws established,” but added: “As for the people what thoughts they have in matters of religion in their own breasts, I cannot reach; but shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same.” In other words, Catholics could believe what they wished, but were not allowed to profess their beliefs in the form that they desired, or to have their teachers among them. To our American eyes such a position is so wholly untenable, so shocking to the moral sense, that it requires an effort to remember that it was in advance of the position taken in the next century by the English toward the Irish through their Penal Laws, and of the position taken in France toward the Protestants during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. and all the reign of Louis XV., while of course it was infinitely beyond the theory upon which the temporal and spiritual authorities of Spain acted.