This
exercise is intended to help students appreciate the importance of critical
analysis of historical writing in order to recognize writers' biases or special
points of view, and comparison and evaluation of conflicting versions in order
to arrive at a coherent account of what actually happened and why it happened,
or perhaps more importantly, how historians can come to different conclusions
about what happened. In short, this is an exercise in historical understanding
of an event.
The
topic for the exercise is a notorious episode in the life of Oliver Cromwell,
which left a lasting reputation for cruelty in Ireland. In 1649, Cromwell led an
army to Ireland to snuff out an anti-English rebellion that had been raging
since 1641. Cromwell's behavior in Ireland, that is, the massacres that followed
his troops' capture of the two towns of Wexford and Drogheda, is the primary
focus of the passages that
follow.
Read
the passages below
as well as Coward, The Stuart Age, 248-249, 525. Then attempt to explain Cromwell's' conduct
in Ireland, not necessarily to excuse or justify it.
A.
Giovanni Costigan, A History of Modern Ireland (New York, 1970),
pp. 76-79:
What then is the explanation of
Cromwell's cruel and compulsive behavior in Ireland? From childhood he had been
raised in an atmosphere of paranoic hatred for Catholicism. When he was only
six, a group of desperate English Catholics had tried to blow King, Lords, and
Commons sky-high; after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a fear and loathing of
Catholicism that was to last for many years swept England and formed the
background of Cromwell's childhood education....
Finally, in Cromwell's adult
years came the reports of the unspeakable atrocities committed by Irish
Catholics in 1641--reports that, as we have seen, were grossly overstated but
that seemed to establish irrefutably the unchanging nature of the evil that was
Catholicism.
B.
Antonia Fraser, Cromwell (New
York, 1973), pp. 334-36:
On 10
September [1649] Cromwell issued his first official summons to Sir
Arthur Aston to surrender [Drogheda] . . . having in his
own words brought the army belonging to the
parliament of England before this place to reduce it to obedience,
to end effusion of blood may be prevented... If this
be refused,’ he continued ominously, "you will have no cause
to blame me." Aston however refused to surrender. Cromwell' s white
flag was replaced by one of red, the colour of blood…
The rules of war of the time,
with regard to sieges, were clear. If a commander refused to accede to a summons
to surrender, and the town was subsequently won by storm, then
he put at risk the lives not only of all his men, but of all those who could be
held to be combatants. The significant
moment was when the walls were breached by the opposing side: thereafter quarter
could not be demanded. …a besieged commander often did well to hold out as
long as possible, unless he had some marked incentive to surrender. The rule of
no quarter once the walls were breached did provide this important incentive. It
was hoped that in the end lives would
actually be saved: garrisons would surrender quickly, sieges would be short, and
victories brief but not bloody. The rule was well understood at the time.
Therefore
when Aston [said] that "they were unanimous in their resolution to perish
rather than to deliver up the place, he was making a heroic boast which he might
well be called upon to implement. Nor was the civilian population of the town
necessarily protected from the rash consequences
of the commander's refusal to surrender....
Grotius
in De Belli ac Pacis, a work [on international law] first printed in
1625, that attempted to prescribe some limits to the vengefulness of war
as a result of the appalling slaughters of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48),
still postulated that it was lawful to kill prisoners of war, and
furthermore, that "slaughter of women and children is allowed to have impunity,
as comprehended in the light of war and 137th Psalm--'Happy shall he be that
taketh and dasheth thy children against the storm'.".... Taken all in all,
it was not a pretty age in which to be involved in a siege willy-nilly, and the
situation of the civilian inhabitants of Drogheda in September 1649
could at best be said to be highly exposed.
C.
Christopher Hill, "Political Animal," New York Review of
Books (9 June 1977), p. 40:
Cromwell's
Irish policy was not personal but national. When he crossed to
Ireland in 1649 the Irish revolt against English rule... had dragged
on for eight years. So long as it continued, Ireland offered a back-door to
foreign intervention against the regicide republic now isolated in monarchical
Europe... The government of the English republic decided that Ireland must be subdued
quickly. Hence the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford, for which Cromwell is
remembered in Ireland today.
D.
Christopher Hill, God's Englishman (New York, 1972), pp. 116-17,
121-22:
On 11
September [1649] occurred the sack and massacre of Drogheda. Virtually the whole
garrison, and all priests that were captured were slaughtered. Cromwell had
summoned the town, and warned its defenders of the consequences of prolonging a
hopeless resistance. Nevertheless, the savagery of the massacre was different
from anything that had happened in the English civil wars (except to Irish camp
followers): it recalled the horrors of the German Thirty Years' War. So the
massacre at Drogheda was followed by another at Wexford, which had long been a
thorn in the side of English traders as a privateering centre. Again
the town refused to surrender, and after an eight days' siege it was
sacked. Anything from 1500 to 2000 troops, priests and civilians were
butchered.
Something must be said about
Cromwell's attitude towards Irish Catholicism. The tolerance which is
so striking a feature of his religious thought of course applied only to
protestants…. Yet in England Cromwell was prepared in fact to tolerate
Catholics as well as Episcopalians: Roman Catholic historians agree that their
coreligionists were better off during the Protectorate than they had ever been
under James or Charles
I. But in Ireland it was different.... In
[Cromwell's] Declaration of December 1649 he
told the Irish Catholic priesthood that the mass had been illegal in Ireland for 80 years
before the rebellion of 1641, and that he was determined to
reinforce this law…. Technically, he
was right. But there had never been such a law-enforcing power in Ireland as his
army. Again we must refer, by way of explanation though not justification to the
political associations of Irish Catholicism, to the lead which the priesthood
and the papacy itself had undoubtedly taken in the
Irish revolt…. It was a political religion in a sense in which
Catholicism in England had ceased to be political.
E.
Maurice Ashley, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution
(London, 1958), p. 98-99:
After
securing Dublin, Cromwell at once marched north and laid siege to Drogheda. On
10 September he summoned the Royalist governor [Aston] to surrender…. But the
governor decided to fight it out, defended the breaches blown by Cromwell's
artillery, and twice repulsed the assault columns
with heavy losses. Cromwell himself led the third charge and
carried the town. In fulfillment of his warning, he gave orders that all those
found in arms in the town should be put to the sword. He himself estimated that
about 2,000 men were killed, but it was probably fewer.
After the fall of Drogheda...
Cromwell's main army turned south and besieged the port of Wexford that had long
been a nest of pirates. When this town was summoned, the governor at first
prepared to yield, but then, upon the receipt of reinforcements, changed his
mind. Later the castle was betrayed, but the garrison resisted desperately in
the streets of the town where there was much slaughter in which innocent
citizens were killed.
F.
Maurice Ashley, The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1966),
pp. 232-34:
Cromwell resolved to put the
[Drogheda] garrison to the sword primarily for military reasons: "Truly I
believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood," he wrote…. To
Sir Winston [Churchill] the atom bomb [in 1945] was a "miracle of
deliverance"; to Cromwell the slaughter of the Drogheda garrison was
"a marvelous great mercy,"….
It was
a grave and deliberate act of policy after full warning had been given (as at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and Cromwell explained it and defended
it as such. It
is necessary to set this story in perspective because it has so often been used
to picture Cromwell as a monster of cruelty, differing from other generals and
statesmen in English history, and secondly because it is frequently assigned as
a main reason for the poisoning of Anglo-Irish relations in modern times. In
fact, Cromwell's Irish policy--' wrong-headed as it may have been--was identical
with that of Queen Elizabeth I, James I, Strafford, and Pym. All of them
sponsored the colonization of Ireland by Protestant settlers. To the Puritans
Ireland was a nearer alternative to Massachusetts or Virginia and the natives as
capable of absorption or extrusion as the Indians.
G.
R.
F. Foster, Modern Ireland (Penguin, 1988), p. 102:
Cromwell's tactics were nothing
if not decisive. The tone was set by his massacre of the civilian population at
Drogheda--a town taken by Inchiquin [royalist general] but with no record of
Confederate support. Like the later horror at Wexford, it is one of the few
massacres in Irish history fully attested to on both sides…. Cromwell himself
affected to see no need for excusing or palliating
the actions of his troops, but his account betrays an uncharacteristically
uneasy tone. As with later wartime outrages, the argument was preferred that
such tactics saved lives in
the long run by acting as a scare tactic; but this, too, has the tone of an ex post
facto
rationalization. Certainly the supposed atrocities of
1641 were frequently invoked in
extenuation….
H.
Peter Young, Cromwell (B.T.Batsford, 1962), pp. 94-97:
The
Roundhead soldiers ranged through the streets in a mood no less savage than that
of their commander, killing not only the garrisons but many civilians with every
circumstance of horror…. It is
true that Trim and Dundalk were immediately abandoned, but later, at Waterford
and Clonmel, the garrisons, rendered desperate by this cruelty, held out beyond
all expectation. The defender of a
fortress who resists after a practicable breach has been made can only expect to
see his garrison slaughtered…. All warfare is designed to change the enemy’s
mind, to make him think he is beaten, to make him give up the struggle.
Atrocities can only be justified if they contribute to this end. The horrors of
Drogheda struck terror into Ormonde’s men for a time, but before many months
were past panic was replaced by grim resolution.
It is
easy to excuse Cromwell’s cruelty and short-sightedness by saying that his
policy was merely an extension of Tudor policy and of that laid down in 1642 by
the Long Parliament. Of what use are great men if they cannot rise above the
narrow prejudices of their generation? The truth is that at least two of his
contemporaries, Ormonde and Strafford, understood Ireland better than did
Oliver. Though it would have been far better for Ireland’s future and for
Cromwell’s fame had he never set foot on her shores, one thing at least he had
achieved: Ireland was no longer a potential base for a Royalist reconquest of
England.
I.
Brian E Blakeley and Jacquelin Collins,
eds. ‘Oliver Cromwell, Letter (September 17,1649) in Documents in British
History (McGraw-Hill, 1993), pp. 204-205:
For
the Honourable
William
Lenthall, Esquire, Speaker of the Parliament of England: These
SIR, Your Army came before the town upon Monday
following, where having pitched, as speedy course was taken as could be to frame
our batteries, which took up the more time because divers of the battering guns
were on shipboard. Upon Monday the 9th of this instant, the batteries began to
play. Whereupon I sent Sir Arthur Ashton, the then Governor, a summons to
deliver the town to the use of the Parliament of England. To the which I
received no satisfactory answer, but proceeded that day to beat down the steeple
of the church on the south side of the town, and to beat down a tower not far
from the same place….
Upon
Tuesday the 10th of this instant, about five o'clock in the evening, we began
the storm, and after some hot dispute we entered about seven or eight hundred
men, the enemy disputing it very stiffly with us. And indeed, through the
advantages of the place, and the courage God was pleased to give the defenders,
our men were forced to retreat quite out of the breach, not without some
considerable loss….
Although
our men that stormed the breaches were forced to recoil, as before is
expressed, yet, being encouraged to recover their loss, they made a second attempt,
wherein God was pleased [so] to animate them that they got ground of the enemy,
and by the goodness of God, forced him to quit his entrenchments. And after a
very hot dispute... our men became masters both of their retrenchments and the
church; which... proved of excellent use to us....
The
enemy retreated, divers of them, into the Mill-Mount; a place very strong and
of difficult access, being exceedingly high, having a good graft, and strongly
palisadoed. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable Officers
being there, our men getting up to them, were ordered by me to put them all to
the sword. And 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 2,000 men, divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the Bridge
into the other part of the Town, where about one hundred of them possessed St.
Peter's church-steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next
the gate called St. Sunday's. These being summoned to yield to mercy, refused,
whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter's Church to be fired, where one of
them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: "God damn me, God
confound me; I burn, I burn."
The
next day, the other two towers were summoned, in one of which was about six or
seven score; but they refused to yield themselves, and we knowing that hunger
must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until
their stomach were come down. From one of the said towers, notwithstanding their
condition, they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted, their
officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed,
and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all
spared, as to their lives only, and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.
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....
And
now give me leave to say how it comes to pass that this work is wrought. 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. And is it not so clear? That which caused your
men to storm so courageously, it was the Spirit of God, who gave your men
courage, and took it away again; and gave the enemy courage, and took it away
again; and gave your men courage again, and therewith this happy success. And
therefore it is good that God alone have all the glory.
It is
remarkable that these people, at the first, set up the mass in some places of
the town that had been monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent that, the
last Lord's day before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great
Church called St. Peter's, and they had public mass there: and in this very
place near one thousand of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for
safety. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head promiscuously but
two; the one of which was Father Peter Taaff, (brother to the Lord Taaff), whom
the soldiers took, the next day, and made an end of; the other was taken in the
round tower, under the repute of lieutenant, and when he understood that the
officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a friar; but that did
not save him....
J.
T.W. Moody and F.X. Martin, Course
of Irish History (Roberts Rinehart, 2001), p. 162.
When
that parliament had disposed of Charles [I] and abolished the monarchy in its
own favour, it turned its attention to Ireland. Its ingrained distrust of
Catholicism was inflamed by exaggerated reports of the brutality with which the
Ulster planters had been treated in 1641. And
when Oliver Cromwell landed at Dublin with a Puritan army in 1649, his mission
was not only conquest but also revenge. The indiscriminate inhumanity with which that revenge was
exacted upon the royalist garrison and many of the townspeople of Drogheda and
upon the defenders of Wexford, became indelibly impressed upon the folk memory
of the Irish resistance. But that
severity was not indiscriminate. Not
many were executed for their part in the rebellion.
Men in arms were treated leniently enough: they were allowed to emigrate
to the Continent, and more than 30000 took advantage of the opportunity.
The poor were left undisturbed: a general pardon was issued, and they
were able to resume their ordinary lives without fear of punishment. It was the
wealth of the land of Ireland that the government of England was interested in.
And it reserved its special fury for those who owned that land.
Your
Essay: Once
you have read these excerpts, write a paper analyzing the material found in
them, taking note of the different pieces of information that the various
excerpts supply. [Do this by indicating the proper passage with the letters
A-J.] Present your own account of Cromwell's Drogheda and Wexford campaigns,
placing them in context by including all background material that you find
essential for a clear understanding of the events in question. Consider the
following points, as well as any others that may come to mind:
a. Information on Cromwell the
individual: his background, his personal values and beliefs.
b. An examination of the
immediate political situation in 1649 that might explain both the Irish
and Cromwell's responses.
c. Insights into broad cultural,
religious and moral values of seventeenth-century European society that
contribute to attitudes toward warfare, i.e. the 'world-view' of that age.
d. Relevant historical
background information, developments in Ireland and
England--and on the Continent--before
1649 that might
have had an
impact on events, i.e. what was the overall setting in which these events
occurred?
e. Do you recognize any obvious biases on the part of the author that might affect his/her interpretation of the events? How do you handle those in your interpretation?
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