The Second Civil War had its counterpart in Ireland, where in May, 1648, Lord Inchiquin and the Munster Protestants threw off obedience to the Parliament and hoisted the royal standard. Ormond returned again to Ireland in September, 1648, and by January, 1649, he succeeded in uniting Anglo-Irish Royalists and Confederated Catholics in a league against the adherents of the Parliament. In vain Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio, opposed the league. The freedom and equality promised to the Catholic religion, the independence promised to the Irish Parliament, allured many even of the clergy to Ormond’s support. They called on the Irish soldiers to fight for God and C?sar under his banners, and engaged to supply him with an army of twenty thousand men. In February, 1649, Rinuccini left Ireland.
The King’s execution further swelled the royalist ranks; for whilst a portion of the Ulster Presbyterians openly declared for Ormond, and proclaimed 256Charles 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.
257“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 258danger 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 259three 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 260Catholic 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 261justice 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.
“It is not to be imagined,” wrote Ormond, “how great the terror is that those successes and the power of the rebels have struck into this people. They are so stupefied, that it is with great difficulty that I can persuade them to act anything like men towards their own preservation.”
Trim and Dundalk were abandoned by their garrisons, Ross opened its gates as soon as a breach was made in its walls, and Ormond’s English Royalists deserted in scores. But, in November, when Cromwell attacked Waterford, the spell was broken. Its stubborn resistance and the tempestuous winter weather obliged him to raise the siege, for the hardships of Irish campaigning had thinned his army, and a large part of it were “fitter for an hospital than the field.” Michael Jones, Cromwell’s second in command, died of a fever, and Cromwell himself fell ill.
Meanwhile, the inherent weakness of the coalition which Ormond had built up revealed itself. Between the Munster Protestants, whom Inchiquin had induced to declare for the King in 1648, and their Catholic Irish allies there was a gulf which no 262temporary political agreement could bridge over. Before Cromwell left England, he had opened secret negotiations with some of the commanders in Munster, and his intrigues now bore fruit. In October, Cork expelled Ormond’s garrison, and in November, Youghal, Kinsale, Bandon, and several smaller places hoisted the English flag. Thus, by the close of 1649, all the coast of Ireland, from Londonderry to Cape Clear, with the sole exception of Waterford, was in Cromwell’s hands: “a great longitude of land along the shore,” wrote Cromwell, “yet hath it but little depth into the country.”
The task of the next campaign was the extension of English rule inland. After wintering in the Munster ports, Cromwell led his army against the fortresses in the interior of Munster. Cashel, Cahir, and many castles fell in February, and Kilkenny, the seat of the Irish Catholic Confederation, capitulated at the end of March.
More and more the war became a purely national war between Celts and English. The last of Inchiquin’s Protestant officers made terms with Cromwell. On the other hand, the Ulster army of Owen Roe stood no longer neutral, and though Owen Roe himself died in November, 1649, his Celtic soldiers fought for the freedom of their race with unsurpassable courage and devotion. Owen’s nephew, Hugh O’Neill, defended Clonmel against Cromwell, and repulsed with enormous loss his attempt to storm it. The Ironsides confessed that they had found in Clonmel “the stoutest enemy this army had ever met in Ireland,” but though the garrison 263escaped by a skilful night march, the town itself was obliged to surrender (May 10, 1650).
By this time war between England and Scotland was imminent. Cromwell’s recall had been voted by the Parliament in January, and a fortnight after the fall of Clonmel he sailed for England, leaving his lieutenants to complete the conquest of Ireland. Ireton, who remained as President of Munster and commander-in-chief, captured Waterford (August 10th), but failed before Limerick, while Coote in the north defeated Owen Roe’s old army at Scarrifholis (June 21st). There was no longer any Irish army in the field, and the war became a war of sieges and forays. At the end of 1650, Ormond left Ireland in despair. His successor, Clanricarde,—distrusted and disobeyed as Ormond had been,—could neither unite the Irish factions for the last struggle, nor combine the scattered bands who still held out in their bogs and mountains. The nobility still clung to the House of Stuart, but the clergy turned for help to the Catholic powers, and offered to accept the Duke of Lorraine as Protector of the Irish nation, if he would come to their defence with his army. In June, 1651, Ireton again besieged Limerick, and after a siege of five months the city yielded to famine and treachery. Ireton himself died of plague fever in November, 1651, but his successors, Ludlow and Fleetwood, completed the subjugation of the country. Galway, the last city to resist, surrendered to Coote in May, 1652. During the year, the last Irish commanders capitulated, and their soldiers entered Spanish or French service.
264So ended the twelve years’ war. The contest had been unequal, but the failure of the Irish to regain their independence was due not so much to the greater strength and wealth of England, as to their own divisions. As a contemporary Irish poet wrote:
“The Gael are being wasted, deeply wounded,
Subjugated, slain, extirpated,
By plague, by famine, by war, by persecution.
It was God’s justice not to free them,
They went not together hand in hand.”
Ireland was devastated from end to end, and a third of its population had perished during the struggle. Plague and famine, said an English officer, had swept away whole counties, and in some places “a man might travel twenty or thirty miles, and not see a living creature, either man, or beast, or bird.” “As for the poor commons,” said another, “the sun never shined upon a nation so completely miserable.”
It was not very difficult for Cromwell and the English Republic to subdue a divided nation, but the task which lay before them now was less easy. It remained to effect a settlement which would secure order, restore prosperity, prevent future rebellions, and extinguish the feuds of race and creed. In the last years of the Republic and during the Protectorate, first under Lord-Deputy Fleetwood and then under Henry Cromwell, this reorganisation of Irish government and society was carried out. The main lines of the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland had been determined by the Long 265Parliament. In all essentials the parliamentary policy towards Ireland was simply a return to the traditional policy which, since the close of the Tudor period, all English governments had more or less consistently pursued. Colonisation, conversion, and the impartial administration of justice were the aims of Cromwell just as they had been the aims of Strafford.
The basis of the settlement was therefore a great confiscation of Irish land, and the substitution of English for Irish landowners. Parliament had announced this policy in 1642, when it voted that two million five hundred thousand acres of Irish land should be set aside for the repayment of the “adventurers” who advanced money for the reconquest of Ireland. The pay of the soldiers employed against............