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Cromwell's Religious Emotion
- The Spirit in which he waged War - The Storming of Drogheda -
Cromwell's Reports - Anthony a Wood's Narrative - No Quarter given -
Ormonde and Owen Roe come to Terms - Death of Owen Roe O'Neill -
Coleraine taken by Coote - Belfast capitulates - Henry and Daniel
O'Neill in the South - Major Henry O'Neill taken Prisoner - "General
Farrell and his Ulsters" - Carrickfergus surrenders to Coote and
Venables.
"History," says Froude
(who cannot be accused of loving
the Irish), "ever eloquent in favour of the losing cause
history, which has permitted the massacre of 1641 to be
forgotten, or palliated, or denied has held up the storming
of Drogheda to eternal execration." In what way history
can be said to have forgotten the massacres of 1641 it would
be difficult to determine. Miss Hickson's two volumes contain evidence
and arguments on the subject never likely to
be forgotten. There is no doubt that Cromwell, in his desire
to "save much effusion of blood", spilled a great deal; but
it is difficult in our day, when the majority of mankind have
exchanged u a life of faith diversified by doubt" for one of
"doubt diversified by faith", to fully realize or heartily sympathize
with the spirit of a Cromwell the spirit of one who
believed himself the chosen instrument of God to be the
avenger of innocent blood. The spirit of religious toleration
was then unknown, and the war waged by Cromwell was
pre-eminently a religious war. The religious spirit pervades
and permeates even the records of the historians who chronicle
the events of the campaign chronicles in which no trace of
the bias which springs from sentiment should be visible.
Without cultivating a spirit of aloofness we must, in considering the
drama enacted at Drogheda, fraught as it is
with human emotion
... sit as God holding no
form of creed,
But contemplating all.
That the religious
element was everywhere prevalent is seen
in a statement by Cox, to which he draws special attention.
44 One thing", he says, "is very remarkable, and ought not
to be omitted, and that is, that though there were several
protestants in the town, yet were the popish soldiers so
insolent and so unjust to their protestant companions, even
in the midst of their adversity, that on Sunday the eighth
of September (the day before the attack) they thrust the protestants out
of St. Peter's church in Drogheda, and publicly
celebrated mass there, though they had monasteries and
other convenient places besides for that purpose." St. Peter's,
it must be remembered, was the church in the timber-constructed steeple
of which a party of about 100 perished
through Cromwell's ordering the building to be fired, the
Lord-Lieutenant himself reporting to the Parliament that
"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 1000 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
a 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."
Among the English
soldiers who were present at this
siege was Thomas, brother of Anthony a Wood, the well-known historian of
Oxford, whose reproduction of Thomas's
reminiscences Lecky held to be a "vivid and most authentic
glimpse of this episode of Puritan warfare", contributed by
an " accurate and painstaking writer". Mr. Richard Bagwell
dismisses "the stories attributed to Thomas Wood" because
they "rest entirely on hearsay evidence, and Thomas was
a noted buffoon". No student of English literature, however, can accuse
Anthony of levity, and, with all due deference to Mr. Bagwell, it is
scarcely likely, therefore, that he
would have chronicled his brother's utterances regarding his
experiences in Drogheda had he not implicitly believed them
to be true. He relates in his autobiography how Thomas
"would tell them of the most terrible assaulting and storming of Tredagh,
where he himself had been engaged.
"He told them that 3000
at least, besides some women
and children, were, after the assailants had taken part and
afterwards all the town, put to the sword on September 11
and 12, 1649, at which time Sir Anthony Ashton, the
governor, had his brains beat out and his body hacked to
pieces. He told that when they were to make their way up
to the lofts and galleries of the church and up to the tower
where the enemy had fled, each of the assailants would take
up a child and use it as a buckler of defence when they
ascended the steps, to keep themselves from being shot or
brained. After they had killed all in the church, they went
into the vaults underneath, where all the flower and choisest
of the women and ladies had hid themselves. One of these,
a most handsome virgin arraid in costly and gorgeous apparel, kneeled
down to Thomas Wood with tears and prayers
to save her life, and being stricken with a profound pitie, he
took her under his arm, went with her out of the church with
intentions to put her over the works to shift for herself, but
a soldier perceiving his intentions he ran his sword through
her . . . whereupon Mr. Wood, seeing her gasping, took
her money, jewels, &c., and flung her down over the
works."
It must not be forgotten
that Cromwell's soldiers "were
not soldiers merely: they had entered the service on the
understanding, that their wages were to be Irish lands. They
were to take the place of those among the native proprietors
who by rebellion had forfeited their holdings." They had
therefore the very best of reasons for exterminating their
opponents, otherwise they might not be able to hold in
peace such lands as they acquired in payment of their wages.
Rebel and royalist alike sank under the sword of Oliver
Cromwell.
A postscript to his
dispatch of the I7th of September,
giving particulars of the siege, contains a line to the effect
that: " Since writing of my Letter, a Major who brought
off forty-three horse from the Enemy told me that it's reported in their
camp that Owen Roe and they are agreed ".
This statement was a little premature, but it was true that
negotiations between Ormonde and O'Neill were in active
progress. Ormonde had recognized, after his defeat at
Dublin, that if he continued to oppose Cromwell he could
only do so with the active assistance of Owen Roe, and
accordingly he approached the Ulster chieftain, who undertook to supply
him with 6000 foot and 800 horse on condition
that Ulster should be included in the Peace and that O'Neill
himself should be general of that province. These terms
were agreed to, and in October Ulster troops to the number
of 1500 were sent under Castlehaven to the relief of Wexford,
then besieged by Cromwell ; but O'Neill was ill and unable
to lead them himself.
While encamped before
Londonderry, where he remained
about ten days after raising the siege on the 8th of August,
he was seized with illness, "an unexpected fit of sickness
in my knee", and was conveyed in a horse litter to Ballyhaise, in County
Cavan, on reaching which he ordered his
nephew, Lieutenant-General Hugh Duv O'Neill, to lead the
promised reinforcements to Ormonde. He was then carried
to Cloughoughter, a strong castle of the O'Reillys in Lough
Oughter, in Cavan, from which, on the ist of November,
he dispatched a letter to Ormonde. "Being now in my
death-bed", he wrote, "I call my Saviour to witness that,
as I hope for salvation, my resolution, ways, and intentions
from first to last of these unhappy wars tended to no particular
ambition or private interest of my own, notwithstand-
ing what was or may be thought to the contrary, but truly
and sincerely to the preservation of my religion, the advancement of His
Majesty's service, and just liberties of this nation,
whereof, and of my particular reality and willingness to serve
your Excellency (above any other in this kingdom), I hope
that God will permit me to give ample and sufficient testimony in the
view of the world ere it be long." He died on
the 6th of November.
The death of Owen Roe
O'Neill was commonly ascribed
to a disease of the foot caused by "a pair of russet-leather
boots" imbued with poison, with which he had been presented by one
Plunket of Louth, which he wore at a ball
given by Sir Charles Coote at Londonderry. Plunket, it
is said, boasted of the service which he had rendered to
England by thus dispatching O'Neill. It is not unlikely
that O'Neill's death was accelerated by the maledictions of
the Nuncio Rinuccini, who had excommunicated him. His
nephew, Daniel, indeed hints as much when he refers to
"the excommunication which has so troubled that superstitious old uncle
of mine in his sickness that I could render
him to no reason ". Daniel O'Neill was a native of Ulster
and a Protestant. The remains of the great general of Ulster
were interred in the old Franciscan monastery of Cavan,
of which no vestige now remains. By his contemporaries
he was held in high esteem for his " honor, constancy and
good sense", and the best testimony to his military skill
is the pronouncement of Marshal Schomberg's secretary,
who declared that "Owen Roo O'neale was the best general
that ever the Irish had".
Ormonde, on hearing of
the storming of Drogheda, hastily
retreated from his quarters round Trim towards Wexford and
Kilkenny, giving orders to the garrisons left behind to burn
and abandon Dundalk and Trim; but the garrisons, on
Cromwell's approach, fled in consternation, leaving all their
stores and ordnance to the enemy. Cromwell then set out
for Dublin, but before doing so, sent Colonel Venables to
co-operate with Coote and reduce the northern garrisons.
Venables, on the i8th of September, presented himself before
Carlingford, which contained the largest magazine in Ulster,
and soon reduced the fort, in which he found seven pieces of
cannon, about a thousand muskets, with forty barrels of
powder, and nearly five hundred pikes. He then marched
with a party of horse and dragoons to Newry, which surrendered without
resistance. In proceeding to Lisburn he
was surprised by 800 horse under Colonel Mark Trevor, who
nearly gained a complete victory; but Venables' men regained their
composure and Trevor was beaten off, and
Lisburn in consequence was taken. Belfast capitulated four
days after Venables appeared before it, and 800 Scots were
afterwards turned out of the town, "whither they had brought
their wives and children to plant themselves there". Coleraine
fell into the hands of Coote, who subsequently drove Sir
George Munro from the counties of Down and Antrim, and
by the end of November Carrickfergus, Charlemont, and
Enniskillen were the only considerable Ulster garrisons not
in the hands of the Parliament.
It is not our province to
accompany Cromwell on his
campaign through the south of Ireland, where his progress
was a series of successes Wexford, New Ross, Carrick-on-Suir, Kilkenny
yielding to his victorious arms, while Cork, Kinsale, and Youghal
declared for the Parliament, and joined
him but note may be taken of the actions in which the Ulster
forces took part. On the 25th of October, 1649, Cromwell
wrote from Ross an official communication to the Speaker, in
which he said: " Ormonde is at Kilkenny, Inchiquin in
Munster, Henry O'Neill, Owen Roe's son, is come up to
Kilkenny, with near 2000 horse and foot, with whom and
Ormonde there is now a perfect conjunction. So that now,
I trust, some angry friends will think it high time to take off
their jealousy from those to whom they ought to exercise
more charity." Which reference is to the jealousy exhibited
towards the Parliamentary party for having countenanced
Monck in his negotiations with Owen Roe. The dying Irish
general had commended, with his last breath, his son to
Ormonde, and had sent him with one of his favourite officers,
Lieutenant-General Farrell, to join him with 500 of the Ulster
army. Ormonde had both Henry and Daniel O'Neill serving
under him, and sent the latter in December with 2000 men to
Carrickfergus to reinforce Lord Montgomery of Ardes and Sir
George Munro, but they arrived too late. Castlehaven prolonged the siege
of Wexford by introducing 1500 Ulster foot,
and at New Ross, a week later, managed with Ormonde and
Montgomery to ferry 2500 men into the town in sight of the
irate Commander-in-Chief. On the i4th of November Cromwell wrote: "We
lie with the Army at Ross. . . . Owen
Roe's men, as they report them, are six thousand foot, and
about four thousand horse, . . . and they give out they will
have a day for it: which we hope the Lord of His mercy will
enable us to give them, in His own good time." In the same
letter the writer says: " From Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Con
naught, I had a letter, about three or four days
since, That he is come over the Bann, and hath taken Coleraine
by storm; and that he is in conjunction with Colonel Venables,
who I hear hath besieged Carrickfergus; which if through
the mercy of God it be taken, I know nothing considerable
in the North of Ireland, but Charlemont, that is not in your
hands."
From Cork a month later
the Speaker received an official
communication in which details of the difficulties encountered
were given, but there was "some sweet at the bottom of the
cup; of which I shall now give you an account. Being informed that the
Enemy intended to take-in the Fort of Passage,
and that Lieutenant-General Ferral with his Ulsters was to
march out of Waterford, with a considerable party of horse
and foot, for that service, I ordered Colonel Zanchy
[Sankey], who lay on the north side of the Blackwater, to
march with his regiment of horse, and two pieces of two
troops of dragoons to the relief of our friends. Which he
accordingly did; his party consisting in all of about three
hundred and twenty. When he came some few miles from
the place, he took some of the Enemy's stragglers in the
villages as he went; all which he put to the sword: seven
troops of his killed thirty of them in one house. When he
came near the place, he found that the Enemy had close begirt
it, with about Five hundred Ulster foot under Major O'Neil;
Colonel Wogan also, the Governor of Duncannon, with a
party of his, with two battering guns and a mortar-piece, and
Captain Browne, the Governor of Ballihac, were there. Our
men furiously charged them ; and beat them from the place.
The Enemy got into a place where they might draw up; and
the Ulsters, who bragged much of their pikes, made indeed
for the time a good resistance: but the horse, pressing sorely
upon them, broke them; killed near an Hundred upon the
place; took Three-hundred-and-fifty prisoners amongst
whom, Major O'Neill, and the officers of Five-Hundred Ulster
foot, all but those which were killed. . . . Ferral was come
up very near with a great party to their relief; but our handful
of men marching toward him, he shamefully hasted away, and
recovered Waterford."
From Cromwell's report
already quoted we learned that
Coote and Venables were besieging Carrickfergus, in which
General Thomas Dalziel held his own, bravely agreeing to
surrender on the i3th of December if not relieved earlier.
Montgomery of Ardes and George Munro marched to his
relief, but they were routed by Sir Charles Coote, "upon a
boggy pass on the plain of Lisnesreane", and Sir Theophilus
Jones, rising from Lisburn with a large body of cavalry, completed the
work, over 1000 being killed. Daniel O'Neill
arriving too late, Munro and Montgomery took refuge in
Charlemont, and Carrickfergus surrendered. |
