OCallaghan - To Hell or Barbados: the ethnic cleansing of Ireland

I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement 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.

Letter written by Oliver Cromwell after Drogheda (1649)

T HE C IVIL W AR in England was over. Many of the vanquished Cavaliers lay in jails and lock-ups, there to await transportation to Barbados. After the execution of Charles I and the ending of the monarchy, a new republic was established with Oliver Cromwell as first president of its Council of State. Its forty members were mainly merchants, with a sprinkling of lawyers and army officers.

Many problems faced the new Commonwealth. There was discontent in the country and problems with the army, including a mutiny in Banbury and at Salisbury among the troops destined for Ireland. This mutiny was quelled by Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had three of the ringleaders shot.

Cromwells greatest preoccupation, however, was with Ireland. Since the beheading of the king and resignation of the royalist lord lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, Earl of Ormonde, his greatest fear was that all classes of Irishman, Protestant and Catholic alike, would unite to invade England.

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 to put us to trouble here I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest; I had rather be overrun with a Scotch interest than an Irish; and I think of all this is 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.

This amply shows Cromwells frame of mind before leaving for Ireland. His fear was that the young Charles, who had been declared king in Scotland immediately after his fathers death, would land in Ireland, rally the people to the royalist cause and lead an invasion to England. In the summer of 1649 it seemed to Cromwell that Ireland had become a royalist state and the prospects of a successful English invasion of that country were receding with every passing day.

On 15 March 1649 the Council of State nominated him to command the troops for the invasion of Ireland. Cromwell hesitated for several reasons. In the first place his health had not been good since the previous Christmas, when he had a breakdown. He was also determined that he should have a free hand in Ireland and that the forces under his command would be properly equipped and provided for as he did not want soldiers to follow him out of personal loyalty. Finally, on 30 March, he accepted the nomination, saying that: It matters not who is our commander -in-chief if God be so.

All was now set for the invasion of Ireland and the reconquest of a country from the barbarous wretches who had spilled so much innocent blood in the rebellion of 1641. In 1641, eight years before his invasion of Ireland, the Irish rose in rebellion against the English and Scottish planters who had seized their lands during the Elizabethan plantations. The rebellion began in Ulster, which was the most heavily planted, and soon spread throughout the country until only Dublin and Derry remained in English hands. At the beginning of this rebellion only peasants took part, armed with pikes and pitchforks . They fell upon the settlers, killing men, women and children indiscriminately.

Sir John Temple, who was in Dublin Castle at the time the rebellion broke out, wrote in his History of the Horrid Rebellion in Ireland (1646): The crisis burst upon us with the suddenness of a violent torrent He claimed that the rebels, inflamed by Jesuits, did march on furiously destroying all the English, sparing neither sex nor age, most barbarously murdering them, and that with greater cruelty than was ever used among Turks or Infidels.