Oliver Cromwell – God’s Executioner?
This is my first attempt at a history blog post, and one might say that as an Irishman, the subject is a contentious one. Long villifed in Irish history for his conduct in Ireland in 1649, growing up in Ireland I only remember bad things about him. Since living in England I have heard a different story where the episode in Ireland is largely ignored and they (understandable one might say) concentrate on the good things that he did for England. Both histories are biased towards themselves. As GK Chesterton remarked,
the tragedy of the English conquest of Ireland in the 17th century is that the Irish can never forget it and the English can never remember it
.Why is he seen this way in Ireland? Is it fair? And what about the English? Should they look beyond what he did for England and see the effect he had on other countries and their relationships with them?
Note: this is not an in-depth analysis of the topic at hand and is merely meant to perhaps prompt a discussion on the matter.
Resources
The title of this blog post is taken from the book God’s Executioner – Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland by Micheál Ó Siochrú (ISBN 978-0-571-214846-2). I picked this book up in Waterstone’s one day, thinking that this would be a good book to refresh my Irish view of Oliver Cromwell, since its author is a lecturer in history at Trinity College, Dublin and has written extensively on 17th century Ireland.
I also recently read an article in February’s issue of BBC History magazine entitled Putting words into Cromwell’s mouth by John Morrill, a professor of British and Irish history in Cambridge and one of the world’s leading authorities on Oliver Cromwell.
Both of these of course draw in material from other resources, but since this is not an in-depth historical analysis I will not be providing a bibliography or references.
Cromwell in Ireland
God’s Executioner’s back cover summary highlights the massacre of thousands of soldiers and civilians by the New Model Army at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649 as ranking among the greatest atrocities in Anglo-Irish history. As a result of this, Oliver Cromwell is seen as a hated figure in Irish history, accused of war crimes, religious persecution and even ethnic cleansing. Even though he was only present in Ireland for 9 months, problems in England requiring his attention caused him to head back home, he somehow has managed to amass this terrible reputation that continues to this day.
However, I found the book itself didn’t really vilify Cromwell at all. The title in itself is very misleading as Cromwell’s actions within Ireland occupy only a short part of the book with the majority of the text concentrating on the internal politics on the Royalist side and the mistrust amongst its leadership. This in itself is a fascinating read and also shows how the Royalists heavily contributed to their own downfall.
But of course none of this is about Oliver Cromwell. The sections that are about him do of course talk about the infamous massacre at Drogheda but they also reveal some other details about the defenders of the town itself, which I don’t remember learning at school. They weren’t all Catholic Irish. There were Protestant Irish and English also defending the town and no distinction was made between them: they were all slaughtered. This of course shows Cromwell in an evil light, and understandably so. It looks like an example was being made of them, to show the rest of Ireland what they might expect should they take up arms against Cromwell and his New Model Army. In speaking about Drogheda, Cromwell is claimed to have said that the killings there constituted:
this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood
Comments such as these can only fuel the fire of Irish hatred towards Cromwell.
at Drogheda?
But is that fair? Cromwell is also said to have implicitly conceded that something terrible had happened at Drogheda, saying that without
the satisfactory grounds to such actions, the scale of the slaughter could not but work remorse and regret
. So he did have a conscience then and realised that nothing good can come of such actions and that this will perhaps only make the Irish more determined to hold out against him (which it proved to do).
There are also conflicting reports on whether civilians were involved in the massacre at Drogheda. That the killing was directed towards everyone who stood in the way, rather than singling out persons of a military persuasion. Since this cannot be coroborated, it seems harsh to take it as fact. Alas in Ireland at least, this seems to be what has happened.
Since most history accounts are written by the victors, they can tell you what they want you to know. However in this case both sides of the story have been recorded, but the different school curriculums tell their specific sides of it. Personally I would have preferred to have a non-biased account when studying at school, thus allowing us to make our own minds up, and I’m sure many English people would feel the same.
In history, great deeds usually have a darker side to them, and sometimes that darker side was a necessary evil.
Note: this article was first penned in May 2010.