Eire_Emerald

When galway surrendered, it did not stop torie bands, somtimes numbering in many thousands of men, continuing to wage guerilla warfare in the hopes of getter better terms from parliament.Faced with an ongoing guerilla war, the parliamentarians tagetted the local catholic population. this period is where the majority of the atrocities took place. Cromwell had long left Ireland and Ireton had died shortly after Limerick.

The dividing line between civilians and soldiers becamse increasingly blurred.


As the New Model Army advanced westwards, they used a schorched earth policy, reducing large areas of the country to a state of famine. Their response was drastic, attack the agricultural inrastructure, slash and burn, kill cattle, steal cattle, drive out the peasents, insist that they not live within those areas and if they refuse, Kill them.

Hundreds of civilians were hanged in Tipperary alone, their only crime, to be found within an enemy zone. My mother comes from Tipperary and although she has no interest whatsoever in history, there is a lot of people aware of what happened there near 400 years.

Now that I look at it I do not know what I would have done to deal with the guerilla warfare the English were faced with.



Travellers in the countryside witnessed scenes of total devastation.

This is translated from Gaelic.
"What the first man expects is execution, and the last that costs will be awarded against him, all the English I can recollect istransport, trasplant. Shoot him, Kill him, strip him, tear him. A Tory, hack him, hang him, rebel, a rogue, a thief, a priest a papist..."


translated from Gaelic
" The War that finished Ireland, and left thousands begging, plague and famine ran together" Sean o Connell 1655 - 1659 Tuireamh na h Eireann








Ireland's population had been reduced by a quarter in the 4 years. It had in effect vecome a blank slate, upon which the Cromwellians could write whatever they chose.



as many as 40,000 native Irishmen went into voluntary exile, most never saw their native land again.


While the last of the war was being fizzled out, The English parliament put the finishing touches to an act for the settling of Ireland. It would be unlike any other piece of legislation Ireland had ever seen. Irish Catholic landowners, their families and dependants, were to be transplanted west of the shannon, coralled into an enclosed areas, sealed off from the sea from which they could no longer threaten their conquerers.


" To Hell or To Connaught "

i admire him that he kept his word in Clonmel but he had absolutley no choice, he had to keep his word.

Funny though how Ireton took mercy on Hugh Dubh O Neill and ironic that Hugh Dubh was on the same boat as the body of Ireton on his way to London Tower. Hugh Dubh would then spend the rest of his days in Spain.



I never knew this.Before the Cromwellian invasion 61% of the country was owned by the native irish, by the end of the war, that was down to maybe 9 - 10 %. that is an enormous tranferal of power which proves enduring until Parnell and michael davitt picked up their top hats in parliament.

The protestant Ascendancy had been established by Cromwell.

During the 1650s, thousands of Catholic women and children, many of them destitute and homeless, were shipped across the Atlantic to work on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. This trade in human cargo also served to clear the country of convicts. Estimates suggest that by the 1660s, as many as 50, 000 Irish had been transported to the new world.


"It is very easy for Cromwell to take the blame, but I worry because if you only blame cromwell you do not distribute the blame broadly enough.

Over 40% of the land tranferred owned by Catholics born in Ireland to Protestants born in England. That is not one man's doing, and it is not one man's responsability.

So if we move away from the obsession with what happened at Drogheda to the much broader question of the horendous long term consequences for the inhabitants of this island.

We need to place the blame more generally on the English and on all different types of groups within England"



I would look less to Drogheda and Wexford than to the whole war. The war was enormously costly in civilian lives who either died directly or indirectly as a redult of famine and famine related epidemics.

This famine was a result of the counter-insurgancy campaign, the long and protracted program of reconquest. Why was it so protracted? Because Cromwell insisted on unconditional surrender, and he did not have to do so. by insisting on uncoditional surrender it led to a very protracted war and in that sense i think there is a direct link between the severity of the war and the human cost __________________

PraiseGod_Barebones

Cromwell was a man of contradictions, he got rid of 'that man of blood Charles Stuart'...by removing his head, then went to Ireland and led his troops to Ireland to commit what was has been called a genocide.

Also he was a Parliamentarian who was a major player in the purge of 1648 that destroyed any semblence of democracy that existed at the time, who then dissolved this rump of a Parliament and became a much more absolute ruler than Charles ever became.

Effective though he was his lack of a good successor was a problem though at least as a result of this we got Charles II, a much underrated monarch.

Tudor chick

Sounds like you should be a new post about Charles 11?

gaius valerius

Cromwell lost the minute Charles his head popped off... up until then he had been a succesful leader, but the execution of Charles was his greatest mistake, at that moment Charles won the war and Cromwell lost, the next 10 years they were on the defensive.

Epictatus

After the Battle of Naseby Cromwell's men mutilated the wives of King Charles' Welsh Infantry...it is not only in Ireland that Cromwell is seen as a cruel tyrant and the Civil Wars as having a racist content.

gaius valerius

He wasn't any more cruel or (what?) 'racist' then many of his contemporaries. He was harsh.

Epictatus

Within the British Civil Wars there was elements of racism, particularly against the West Britons who were often massacred...three things occassioned this
a) religion
b) language
c) ethnicity
the West was 'catholic'; non-English speaking, Celtic in culture....
evidence
English and lowland Scots pamphets from the time held in the British Library...the treatment of the Welsh, Cornish and Highland Scottish by the English/Covenanter forces, the treatment of Ireland...this was race war as well as religious.

PraiseGod_Barebones

one only needs to look at some of the atrocity propaganda from after the irish rebellion to see their was would now be called racism quite prevelant, Irish being ape like etc.

Epictatus

In Scotland the Lowland Covenanter armies slaughtered the highland forces of Motrose. Cromwell's men comitted atrocities in Wales and Cornwall as well as in Ireland...the 'racism' was anti-West Briton....

Lord Nelson

Tony Blair's manifesto guru (but Blair forgot to advertise the God bit)