Cromwellian conquest of Ireland: Encyclopedia - Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland with his New Model Army on behalf of the English Parliament in 1649. Since the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Ireland had been mainly under the control of the Irish Confederate Catholics, who in 1649, signed an alliance with the English Royalist party, which had been defeated in the English Civil War. Cromwell defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country - bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. He passed a very harsh series of Penal laws against Catholics and confiscated almost all of their land. The Parliamentarian re-conquest of Ireland was extremely brutal, and it is alleged that many of Cromwell's actions during the re-conquest would today be called war crimes and genocide. Cromwell is still a hated figure in Ireland. However, a recent book claims that many of the actions taken by Cromwell were within the then accepted rules of war, or were exaggerated or distorted by later propagandists¹. However only in Ireland did he pursue such ruthless actions, the most atrocious of the Civil War period. Cromwell's ferocious retribution for Irish actions earned him a reputation for cruelty. Debate over his impact in Ireland is lively².

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - The Battle of Rathmines and Cromwell’s landing in Ireland

By the end of the period known as Confederate Ireland in 1649, the only remaining Parliamentarian outpost in Ireland was in Dublin, under the command of Colonel Michael Jones. A combined Royalist and Confederate force under James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde gathered at Rathmines, south of Dublin, in order to take the city and deprive the Parliamentarians of a port in which they could land. Jones however launched a surprise attack on the Royalists while they were deploying on August 2, putting them to flight. Around 3000 Royalist or Confederate soldiers were killed in the subsequent rout. Oliver Cromwell called the battle, "an astonishing mercy", as it meant that he had a secure port at which he could land his army in Ireland, and that he retained the capital city. With Admiral Robert Blake blockading the remaining Royalist fleet under Prince Rupert of the Rhine in Kinsale, Cromwell landed on on August 15.

Ormonde's troops retreated from around Dublin in dissaray. They were badly demoralised by their unexpected defeat at Rathmines were incapable of fighting another pitched battle in the short term. As a result, Ormonde hoped to hold the walled towns on Ireland's east coast to hold up the Cromwellian advance until the winter, when he hoped that "Colonel Hunger and Major Sickness" (i.e. hunger and disease) would deplete their ranks.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - The Siege of Drogheda

Upon landing, Oliver Cromwell proceeded to take the other port cities on Ireland’s east coast, in order to secure an efficient supply of reinforcements and logistics from England. The first town to fall was Drogheda, about 50km north of Dublin. Drogheda was garrisoned by a regiment of 3000 English Royalist soldiers, commanded by Arthur Aston. When Cromwell’s men took the town by storm, the entire garrison and some civilians were massacred on Cromwell’s orders. Arthur Aston was famously beaten to death by the Roundheads with his own wooden leg. The sack of Drogheda was received with horror in Ireland, and is remembered even today as an example of Cromwell’s extreme cruelty. However, it had recently been argued (for example by Tom Reilly in Cromwell, an Honourable Enemy, Dingle 1999) that what happened at Drogheda was not unusually severe by the standards of seventeenth century siege warfare. See also: siege of Drogheda This view contradicts what has been established by a large number of modern professional historians such as Michael Burke, Peter Gaunt, John Morrill, Antonia Fraser and others. (see History Ireland)

Having taken Drogheda, Cromwell sent 5000 men north under Robert Venables to take Ulster from the remnants of a Scottish Covenanter army that had landed there in 1642. The Parliamentarians were joined by an army of British settlers based around Derry, commanded by Charles Coote.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Wexford Waterford and Duncannon

The New Model Army then marched south to secure the ports of Wexford, Waterford and Duncannon. Wexford was the scene of another famous atrocity, when Cromwell’s men broke into the town during negotiations and killed around 2000 of its inhabitants. On this occasion Cromwell did not order the killings, but his officers were guilty of in-discipline, at the least, for not stopping an attack on a town which was in the process of surrendering. At worst, it has been suggested that Cromwell turned a blind eye to the massacre because he did not want to let the garrison of Wexford be evacuated to fight him again. Arguably, Cromwell's sack of Wexford was ultimately counter-productive. Firstly, the destruction of the town meant that the Parliamentarians could not use its port as a base for supplying their forces in Ireland. Secondly, because of the example set at Drogheda and Wexford, the New Model Army had a far more difficult time in taking fortified towns after this point - as garrisons feared being killed even if they surrendered. Cromwell was unable to take Waterford or Duncannon and the New Model Army had to retire to winter quarters, where many of its men died of disease – especially typhoid and dysentery. (The port towns of Waterford and Duncannon eventually surrendered after prolonged sieges in 1651).

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Clonmel and the conquest of Munster

The following Spring, Cromwell mopped up the remaining walled towns in Ireland’s south east – notably the Confederate Capital of Kilkenny, which surrendered on terms. The New Model Army met its only serious reverse in Ireland at the siege of Clonmel, where its attacks on the towns walls were repulsed at a heavy cost. The town nevertheless surrendered the following day. Cromwell's behaviour at Kilkenny at Clonmel contrasted sharply with his conduct at Drogheda and Wexford. Despite the fact that his troops had suffered heavy casualties attacking the former two towns, Cromwell respected surrender terms that included guarenteeing the lives and property of the townspeople and the evacuation of armed Irish troops who were defending them. The change in attitude on the part of the Parliamentarian commander may have been a recognition that excessive cruelty was prolonging Irish resistance. Ormonde’s Royalists still held most of Munster, but were outflanked by a mutiny of their own garrison in Cork. The British Protestant troops there had been fighting for the Parliament up to 1648 and resented fighting with the Irish Confederates. Their mutiny handed Cork and most of Munster to Cromwell and they defeated the local Irish garrison at the battle of Macroom. The Irish and Royalist forces retreated behind the Shannon river into Connaught.

In May 1650, Charles II repudiated his father’s (Charles I) alliance with the Irish Confederates in preference for an alliance with the Scottish Covenanters (see Treaty of Breda (1650)). This totally undermined Ormonde’s position as head of a Royalist coalition in Ireland. Cromwell published generous surrender terms for Protestant Royalists in Ireland and many of them either capitulated or went over to the Parliamentarian side. This left in the field only the remaining Irish Catholic armies and a few diehard English Royalists. From this point onwards, many Irish Catholics, including their Bishops and clergy, questioned why they should accept Ormonde's leadership when his master, the King had repudiated his alliance with them. Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650 to fight the Third English Civil War against the new Scottish-Royalist alliance. He passed his command onto Henry Ireton.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Scarrifholis and the destruction of the Ulster Army

The most formidable force left to the Irish and Royalists was the 6000 strong army of Ulster, formerly commanded by Owen Roe O'Neill , who died in 1649. However the army was now commanded by an inexperienced Catholic Bishop named Heber MacMahon. The Ulster army met a Parliamentarian army composed mainly of British settlers and commanded by Charles Coote at the battle of Scarrifholis in Donegal in June 1650. The Ulster army was routed and as many as 4000 of its men were killed. In addition, MacMahon and most of the Ulster Army's officers were either killed at the battle or captured and executed after it. This eliminated the last strong field army opposing the Parliamentarians in Ireland and secured for them the northern province of Ulster. Coote's army there was now free to march south and pacify the west coast of Ireland.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - The Sieges of Limerick and Galway

Ormonde was discredited by the constant stream of defeats for the Irish and Royalist forces and no longer had the confidence of the men he commanded, particularly the Irish Confederates. He fled for France in December 1650 and was replaced by an Irish nobleman Ulick Burke of Clanricarde as commander. The Irish and Royalist forces were penned into the area west of the river Shannon and placed their last hope on defending the strongly walled cities of Limerick and Galway on Ireland's west coast. These cities had built extensive modern defences and could not be taken by a straightforward assault like Drogheda or Wexford. Ireton besieged Limerick while Charles Coote surrounded Galway, but they were unable to take the strongly fortified cities and instead blockaded them until a combination of hunger and disease forced them to surrender. An Irish attempt at relieving Limerick from the south was routed at the battle of Knocknaclashy. Limerick fell in 1651 and Galway the following year. Disease however killed indiscriminately and Ireton along with thousands of Parliamentarian troops, died of plague outside Limerick in 1651. See also sieges of Limerick and siege of Galway

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Guerrilla warfare famine and plague

The fall of Galway saw the end of organised resistance to the Cromwellian conquest, but fighting continued as small units of Irish troops launched guerrilla attacks on the Parliamentarians. These men were known as "tories" (from the Irish word toraidhe meaning, "pursued man"). They operated from difficult terrain such as the Bog of Allen, the Wicklow Mountains and the drumlin country in the north midlands. and within months, made the countryside extremely dangerous for all except large parties of Parliamentarian troops. Henry Ireton and John Hewson both mounted punitive expedition to the Wicklow mountains to try and put down the tories there, but without success. In response, the Parliamentarians destroyed food supplies and forcibly evicted civilians who were thought to helping the tories. The result was famine throughout much of Ireland, aggravated by an outbreak of Bubonic plague. As the guerrilla war ground on, the Parliamentarians designated areas such as county Wicklow as what would now be called Free-fire zones, where anyone found would be killed. In addition they began selling prisoners of war as slaves to the West Indies (especially Barbados, where their descendants are known as Redlegs).

This phase of the war may actually have been the most costly in terms of civilian loss of life.The combination of warfare, famine and plague caused a huge mortality among the Irish population. William Petty estimated the death toll of the wars in Ireland since 1641 as over 400,000 people, or about one third of the country’s population. Eventually, the guerrilla war was ended by publishing surrender terms in 1652 allowing Irish troops to go abroad to serve in foreign armies not at war with the Commonwealth of England. Most went to France or Spain. The last Irish and Royalist forces (the remnants of the Confederate's Ulster Army) formally surrendered at Cloughoughter in Cavan in 1653. However, low-level guerrilla warfare continued for the remainder of the decade and was accompanied by widespread lawlessness and banditry. Undoubtedly some of the tories were simple bandits, whereas others were politically motivated. The Cromwellians distinguished in their rewards between "private tories" and "public tories".

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - The Cromwellian Settlement

See Also: Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652 and Act of Settlement 1662

Cromwell imposed an extremely harsh settlement on the Irish Catholic population. This was because of his deep religious antipathy to the Catholic religion and to punish Irish Catholics for the rebellion of 1641, in particular the massacres of Protestant settlers in Ulster.

Anyone implicated in the rebellion of 1641 was executed. Those who participated in Confederate Ireland had all their land confiscated and thousands were transported to the West Indies as slaves. Those Catholic landowners who had not taken part in the wars still had their land confiscated, although they were entitled to claim land in Connaught as compensation. In addition, no Catholics were allowed to live in towns. Irish soldiers who had fought in the Confederate and Royalist armies left the country in large numbers to find service in the armies of France and Spain - William Petty estimated their number at 54,000 men. The practice of Catholicism was banned and bounties were offered for priests, who were executed when found.

The Long Parliament had signed the Adventurers Act in 1642, which said that the Parliament's creditors could reclaim their debts by receiving confiscated land in Ireland. In addition, Parliamentarian soldiers who served in Ireland were entitled to an allotment of confiscated land there, in lieu of their wages, which the Parliament was unable to pay in full. As a result, many thousands of New Model Army veterans were settled in Ireland. Moreover, the pre-war Protestant settlers greatly increased their ownership of land. See also: The Cromwellian Plantation Before the wars, Irish Catholics had owned 60% of the land in Ireland, whereas by the time of the English Restoration, when compensations had been made to Catholic Royalists, they owned only 20% of it. During the Commonwealth period, Catholic landownership had fallen to 8%. Also, even after the Restoration, Catholics were barred from all public office, including the Irish Parliament.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Long term results

The Cromwellian conquest completed the British colonisation of Ireland. It destroyed the native Irish Catholic land-owning classes and replaced them with colonists with a British Protestant identity. Irish Catholics did not become full citizens of the British state again until the 1830s and did not re-acquire significant land-ownership in Ireland until the late 19th century. The bitterness caused by the Cromwellian settlement was a powerful source of Irish nationalism from the seventeenth century onwards. A generation later, during the Glorious Revolution, Irish Catholics tried to reverse the Cromwellian settlement in the Williamite war in Ireland, where they fought en masse for the Jacobites. They were defeated once again.

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Notes

• Note 1: Tom Reilly, 1999, Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy ISBN 0863222501
• Note 2: The Journal History Ireland dismissed this view "His general thesis that Cromwell may well have had no moral right to take the lives at Drogheda or Wexford 'but he certainly had the law firmly on his side' does not stand up to examination." [1]

See also

• Wars of the Three Kingdoms
• Irish Confederate Wars
• British military history
• Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - External links

• Cromwell in Ireland from site on British Civil Wars
• Cromwellian conquest of Ireland from Military History magazine

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland - Main Sources

• Reilly, Tom, Cromwell, an Honourable Enemy, Dingle 1999
• Scot-Wheeler, James, Cromwell in Ireland, Dublin 1999
• Lenihan, Padraig, Confederate Catholics at War, Cork 2001.
• Ohlmeyer, Jane, Kenyon John (ed.’s) The Civil Wars, Oxford 1998.
• Canny, Nicholas P, Making Ireland British 1580-1650, Oxford 2001.

Categories: History of Ireland | English Civil War | Wars of the Three Kingdoms | Irish Confederate Wars | Guerrilla wars | War crimes

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