Cromwell's Iron Hand

In spite of the strong alliance between the two sections of the Irish, there was but little severe fighting done anywhere in Ireland. King Charles, sorely pressed by his Puritan enemies in England, and learning that his army in Ireland was in a miserable state, was anxious to come to terms with the "confederates," as the combined Irish were called. At last his agents succeeded in persuading. them to make a truce of a year (1643). The lords deputies, who were favorable to Parliament, and their adherents, were removed from office; and Ormond, who was created a marquis, was appointed lord-lieutenant. A few months after, the truce was extended to two years longer. Each party continued to occupy the places in which the truce found it. The confederates agreed to give Charles 230,000, and to supply him with some troops for service in Scotland.

Soon after the trace had been concluded, however, serious dissensions broke out between the confederates themselves. One party, headed by Red Owen, still wished to break from England altogether, and to strike for Irish independence. The other party, composed mostly of the Anglo-Irish, desired to come to terms with the king, after securing freedom of worship and the peaceful possession of their lands. An envoy of the pope, Rinucini, came to Ireland, and gave his influence to the party which wished to make Ireland entirely free.

At the conclusion of the truce (1646), the conflict broke out anew. Red Owen inflicted a severe defeat upon Munroe, the Scottish general, at Benburb; and later, being joined by Preston, he marched on Dublin. The defenses of the city were weak; and news had reached Ormond, who was in command, that Charles had been surrendered by the Scots to Parliament. Many of the Puritan vessels were now cruising in St. George's Channel. Ormond declared that the royal cause was wholly lost. Meanwhile the two Irish generals, Red Owen and Preston, quarreled bitterly; and, fearing defeat, they raised the siege of Dublin. Ormond knew that to hold out any longer for the king would be futile. He therefore gave Dublin up to the friends of Parliament, and took refuge in France. The parliamentary forces promptly took the field to suppress the rebellion. Preston was defeated with a heavy loss at Dungan Hill, and soon after the Irish forces were again badly beaten at Mallow. The cause of the rebellion was fast losing ground.

The moderate, or Anglo-Irish, party once more made terms with the royalists, and turned against O'Neil and the friends of Irish independence. The royal cause was utterly defeated in England. It was resolved to make a last desperate stand for the king on Irish soil. Ormond returned from France; and Prince Rupert, the king's nephew, arrived at the port of Kinsale with sixteen men-of-war. A treaty of peace was concluded between the royalists and the Anglo-Irish under Preston (1649). Soon after the news that Charles had been beheaded reached Ireland. Ormond at once proclaimed the young king as Charles the Second. Three parties now contended for the upper hand in Ireland,—the champions of Irish freedom under O'Neil, the parliamentary or Puritan party, and the royalists allied with the Anglo-Irish. The latter party was also joined by the Ulster Scots, who were Presbyterians; for the Presbyterians in Scotland and England had now quarreled with the Puritans. At first the fortunes of war leaned to the side of the royalists and their confederates, Inchiquin took Drogheda, and Ormond laid siege to Dublin. It looked very much as if the Puritans would soon lose altogether their hold on Ireland.

At this serious moment, the English Parliament resolved that a most vigorous effort should be made, without delay, to crush out the Irish revolt. With this end in view, the most famous and most victorious general of the parliamentary armies, Oliver Cromwell, was chosen lord-lieutenant and general-in-chief of the English troops in Ireland. Cromwell had at his disposal a remarkable army. He had organized the parliamentary troops into one of the most effective military forces which had ever fought in Europe. With his sturdy Ironsides," as they were called, he had marched from triumph t > triumph, and had finally crushed the royal power at the battle of Naseby. It was the best portion of this formidable army which he now led to Ireland. The Ironsides were deeply religious, as well as heroic in battle; and Cromwell proposed not only to conquer, but to convert, the Irish. He carried the Bible in one hand, the sword in the other. With him went his stern son-in-law Ireton, his indolent son Henry, and the fanatical Puritan Ludlow.

Cromwell entered Dublin at the head of twelve thousand Ironsides. They were well equipped and well provisioned, and were supplied with Bibles, as well as with the deadly weapons of war. The royalists still held the strong hold of Drogheda, and Cromwell's first blow was struck at that place. Drogheda soon fell beneath the irresistible attack of the Ironsides. Cromwell had promised the garrison their lives; but no sooner did he find himself in possession of the town, than he put to the sword, not the garrison alone, but the inhabitants, even to the women and children. hive days were spent in this cruel and hideous massacre. It was by such barbarous methods that Cromwell resolved to stamp out rebellion in Ireland. The frightful carnage of Drogheda was soon succeeded by similar scenes at Wexford. The castle of Wexford was betrayed into Cromwell's hands; the guns of the fortifications were turned upon the devoted town; the garrison was mercilessly slaughtered in the streets; some of the townspeople, who tried to escape in boats, were drowned; and Wexford was given up to merciless pillage and outrage. It is said that two thousand of the garrison fell victims to the fury of the Ironsides.

The gallant Red Owen was now dead. The two Irish parties, which had joined to resist the English, had been rent asunder. The almost unparalleled atrocities of Cromwell created a wild panic of dread throughout Ireland. As the grim leader of the Iron-sides advanced through the country, the strongholds of the patriots and royalists fell easily into his hands. Cromwell, with all his cruelty, was strictly honest in his dealings. He paid for the supplies which the country folk brought to him, and thus his army was well fed and well clothed wherever it marched. Within a year he had dealt a death-blow at the resistance of the Irish. He returned to England to fight the Scots, leaving his son Henry as lord-lieutenant, and Ireton as commanding-general. The last stand made by the baffled and defeated Irish was in the western part of the island. There they still held out obstinately. Ireton, like Cromwell, was cruel and pitiless. Murder and desolation attended his every triumph. At last, with the fall of Galway (1652), the ten-years' revolt came to an end, and all Ireland lay once more bound hand and foot at England's feet.

Cromwell resolved to make the most of his conquest of the subject island. He proposed to reap the full fruits of his victory. He was determined that the Irish should never have a chance to rise again. At first, he even considered a plan for sweeping the entire Irish race from the face of the earth, and to re-people the island entirely with English and Scots. But this seemed, even to his grim soul, too barbarous a remedy.

The measures which he did take were stern and severe. Phelim O'Neil, Lord Mayo, and other leaders of the revolt were executed. At the same time a vast scheme of removing nearly the whole body of the Irish from the fruitful provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, into the inclement and far less fertile province of Connaught, was vigorously carried out. Not only the common people were thus transferred, but the lords, land-owners, and men of good family; not only the native Irish, but the Anglo-Irish also. Pieces of land in Connaught were given to the exiles. A date was fixed, before which every family must remove from its home, and repair to the place allotted to it in Connaught. It was decreed that the men should precede their families to their new and dismal homes; and, when they had built huts for them, the old men, women, children, cattle, and household goods were to follow.

Those of the Irish who failed to obey these harsh decrees were condemned to be executed. Not only this. They were forbidden to go into the city of Galway, or to approach within four miles of the sea on one side, or within two miles of the river Shannon on the other, on pain of death. The wretched, desolate regions of Connaught were soon swarming with the Irish, suffering and sometimes dying of cold and hunger. They found it no easy task even to get possession of the lands which had been allotted to them. It was only, often, by paying money to Cromwell's soldiers, that they were allowed to occupy their miserable patches. Then, in the spring (1654), one of the saddest spectacles ever seen on earth was witnessed in Ireland. Long trains of old men, invalids, women, children, ill-clad and gaunt with hunger, trudged wearily westward along the muddy roads, amid storms of rain and hail. Whole communities of the Irish thus abandoned their ancient homes, and reached their new abodes to live in dreadful want upon almost barren lands, or to die, as very many did, of unendurable hardships. The three provinces of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster were all but stripped of their Irish and Anglo-Irish population; and the Irish race was pent up, as in a huge prison, between the Shannon and the ocean.

THE IRISH EXPELLED TO CONNAUGHT.

Meanwhile, the soldiers who had taken part, either as patriots or under the royalist banners, were rigorously dealt with. The higher officers were sent into exile and deprived of two-thirds of their property. The lesser officers and soldiers were forced to give up what lands they had and to accept far less fertile lands in Connaught. Many of the soldiers resorted to the bogs and woods, where they became outlaws and robbers. These were called "Tories," which meant in Irish, "freebooters;" and this is the origin of the English word "Tory." But by far the greater number of the Irish soldiers went to the continent, where they enlisted in the French or Spanish army. It is said that more than forty thousand took this course. Meanwhile, an atrocious act was committed by Cromwell's agents. Seven thousand Irish women and children were seized, put on board ships, and sent to the West Indies. The boys were sold as slaves to the west-Indian planters, and the women and girls were destined to even a baser and more cruel end. Thus the way was prepared for a new plantation of Ireland by English colonists.