| Copyright | ||
|
Home Ireland under Tudors and Stuarts, 1485-1688 Part 4 |
Part 4In 1642 the situation was complicated by the outbreak of the Civil War in England, and affairs in Ireland became so entangled, owing to the variety of parties, that a brief summary is hardly possible. It is sufficient to say that Charles, in the course of the Civil War, made attempts to secure aid from the Irish, and that a few did come over; but otherwise nothing definite was done. Then, in 1649, when Charles was executed, all parties in Ireland combined, for a brief period, in order to secure the recognition of his son as king, as the prospect of rule by the "Rump" Parliament was detested by all alike.Consequently Cromwell was sent over to subdue Ireland. But before he arrived a Colonel Jones had defeated the combined army at Rathmines, and the Irish, till they could gather fresh forces, had to rely on their ability to hold out in their fortresses. Cromwell, however, quickly stormed Drogheda and Wexford (Cromwell put the whole garrison to death at Drogheda : "I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives'", he wrote. By the rules of war at that time the garrison of a place which had refused to surrender and was then stormed was liable to this fate. Cromwell, however, defended his conduct on the ground that the garrison had been concerned in the massacres of 1641 and that severity on this occasion would lead other garrisons to surrender at once. It may be doubted whether this severity had this result, and, as a matter of fact, no member of the garrison had been concerned in the previous massacres. Both at Drogheda and Wexford Cromwell put to death all the priests he could find, by knocking them on the head, as he himself put it), and before he left Ireland had obtained possession of the whole coast except Waterford. The conquest which Cromwell had begun his son-in-law, Ireton, completed, and by April, 1652, the whole of Ireland was subdued. The condition of Ireland at the end of this long period of warfare was pitiable. Over one-third of the population, it is estimated, died during these ten years of bloodshed and misery. Much of the land was out of cultivation, and a great deal of country depopulated. The inhabitants were further reduced, as thousands of Irishmen went to serve in foreign armies, and some hundreds of boys and girls were shipped to Barbados and sold to the planters. |
Chronology |
| copyright by uuo-ununoctium.info |