CHAP. I

THE QUESTION OF UNION

259

terms ought still to resist the forced imposition of a king upon them either by Ireland or by Scotland. In other words, the contest between the crown and the parliament had now developed into a contest, first for union among the three kingdoms, and next for the predominance of England within that union. Of such antique date are some modern quarrels.

CHAPTER II

CROMWELL IN IRELAND

66

It is not enough to describe one who has the work of a statesman to do as a veritable Heaven's messenger clad in thunder." We must still recognise that the reasoning faculty in man is good for something. "I could long for an Oliver without Rhetoric at all," Carlyle exclaims, "I could long for a Mahomet, whose persuasive eloquence with wild flashing heart and scimitar, is: Wretched mortal, give up that; or by the Eternal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! Thou blasphemous scandalous Misbirth of Nature, is not even that the kindest thing I can do for thee, if thou repent not and alter, in the name of Allah?"" Even such sonorous oracles as these do not altogether escape the guilt of rhetoric. As if, after all, there might not be just as much of sham, phantasm, emptiness, and lies in Action as in Rhetoric. Archbishop Laud with his wild flashing scimitar slicing off the ears of Prynne, Charles maliciously doing Eliot to death in the Tower, the familiars of the Holy Office, Spaniards exterminating hapless Indians, English puritans slaying Irishwomen at Naseby, the monarchs of the Spanish Peninsula driving populations of Jews and Moors wholesale and innocent to exile and despair-all these would deem themselves entitled to hail their hapless victims as blasphemous misbirths of Nature. What is the test? How can we judge? Dithyrambs are of no use. It is

CHAP. II

CROMWELL IN IRELAND

261

not a question between Action and Rhetoric, but the far profounder question alike in word and in deed between just and unjust, rational and shortsighted, cruel and humane.

The parliament faced the Irish danger with characteristic energy, nor would Cromwell accept the command without characteristic deliberation. "Whether I go or stay," he said, "is as God shall incline my heart." And he had no leading of this kind, until he had in a practical way made sure that his forces would have adequate provision, and a fair settlement of arrears. The departure of Julius Caesar for Gaul at a moment when Rome Iwas in the throes of civil confusion has sometimes been ascribed to a desire to make the west a drillground for his troops, in view of the military struggle that he foresaw approaching in Italy. Motives of a similar sort have been invented to explain Oliver's willingness to absent himself from Westminster at critical hours. The explanation is probably as far-fetched in one case as in the other. The self-interest of the calculating statesman would hardly prompt a distant and dangerous military expedition, for Cromwell well knew, as he had known when he started for Preston in 1648, what active enemies he left behind him, some in the ranks of the army, others comprehending the whole of the presbyterian party, and all embittered by the triumph of the military force to which instrumentally they owed their very existence. The simplest explanation is in Oliver's case the best. A soldier's work was the next work to be done, and he might easily suppose that the God of Battles meant him to do it. Everybody else supposed the

same.

It was August (1649) before Cromwell embarked, and before sailing, "he did expound some places of scripture excellently well, and pertinent to the occasion." He arrived in Dublin as Lord

66

Lieutenant and commander of the forces. After a short time for the refreshment of his weather-beaten men, he advanced northwards, some ten thousand strong, to Drogheda, and here his Irish career began with an incident of unhappy fame. Modern research adds little in the way either of correction or of amplification to Cromwell's own story. He arrived before Drogheda on September 3rd, the memorable date of three other decisive days in his history. A week later he summoned Ormonde's garrison to surrender, and receiving no reply he opened fire, and breached the wall in two places. The next day, about five in the evening, he began the storm, and after a hot and stiff defence that twice beat back his veterans, on the third assault, with Oliver himself at the head of it, they entered the town and were masters of the royalist entrenchments. Aston, the general in command, scoured up a steep mound, a place very strong and of difficult access; being exceedingly high, having a good graft, and strongly palisaded." He had some three hundred men with him, and to storm his position would have cost several hundreds of lives. A parley seems to have taken place, and Aston was persuaded to disarm by a Cromwellian band who had pursued him up the steep. At this point Cromwell ordered that they should all be put to the sword. It was done. Then came another order. "Being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town; and I think that night they put to the sword about 2000 men; divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other (the northern) part of the town." Eighty of them took refuge in the steeple of St. Peter's church; and others in the towers at two of the gates. "Whereon I ordered the church steeple to be fired, when one of them was heard to say, 'God damn me, God confound me; I burn, I burn.'" Of the eighty wretches in

CHAP. II THE DROGHEDA MASSACRE

263

the steeple, fifty were slain and thirty perished in the flames. Cromwell notes with particular satisfaction what took place at St. Peter's church. "It is remarkable," he says, "that these people had grown so insolent that the last Lord's Day before the storm, the protestants were thrust out of the great church called St. Peter's, and they had public Mass there; and in this very place, near 1000 of them were put to the sword fleeing thither for safety." Of those in one of the towers, when they submitted, "their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other tower were all spared as to their lives only, and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes." Even when time might have been expected to slake the sanguinary frenzy, officers in hiding were sought out and killed in cold blood. "All the friars," says Cromwell, were knocked on the head promiscuously but two. The enemy were about 3000 strong in the town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives." These 3000 were killed, with a loss of only sixtyfour to those who killed them.

66

66

Such is the unvarnished tale of the Drogheda massacre. Its perpetrator himself felt at the first moment when the heat of action" had passed that it needed justification. "Such actions," he says, "cannot but work remorse and regret," unless there be satisfactory grounds for them, and the grounds that he alleges are two. One is revenge, and the other is policy. "I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood in the future.' And then comes a theory of the divine tactics in these operations, which must be counted one of the