Talk:Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

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All comments are welcome, JD

Contents

[edit] Debate over Cromwell's actions

I have given the material on this its own section and added some more information. I have also moved info on the Sack of Wexford to its own article. My concern is that the narrative structure of this article was in danger of getting lost in controversey over some details, or alternatively, that the article would get too large.

Editors should be aware that Tom Reilly's provocative thesis that no civilians died in the sacking of Drogheda and Wexford is not generally accepted by historians. This does not mean that it should be discounted, but this artilce should not only express his view. Reilly has done some very detailed research on these two actions but his undertanding of the civil war period as whole - at least expressed in the opening chapter of Cromwell - an honourable enemy - is rather weak.

Jdorney 13:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi

OK - no civilians is implausible - but does Reilly say that? He argues that it cannot be shown that unarmed civilians died - which is different. it cannot be shown that Cromwell intended or ordered the deaths of civilians, indeed the evidence points to the contrary. Reilly appears to be the only historian who has actually dug deep into the evidence, and discounted a lot of it.

It isn't correct to imply here that civilians were massacred on Cromwell's orders.

"When Cromwell’s men took the town by storm, the majority of the garrison and some priests and civilians were massacred on Cromwell’s orders"

The edits were on the specifics of the 2 events so I don't see that Reilly's supposed weaknesses as general historian of the period, or his writing style come to that, are relevant.

Similarly

"At best, Cromwell and his officers were guilty of indiscipline in failing to stop the sacking of the town. 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, but the army was out of his control when they broke into the town."

If, as Reilly, has it Cromwell was in his tent when the army, unexpectedly, broke into Wexford it is hard to see how he can be guilty of "indiscipline", in some ways you could argue that the rank and file and junior officers showed commendable intiative and that was one of the things that made them so effective in the first place. - as you say the army was out of control. As with Wellington's army at Badajoz there was no stopping them, that is a fact of war. Cromwell wanting the garrison massacred and not evacuated is pure speculation - there is no evidence at all that he would not have stuck to the terms of the surrender that he was negociating with Sinnott

EA

PS I think the way you have handled my edits is fair overall - thanks. I would though put in a plea to have this extract from Cromwell's order in Dublin to be re-inserted, because it is clearly material

"I do hereby warn....all Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or violence toward Country People or any perons whatsover, unless they be actually in arms or office with the enemy.....as they shall answer to the contrary at their utmost peril".

English Achilles 16:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The above quotation is still there, it has just been moved to the "Historical Debate" section. Fair play to you for contributing, please continue to do so.

What Cromwell ordered at Drogheda was the masacre of the garrison and the Catholic priests. According to militaery custom at the time, this was a bit extreme, but not exceptional. It is true that he did not order the killing of civilians there, but as you say, it is just not plausible that none were killed in th sack. Doubtless many civilians were also killed at Badajoz in 1812, which was supposed to be a friendly city.

Re Wexford, the speculation is not mine, but James Scott Wheeler in his "Cromwell in Ireland". Wheeler suggests that Cromwell strung out the negotiations and tacitly approved of the assault on the town. Arguing that Cromwell is not responsible evades the issue a bit because as commander he had the responsability to control his troops. Sacking a town which was trying to surrender was a gross breach of military conventions, even in the 17th century. This shows grave indiscipline on the part of the New Model Army and its officers. Initiative as well perhaps, but certainly indiscipline. Wheeler (an American army officer if that makes a difference) argues that this was bad for the Army's own morale and efficiency.

To Cromwell's credit, he did fully respect surrender terms at Kilkenny and Clonmel, where his troops hd taken heavy casualties. However, this reflects as much on these town's ability to defend themselves as it does on Cromwell's generosity -i.e he would have faced heavy casualties in storming them.

Re Reilly, he is certainly not the only author to examine Drogheda and Wexford in detail - a list of others includes James Scott Wheeler, Ian Gentles, Antonia Fraser, Padraig Lenihan and there are more. By Reilly's own admission the garrison of Milmount fort inDrogheda surrendered on terms and were then killed - another gross violation of contemporary custom (there were no "laws" of war at the time) which were essentially that if a belligerent surrendered and this was accepted by another belligerent he who surrendered was entitled to protection. In siege warfare, if a fortified place fell to an assault, all bets were off, so to speak. If on the other hand, it was assaulted but not taken, it was in a position to negotiate good terms, e.g. Siege of Clonmel

Reilly has a view of Cromwell as democratic revolutionary and the royalists as reactionary bigots, which is fine, but is not accepted by almost any modern historians. This colours his perception of the war in Ireland, an essentially ethno-religious conflict where democratic ideology has little relevance. Where his apparent lack of understanding of the wars in general comes into it is his lack of understanding of the context in which the campaign of 1649-53 occurred.

Jdorney 16:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, Reilley is ONE author who is constantly cited as a defense of Oliver Cromwell. Having that absurdly large amount of opinion from Reilley in this post is like having Abraham Lincoln's page be filled with Di Lorenzo. Put more authors and historical light other than Reilley's opinion in here.

Furthermore, I find it amazing that Cromwell gets a pass on this article whereas the massacres of 1681 are called as such, massacres. Despite the fact that they were grossly over exaggerated. It's essentially saying catholic = bad, protestant = good. A gigantic bias if I've ever seen one.

Look, if you have further information, or sources, then contribute them to he article. The work of several historians has been included in this article and the facts have been represented in the mot comprehensive way possible in the space provided. For more on the Drogheda and Wexford massacres go to the articles that deal specifically with them.

Jdorney 08:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Reilley's opinion on Cromwell is exclusively presented in his defense. This is one author who taints the entire perception of Cromwell. I bring up Thomas Di Lorenzo and Abraham Lincoln as an example, again. Cromwell is simply given a free pass in this article and there is ONE author doing to the passing whereas many others disagree.

That's not true. Firstly, the facts have been presented as best they can be assembled here. That's all we can do. Secondly, a lot of historians argue that Cromwells sacking of Wexford and Drogheda, while horrifying in their own right, were not unusual actions by the standards of the day. Reilly takes it a step further in that he argues that they were not considered atrocities at the time and that no civilians were killed. This is not widely accepted by other historians.

Jdorney 10:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link

Is there a reason why one of the external links, Article Cromwellian conquest of Ireland from Military History magazine, is linking to the url that is? I cant see any reference to the Cromwellian conquest on this external url.

GD.

[edit] Puritans

Added that Cromwellians were Puritans, which worsened the anti-Catholic element of the war.86.42.206.28 12:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes

I removed the paragraph about the confederates being responsible for the cromwellian episode by failing to resist him. While this may be true, it doesn't really have any bearing on the debate over the actual conduct of the campaign.

I'm also not happy with the tone that has been inserted into the debate section. In reality, the majority of modern historians of the period see Cromwell's actions at Drogheda and Wexford as being horrific but not that unusual by the standards of the day. Reilly is unusual in that he claims that Cromwell never harmed any civilians at all in Ireland and that this was entirely a royalist inspired fiction. It is this claim that most other historians do not accept.

Re the references claiming the campaign was a genocide; first of all I feel they are highly cumbersome and make editing this section very difficult. In addition, many of them are asides from authors writing about other topics. Tim Pat Coogan, for example, has no specialist knowledge of the area and his comment seems to be an off-the-cuff remark. A few of the others are similiar and some of them contain basic and glaring errors of fact, for example, stating that, Cromwell's campaign was a respsone to an Irish rebellion of 1649 and that all the Irish had to live west of the Shannon. Both of these assertions are plain wrong. At most they show that Cromwell's campaign has lodged in the popular memory as a genocide. They don't tell us anything abotu the conduct of hte campaign itself.

Some of the other sources are better, for example describing the Cromwellian settlement as, 'close to ethnic cleansing' and appear to be supported by more facts. This I could accept.

Jdorney 15:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Rump

Since the conquest is generally called (including history texts) the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and not "The Rump's Conquest of Ireland", doing a search and replace on Cromwell and replacing it with "the Rump" is hardly reasonable. It would also make WP the only place (at least that I know of) to present it in that way. The role of the parliament should be expanded upon, no argument there, but this wasn't the way to do it. Hughsheehy 13:36, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't a search and replace so much as looking for instances where it was reasonable to replace Cromwell with the Rump given the context. I know it's known as the Cromwellian conquest, and given the wide usage the name of the article should probably stay, but the article should try to distinguish between things done by Cromwell specifically and things done by other commanders, or by the English regime in generally (remembering that he wasn't protector until December 1653). I certainyl didn't remove and replace all references by any means. Here's my rationale for each substitution (I suppose I should have put this here proactively, apologies for that).

  • Introduction - change 1. Here I think it's fair to make clear it was an English conquest by the Rump which had 3 different commanders, and that it was not just Cromwell's conquest. It was an invasion by the English government and the Rump at this point was the executive who ordered it.
  • Introduction - change 2. The second sentence in the intro I changed was that mentioning Cromwell's forces - I changed this to the Rump's force. Perhaps you have a point on this one - they're Cromwell's forces in the sense that he was commander-in-chief of the New Model overall (although not commander in Ireland past June 1650), but equally it's not unreasonable to describe them as the Rump's forces. In changing it I was trying to bring out the sense that it wasn't just Cromwell leading the forces throughout the campaign.
  • Introduction - change 3. The third sentence I changed was that saying "he passed a very harsh series of penal laws against Roman Catholics and confiscated almost all of their land". Cromwell didn't pass the Act of Settlement. The Rump did.
  • Fall of Galway. I changed it from "Cromwellian conquest" to "the Rump's conquest". Again this was to underline that it was a wider Parliamentarian conquest. But I can see how the original mirrored the article's title.
  • Section on the Cromwellian settlement. Original text was "Cromwell imposed an extremely harsh settlement on the Irish Catholic population". Again in the context of the 1652 Act this is inaccurate phraseology. I can see though that once you're into late 1653 onwards, as Protector Cromwell held ultimate responsibility for actions taken from that point - although there would need to be some discussion of Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell's roles as Lords Deputy.

I won't revert at this point because it's probably better for us to discuss and hopefully reach an agreement. Any thoughts? You're right though that the role of the Rump more generally - and correction of the tendency sometimes to assume anything in high politics done in England between 1649-53 was done by Cromwell - would be helpful, and I can have a go at doing this for the article if that would be useful. Thanks, Greycap 14:05, 5 September 2007 (UTC)