Cromwell, Drogheda and Legitimate Killing in Wartime

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-big-question-was-cromwell-a-revolutionary-hero-or-a-genocidal-war-criminal-917996.html

http://www.iisresource.org/Documents/KS3_Cromwell_Ireland_Interpretation.pdf

To save space, please get the general picture of this issue from the first article above, or a more detailed picture by reading both.

In 1649, just after the English Civil Wars, anti-monarchist leader Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland to put down an anti-English rebellion. England had exercised colonial control over Ireland since before the Norman invasion, but the Irish had rebelled in 1641. Cromwell arrived intent on putting Ireland firmly under English control with fire and sword, but questions concerning his willingness to apply them remain. Cromwell ordered two brutal massacres, but could they qualify as genocidal considering military standards of the time? English forces certainly committed genocide against the Irish people following Cromwell’s retaking of Ireland, but should Cromwell’s massacres be lumped in with these actions?

             About the fact that England committed genocide against Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century there cannot be any doubt (please see footnotes for details). I would argue that confiscating more than half a nation’s land, executing its political and religious elites and forcing its population into a tiny fraction of its area in order to break up its national pattern for ethnic and religious reasons qualifies as genocide. That being argued, the remaining question is whether Cromwell’s massacres should be considered part of it.

            Cromwell commanded two major massacres, both after sieges: Drogheda and Wexford. Wexford is an unsure case, as Cromwell claimed his troops killed the defenders after breaking through their defenses without his knowledge while he was involved in surrender negotiations, and will therefore not be discussed.

            After arriving in Ireland in 1649, Cromwell took his forces to the Royalist-and-Irish-Coalition controlled fortified town of Drogheda. His troops besieged the town, and after his artillery made breaches in their walls Cromwell offered the defenders a chance to surrender, which they declined. Cromwell’s forces assaulted and took the town, and executed all captives, including about 2,500 soldiers and 700-800 civilians. While this behavior seems barbaric by modern standards, it was not entirely out of line with military practice at the time. (See footnote)

This does not, of course, resolve the issue of the civilians. While in medieval sieges, civilians in stormed castles would be killed or enslaved along with their armed counterparts, and the practice continued intermittently through the seventeenth century, by this time it was no longer the rule. Furthermore, Cromwell was well known to harbor strong anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments (see footnote); does the combination of these two facts make this massacre genocidal?

I would argue yes; the irregular nature of these killings, their total lack of function aside from terror and Cromwell’s previously admitted anti-Irish bias points to their being motivated by ethnic hatred, and when taken in the context of English genocidal policy. Oliver Cromwell did liberate Britain from the autocratic yoke, but even (or especially) revolutionaries are capable of the worst crimes.

Further information:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4390

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland

Footnotes:

English genocide against the Irish:

IIres.org:

 “…the whole period 1649-58, [saw] the ruthless suppression of Catholic and royalist resistance, the execution, transportation, or imprisonment of substantial numbers of Catholic clergy, and the wholesale confiscation of Catholic lands.”

“In September 1653 the English parliament set aside four counties… for the government, and ten counties… for division between the adventurers and soldiers,”

“Petty reckoned that II million of Ireland’s 20 million acres had been confiscated.”

The Independent:

“Cromwell's forces ordered Irish Catholics to move to live west of the Shannon river only. The alternative to this forced mass population transfer was clear. The Irish were told "To Hell or to Connaught!" It was the greatest act of ethnic cleansing in the British Isles since the Norman Conquest. By the end of 1656 four fifths of the Irish land was in Protestant hands. When Catholics fought back, in guerrilla groups numbering some 30,000 Cromwell's generals forcibly evicted civilians who were thought to be helping the resisters and systematically burned the area's crops and killed all livestock. Famine followed, exacerbated by bubonic plague. Three years on, a fifth of the population had died.”

Siege warfare:

From the Middle Ages onward, castles dominated European warfare. No technology existed to effectively assault such defensive works, so wars often consisted of incredibly long, drawn out and expensive sieges, often lasting years. This immense risk to and investment by attackers led to diplomacy in these situations being very simple: the defenders could surrender and leave with their lives, or wait several years and be executed en masse. Although technology advanced greatly between the 13^th and 17^th centuries, military conducted remained similar in several respects, including siege etiquette. Thus, Cromwell’s execution of Drogheda’s garrison, while monstrous, was entirely legitimate by the standards of the day.

Cromwell quotations:

Concerning the Drogheda massacre: “this is the righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood”

Referring to the current conflict in a speech to his troops: “the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish and the rest of their adherents and confederates”