Oliver Cromwell - Gods Executioner (Ep1)
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00:00In August 1649, a fleet of over 100 ships, loaded with men, weapons and supplies, landed
00:18at Ring's End on the outskirts of Dublin.
00:21Sword of the Lord!
00:22And shield!
00:24It was one of the most powerful invasion forces England had ever assembled.
00:30Fire!
00:31Within four years, as many as 500,000 people, or 25% of the population of Ireland, would
00:38be dead.
00:39Fire!
00:42Proportionally, it was a worse disaster than the Great Famine of the 19th century.
00:48At the head of this force, known as the New Model Army, was Oliver Cromwell.
00:52To this day, Cromwell remains a dark silhouette against the blood-stained backdrop of Irish
01:00history.
01:02He stands accused of war crimes, religious persecution and ethnic cleansing on a dramatic
01:09scale.
01:09The English writer, G.K. Chesterton, said of Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, that it
01:18was a tragic necessity that the Irish should remember it, but far more tragic that the English
01:24forgot it.
01:25The human cost was enormous.
01:31Between one-fifth and one-quarter of the civilian population perished in the year 1649, 50, 51,
01:3852, and into 53.
01:40That is Cromwell's legacy.
01:44It's part of a cycle of violence, but the escalation of that cycle of violence has to
01:50be the biggest single reason why there has been problems between the communities here
01:56and between the islands of Britain and Ireland ever since.
02:01Cromwell inadvertently played a key role in the development of modern Irish nationalism
02:06as the shared experience of violent persecution and dispossession forged a sense of common
02:12identity among the Catholic peoples of Ireland.
02:17So who was this man?
02:19Why had he come?
02:20And what is the truth behind one of the most harrowing and controversial episodes in Irish
02:25history?
02:25We are come to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed.
02:38We come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels.
02:42We come by the assistance of God to hold forth and to maintain the luster and glory of English
02:49liberty in a nation where we have an undoubted right to it.
02:52Ireland, 400 years ago, a divided and troubled country.
03:20Since the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, the native Irish had resisted successive attempts
03:28by the English crown to control the island.
03:31The defeat of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, signalled the
03:38end of the old Gaelic political order.
03:40Queen Elizabeth's successor, James I, now adopted a radical policy that would dramatically alter
03:51the course of Irish history, the Ulster Plantation.
03:55Tens of thousands of English and Scottish Protestants migrated across the Irish Sea to Ulster, settling
04:07on lands that had previously been inhabited by native Irish Catholics.
04:11The descendants of the original Anglo-Norman settlers were known as the Old English.
04:24Like the native Irish, they had remained true to the Catholic faith.
04:31Both groups were determined to resist the English government's efforts to impose the Protestant religion.
04:38In the early 17th century, the English began to expand their territories across the globe.
05:08In North America, the Caribbean, and India.
05:12In many ways, Ireland acted as a laboratory for empire, enabling the English to test out new policies
05:17closer to home before exporting them overseas.
05:23The whole process of civilising Ireland was complicated.
05:30On one hand, it involved the use of force, sheer military power, to overcome and subdue Ireland.
05:38On the other, it involved exposing Irish people to English customs, habits, language, legal practices and, of course, the Protestant religion.
05:50Elizabeth's successor, King James, may well have hoped for the peaceful acceptance of his civilising mission by the native population.
06:00But colonial officials on the ground favoured a policy of discrimination and dispossession, which in turn provoked resentment and resistance.
06:09The English identity was increasingly associated with the Protestant faith and Irishness with Catholicism.
06:21The resulting ethnic and religious tensions threatened to tear the country apart.
06:27In 1625, James I died and was succeeded by his son, Charles I, who insisted on political and religious conformity throughout the three Stuart kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.
06:49His policies triggered a revolt by Scottish Presbyterians in the late 1630s.
06:56The success of the Scots inspired Irish Catholics to make plans for their own rebellion.
07:03On the 22nd of October 1641, Sir Phelan O'Neill, the leading O'Neill still resident in Ireland, seized Charlemagne Fort in County Armagh.
07:14Before long, he controlled most of South Ulster.
07:18It soon became clear, however, that Sir Phelan O'Neill could not control his followers.
07:30As law and order collapsed across the kingdom, the Irish Catholic population seized the opportunity to settle old scores.
07:38Protestants were attacked, robbed and driven from their homes, which in turn provoked vicious and indiscriminate reprisals from government forces.
07:48Get out of here! Get out of here! Get out of here!
07:55Get out of here!
07:57Get out of here!
07:59Soon there was a downward spiral into violence and massacre.
08:04In the coming months, thousands would be killed.
08:11One of the most notorious massacres took place at Port-a-Down in County Armagh,
08:17where over 100 Protestants were killed.
08:20The captives were driven six miles through the countryside until they reached the River Ban.
08:26The prisoners were driven into the water.
08:27And then and there were instantly and most barbarously drowned.
08:28The prisoners were driven into the water.
08:33And then and there were instantly and most barbarously drowned.
08:41And those that could swim and came to the shore, they knocked on the head and so after drowned them.
09:02Or else they were shot to death in the water.
09:18Elizabeth's five children were among the slain.
09:21Not long afterwards, she witnessed a strange apparition at the site of the massacre.
09:28There appeared a vision or a spirit, assuming the shape of a woman, standing upright in the water, waist high, her hair disheveled, very white.
09:49Her eyes seeming to twinkle in her head, and her skin as white as snow.
09:59This woman or vision divulged and often repeated the word, revenge.
10:14Revenge.
10:15Revenge.
10:16Revenge.
10:17When news of the rebellion reached England, the call for revenge was repeated.
10:35The Irish Rebellion 41 is one of the most traumatic events recorded in the history of Britain and Ireland.
10:42It's probably the biggest civilian massacre in the history of these islands, the whole archipelago.
10:48Probably 3,000 to 8,000 civilians are killed.
10:51But by the time the story reaches England, it's 100,000 civilians have been killed.
10:56Nothing like it's ever been recorded, ever known.
10:59It's completely unprecedented.
11:01And so it brings to Britain a reported scale of atrocity that's only otherwise known in Europe.
11:08And until now, we regard the British Isles as being shielded from just that kind of scale of horror and violence.
11:14And so the English feel as though something they've known as a nightmare from abroad is now on the edge of their shores and is coming their way.
11:22English propagandists published lurid and exaggerated accounts of the rebellion that bore little resemblance to reality.
11:31We need to realize that 1641 is the first year in which there is a free popular press.
11:39There is, in effect, newspapers.
11:42There are pamphlets pouring out which purport to be eyewitness accounts.
11:46There are woodcuts of grotesque violence which are more shocking than anything we'd see on our television screens nowadays.
11:55And the sheer novelty as well as the sheer horror of this gives an overwhelming sense that there's been one of the great atrocities of Western history taking place just over the Irish Sea.
12:08They reported as many as 150,000 deaths. In fact, about 4,000 Protestants had been killed and a further 8,000 died after being driven into the wilds in harsh winter conditions.
12:25The English may well have been shocked by reports of massacres, but the Irish had long and bitter experience of colonial violence.
12:33And not surprisingly, propagandists in London ignored the fact that thousands of innocent Catholics were killed by government troops during the early months of the rebellion.
12:48Like all Englishmen, Oliver Cromwell was horrified by reports of the 1641 rebellion.
12:55A burning desire to avenge the massacre of Protestant settlers provided the key motivation for his subsequent invasion of Ireland.
13:07An obscure landowner from the reclaimed marshlands of the Fens in East Anglia, Cromwell was extremely well connected through his extended family network.
13:32Cromwell comes from the top 3% of English society, but he sinks to near the bottom of that 3%.
13:45He's born with a fat silver spoon in his mouth stuck there by a rich uncle.
13:50But when Oliver's in his twenties, uncle goes bust and Oliver is broken socially and has to go and live as a working tenant farmer in the countryside, which counts as massive humiliation.
14:03We know that Cromwell's in trouble emotionally in the late 1620s.
14:07He goes to a famous doctor in London to be treated for acute nervous depression.
14:12And so you get some idea of somebody who is deeply melancholy, confused, feeling wretched.
14:19This is a ripe mental field for sowing with new ideas.
14:24Because one of the points of being born again as a Puritan in England is you get the idea that God has thrown you down in order to discipline you, just to raise you up for a great purpose.
14:35You know what my manner of life hath been.
14:42I have lived in a love darkness and hated the light.
14:50I was a chief, a chief of sinners.
14:57This is true.
14:58I hated godliness.
15:07Yet God had mercy on me.
15:12When he has a big religious conversion experience in the 1630s, he says, I must serve my God either by doing or by suffering.
15:22And I think he feels initially that he's called to witness to the God who has saved him by suffering.
15:29But once the opportunity comes, once he, against all the odds, becomes an MP, serves in parliament, he realises that God has called him not to serve by suffering, by doing.
15:40And from that moment onwards, he is absolutely convinced that he has been called to be the instrument of God's purposes.
15:46As a politician, he is seen as very headstrong.
15:52He isn't a learned man.
15:54The only book he ever cites in the whole of his hundreds of letters and dozens of speeches, the only book he ever cites is the Bible.
16:03And he cites it repeatedly.
16:05He obviously knows huge parts of it off by heart, but he isn't a bookish man.
16:10And therefore, when he speaks in parliament, the more sophisticated, learned people around see him as being a rather raw, unsophisticated man.
16:24Although preoccupied for the next few years with English politics, the unfinished business of Ireland was never far from his mind.
16:31When God raised his hand in vengeance to punish the Irish rebels, Cromwell would be there.
16:50While the rebellion of 1641 was to prove decisive in Cromwell's relationship with Ireland, it also acted as a clarion call for many of Ireland's Catholic exiles.
16:591642 saw the return to Ireland of the great general, Own Roe O'Neill, along with 300 experienced officers.
17:10These returning exiles were the rock on which native Irish hopes would stand or fall.
17:161944 said in a few years Class of the same year in the White House, the Irish nationalites were the most Podcast of Ireland.
17:20Are they?
17:222440 said in a few years old in the White House.
17:312040 said in two years, the Indian recreated for Ireland was a victim of the Jewish people become a woman's mother.
17:372040 said in one day, the Indian recreated for his children to be a man's father.
17:43...and I would like to thank the people of the Irish and the Arab people.
17:55Oenrow's task would not be an easy one.
17:58But then, fate dealt the Irish a lucky hand.
18:04In England, tensions between King and Parliament erupted.
18:09Charles I had instigated a period of personal rule during the 1630s...
18:14...creating deep divisions throughout England.
18:20Without a rebellion in Ireland at the end of 1641...
18:23...you would have had a great deal of political tension in England.
18:26But it could have been talked out, and it was being talked out slowly.
18:30What the Irish Rebellion does is produce an acute short-term crisis.
18:34It's not just that you have people now convinced...
18:37...that the world is falling to pieces around them...
18:39...prepared to jump in every shadow and every cock crow.
18:41It's that you have an urgent military need...
18:43...to raise a big army and send it to Ireland...
18:45...raising the critical question of who controls that army in England...
18:49...and what they might do with it once the Irish are crushed.
18:52The Irish Rebellion lit the fuse for the English Civil War...
18:55...one of the most divisive and destructive conflicts in the history of these isles.
19:01The Irish Rebellion
19:11The Irish Rebellion
19:13Blessed be the Lord my strength...
19:29...which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight...
19:35...my goodness and my fortress...
19:37...my high tower and my deliverer...
19:39...my shield and he in whom I trust...
19:42...who subdueth my people under me.
19:47Since the outbreak of the English Civil War...
19:49...Oliver Cromwell had risen rapidly through the ranks of the Parliamentary Army.
19:53Even though he had no formal military training...
19:56...Cromwell thrived in wartime...
19:58...where he excelled as a leader of men.
20:00Well, he clearly is an exceptional soldier...
20:03...and he's an exceptional leader...
20:05...and he seems to always communicate to his men...
20:09...that they are doing God's will...
20:11...that he, as it were, has been told by God what needs doing...
20:14...and if they follow him, they will succeed...
20:17...and because they believe him, they do succeed.
20:19I mean, he is just an extraordinary leader of man.
20:23Cromwell wanted an army unrestricted by local ties...
20:29...and staffed by highly disciplined, well-trained...
20:32...and suitably God-fearing men.
20:35He also preferred soldiers devoted, like himself, to Puritan ideals.
20:40The new model army had gradually developed...
20:43...into one of the most formidable, zealous and effective fighting machines...
20:47...in English history.
20:53Fighting between King and Parliament...
20:55...prevented the English from intervening decisively in Ireland...
20:57...where the Catholic forces made major gains.
20:59They established the Confederate Association...
21:01...effectively a self-governing state...
21:03...with its capital in Kilkenny...
21:05...which controlled most of the country.
21:07The Confederates faced three separate enemies.
21:09The Royalists under the command of a local Protestant...
21:11...James Butler, Marquess of Ormond...
21:13...the King's representative in Ireland.
21:15Protestant forces in Cork, loyal to the English Parliament...
21:19...and finally, a Scottish army sent to Ulster...
21:21...to protect the settler community.
21:23For the next seven years...
21:25...the Confederates fought all three for control of Ireland.
21:27By 1646, Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians...
21:31...had won the English Civil War.
21:33The cost? Over 80,000 soldiers had died in battle...
21:35...while Cromwell's own son, also called Oliver...
21:37...died in parliamentary service.
21:39Negotiations between King and Parliament...
21:41...failed to reach a settlement...
21:43...and when, in 1646...
21:45...the Confederates, the Confederates fought all three...
21:47...for control of Ireland.
21:49By 1646, Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarians...
21:51...had won the English Civil War.
21:53The cost? Over 80,000 soldiers had died in battle...
21:55...while Cromwell's own son, also called Oliver...
21:57...died in parliamentary service.
22:03Negotiations between King and Parliament...
22:05...failed to reach a settlement...
22:07...and when, in 1648...
22:09...Royalists renewed the war...
22:11...Cromwell and his supporters...
22:13...decided to take drastic action...
22:15...against this man of blood.
22:19Their decision turned the world upside down.
22:23After a brief show trial in January 1649...
22:27...Charles I was executed at Whitehall in London.
22:31Shortly afterwards, the institution of monarchy...
22:33...was formally abolished...
22:35...and replaced by the Commonwealth of England...
22:37...140 years...
22:39...before the guillotines of the French Revolution...
22:41...would start to fall.
22:43Throughout England...
22:45...there was a genuine outrage...
22:47...at what Parliament had done.
22:49And so, not for the last time...
22:51...a government under threat at home...
22:53...decided to wage war abroad.
22:55An overseas campaign would rally...
23:01...English nationalist sentiment...
23:03...on what better target...
23:05...than the hated Irish Catholics.
23:07There were other more practical reasons...
23:13...for an invasion.
23:15The seizure of Catholic-owned land...
23:17...would enable the Parliament to pay off its soldiers...
23:19...as well as those London merchants...
23:21...who had financed the war.
23:23What followed...
23:25...was one of the largest land grabs...
23:27...in early modern European history.
23:29It's now obvious...
23:31...that the enemies of Charles I of England...
23:35...would stop at nothing.
23:44In total...
23:45...12,000 soldiers disembarked...
23:47...with the largest train of siege artillery...
23:49...ever seen in the country.
23:51Cromwell could at last...
23:53...begin the reconquest of Ireland.
23:55Cromwell could at last...
23:57...begin the reconquest of Ireland.
23:58...
24:09Cromwell clearly shared the English sense of superiority over the Catholic Irish,
24:29and he quickly rallied the local Protestant population to his side.
24:33All whose hearts' affections are real, for the carrying on of the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish,
24:44for the propagating of the Gospel of Christ, establishing peace and truth,
24:49and restoring this bleeding nation to its former happiness and tranquility,
24:56shall find favour and protection from the Parliament of England.
25:03Catholic rebels could expect no mercy, but he assured the common folk that they would not be harmed.
25:10In fact, he hanged a number of his own troops for pillaging.
25:18At first, Cromwell enjoyed some success in this battle for hearts and minds.
25:23But within weeks, his relationship with the local Catholic population turned sour,
25:29as a result of one of the most controversial episodes in Irish history.
25:33Drogheda, the nearest royalist garrison, was only 30 miles from Dublin.
26:03Ormond and his commanders took the fateful decision to defend the town,
26:12hoping to stall the parliamentary advance long enough to regroup the shattered royalist forces.
26:17Sir!
26:18Having brought the army belonging to the Parliament of England,
26:32To be continued...
27:02I thought fit to summon you to deliver the same into my hands to their use.
27:07If this be refused, you have no cause to blame me.
27:11I expect your answer, and rest your servant.
27:21The Governor of Drogheda, Sir Arthur Aston, was an English Catholic and a veteran of the Continental Wars.
27:28He commanded a garrison of around 3,000 men, a mixture of English and Irish troops, Catholic and Protestant,
27:37and was confident he could hold the town until the arrival of a relief force.
27:47The scene was now set for one of the most tragic episodes in Irish history.
27:58Cromwell's siege guns opened fire on Drogheda.
28:07England and liberty!
28:08No contrary!
28:10No contrary!
28:11No bishop!
28:12No bishop!
28:13One king!
28:14King Jesus!
28:16Bow thy heads for the word of the Lord.
28:19Lord, we lay our souls in this matter at thy foot.
28:24Let us not be deceived, I humbly beseech thee.
28:30Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy children against the storm.
28:39Hallelujah, brethren!
28:40Hallelujah!
28:42Watch out!
28:43By the following day, two major breaches had been smashed in the town walls.
28:52On the 11th of September, 1649, Cromwell ordered a full assault.
29:00The defenders fought bravely, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy.
29:04But as parliamentary troops stormed through the breach, they fell back in disarray.
29:10Aston and his officers retreated to a fortified mound known locally as the Mill Mount, where they surrendered.
29:17But Cromwell ordered that none taken in arms be spared,
29:21and hundreds, including Aston, were butchered on the site.
29:24Give them no quarter!
29:31Give no quarter to any man who's hurt his arm!
29:34It's all for us to be sure we'll fuck them out of it!
29:37Give him no quarter to any man who's hurt his arm!
30:07In total, over 3,000 people died here at Drogheda,
30:21including most of the garrison and an indeterminate number of civilians.
30:25As many as 1,000 were killed in the vicinity of St. Peter's Church,
30:28where they had fled, seeking refuge.
30:30I ordered the steeple of St. Peter's Church to be fired,
30:44and one of them was heard to say, in the midst of the flames,
30:48God damn me!
30:49God confound me!
30:51I burn!
30:52I burn!
30:53The scale of the killing at Drogheda was simply unprecedented
31:00in the context of the British and Irish wars.
31:03And by Cromwell's own account,
31:05the casualties at Drogheda included many inhabitants.
31:08This is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches
31:14who have imbrewed their hands in so much innocent blood.
31:21And it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.
31:26That is the satisfactory ground for such actions,
31:35which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.
31:43A lot of what happened at Drogheda,
31:46the importance that's attached to it,
31:48I think arises paradoxically from Oliver Cromwell's own attempts
31:52to explain what happened.
31:54We see a man wrestling with his conscience,
31:56and winning.
31:57And it's this spectacle,
32:00which any biographer and admirer of Cromwell
32:02has to confront and deal with.
32:04And I think it's that.
32:05He talks about it a lot,
32:07and he tries to explain it.
32:09And that itself betrays, I think,
32:10an uneasy conscience about what did or didn't happen
32:13during that siege.
32:16The numbers killed, of course,
32:18are what you first note,
32:19and the fact that it's clearly civilians as well as soldiers.
32:24His justifications need to be looked at very carefully.
32:28On the one hand, rather chillingly,
32:29he says it's a just judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches
32:34that have been brewed at their hands in so much innocent blood.
32:37It's an act of vengeance for the massacres
32:39that have occurred years before.
32:42But it's really important we stress his second reason,
32:45which is to prevent the effusion of blood for the future.
32:48That's to say, he sees this as a way of terrorising the Irish
32:55into surrendering at his arrival.
32:57That will spare lives on both sides.
33:01It's very much the argument that the Americans use
33:04about dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
33:06And that's why the moral argument is complicated.
33:09What is obviously also complicated
33:13is why you need to do it twice.
33:14I mean, why drop the bomb on Nagasaki?
33:17Why allow the troops to run amok at Wexford?
33:24What is unique about Drogheda
33:26is the very large number of Protestants in the garrison
33:29and the fact that it's commanded by and large by Englishmen
33:33who have come over from the English Civil War
33:35and are fighting on in Ireland.
33:37And Cromwell is extraordinarily savage against these,
33:40which is why I cannot tell when Cromwell talks about
33:43the barbarous wretches in Drogheda,
33:46whether he's speaking about the native Irish
33:48and pinning Drogheda,
33:49which, after all, is a Protestant town
33:51of the Irish rebellion and vice versa,
33:53or whether he's speaking about these die-hard English
33:56who fought him right down the line,
33:58now still fighting him in another land.
34:01It is remarkable that Cromwell's greatest atrocity
34:04is against more people of his own religion
34:06and more people of his own nationality
34:08than any other engagement he fights in Ireland.
34:15Cromwell had made an example of Drogheda,
34:18but his policy of terrorising the Irish
34:20into a quick submission
34:21would eventually backfire spectacularly.
34:24Once the initial shock had subsided,
34:26the Irish would resolve to fight on.
34:29Why surrender to a man seemingly intent
34:32on wholesale slaughter?
34:33But for the moment,
34:36it appeared that nothing could stop
34:37the onslaught of the new model army.
34:48After Drogheda,
34:50Cromwell divided his army in two,
34:52sending 5,000 men into Ulster.
34:54He himself marched south with 7,000 men.
34:58His next target,
34:59the poor town of Wexford.
35:03He himself marched around.
35:06Jehovah, Cromwell!
35:08Jehovah, Cromwell!
35:10No bishops!
35:12No bishops!
35:13No potpourri!
35:15No potpourri!
35:17One king!
35:18Reports on events at Drogheda
35:20soon reach Wexford,
35:21where terrified citizens
35:22anxiously awaited news
35:24of Cromwell's advance.
35:26Wexford is of huge strategic importance to the Irish confederates during the 1640s because
35:33it was at Wexford and to a lesser extent at Waterford that the confederate fleet of privateers
35:39and a privateer is simply a licensed pirate were based. They were in the North Sea, they were in
35:46the St George's Channel, they were in the Irish Sea but above all they were at the mouth of the
35:51Thames and in the English Channel picking off English merchant ships. So they represented
35:57a major economic threat to Cromwell but they also represented a very real political and
36:03military threat. His priority had to be the elimination of that confederate navy at Wexford.
36:13The governor of Wexford, David Sinnott, acknowledged the fear now rampant in the town.
36:20I find no resolution of the townsmen to defend the town. To speak the truth nakedly, I find
36:26them rather inclined to capitulate than take conditions of the enemy. Such an impression
36:31they have of Drogheda.
36:35Cromwell immediately demanded the surrender of the town with the familiar dark threat attached.
36:43By this offer I hope it will clearly appear where the guilt will lie, if innocent persons
36:49should come to suffer.
36:54Sinnott desperately stalled for time, hoping for reinforcements. For a week he negotiated
37:00with Cromwell, sending presents of wine and beer to soften his mood. Unimpressed, Cromwell continued
37:07making preparations to storm the town. On the 11th of October, with little hope of relief,
37:17the Sinnott decided to surrender. But then disaster struck.
37:23During negotiations, the besieging troops gain control of a castle that's immediately adjoining
37:30the town of Wexford. From that castle, they then clamber over the walls of the town and
37:35to make their way into the town.
38:05There are many legends associated with events in Wexford on that day, including the story
38:33of over 300 women butchered here in the Bullring. What we do know is that many civilians perished
38:40in running street battles through the town.
38:54In total, some 2,000 soldiers and townspeople died. Of the inhabitants, Cromwell wrote,
39:02I believe scarce 1 in 20 can challenge any property in their houses. Most of them are run away
39:08and many of them killed in this service.
39:10The storming of Wexford happens while Cromwell and Cromwell's officers are in negotiation with
39:19the governor and townspeople about the surrender. And that's hard to explain away. Cromwell does so,
39:26to his own satisfaction, by invoking in divine retribution. God would have it so. But we,
39:33alas, must be less content.
39:39It does raise the question whether he just lost control at Wexford. It's possible he didn't want
39:47a second massacre, that one was enough. And the absence of any record of Cromwell's reflections on
39:55what he did at Wexford is obviously a queasy conscience. Either that he didn't want the English
40:01to meditate on a second massacre or he didn't want to own up to the fact that he'd lost control of his
40:07of his men. But certainly Wexford is more problematic in a way than Drogheda.
40:14Catholic clergy were deliberately targeted. As at Drogheda, a number were executed in cold blood.
40:21In some ways, Cromwell is an absolutely classic Puritan. He's a Puritan in the sense that he has
40:33a hatred of idolatry, which he associates both with the Anglican church and with the Roman Catholic
40:40church. He hates the Catholic clergy, who we think confuse people and confuse the Catholics and keep
40:47the scriptures from them.
40:57I meddle not with any man's conscience, but if by liberty of conscience they mean the liberty to
41:01exercise the mass, I judge a blessed to use plain dealing and to let them know that will the Parliament
41:07of England have power. It will not be allowed.
41:21Cromwell gave no specific order for the slaughter of Wexford's civilian population,
41:26but as commander-in-chief he must be held responsible for the excesses of his troops.
41:30Cromwell gave no specific order for the blood.
41:34Historians have argued that he was simply following the rules of early modern warfare,
41:39and in that sense should be excused from having the blame for the bloodlettings,
41:47especially at Drogheda and at Wexford, laid at his feet.
41:50In my opinion, there is no doubt that there was an excess used, and that he abused his position
42:01and allowed his men to act with unnecessary brutality.
42:08Despite his successes at Drogheda and Wexford, the hard fighting and harsh weather was taking its toll
42:14on the parliamentary army. The fate of Cromwell's campaign now hung in the balance.
42:19His forces were exposed to the elements and vulnerable to a royalist counter-attack.
42:24Cromwell faced the prospect of a difficult retreat to Dublin through hostile territory,
42:30unless he could cross the River Barrow, swollen by winter rains, and push on into Munster,
42:35to the Protestant-controlled towns of Cork, Yall and Kinsale.
42:39Ormond would never have a better opportunity to avenge the crushing defeats at Drogheda and Wexford.
42:47But the great general, after four decades of constant campaigning,
42:51his body, wracked by disease, was in fact dying.
42:55Oan Rho died on the 6th of November, 1649, at Cloughoughter Castle in County Cavan.
43:15His death was a crushing blow to the hopes of Irish Catholics.
43:34By his death, the enemy has grown strong and cruel.
43:38For now, the enemy does not fear the name of General Owen O'Neill,
43:45which not long before did sound like a thunderbolt in his ears.
43:50As long as he breathed life, we were to stand in possession of this land.
43:55Now all is whipped and snatched out of our hands.
43:59Oan Rho's nephew, Major General Hugh Dove O'Neill, now emerged from his shadow.
44:09Born in Spain, this veteran of the Continental Wars commanded 2,000 experienced soldiers of the Ulster Army.
44:17These troops would soon come face to face with Cromwell.
44:20The fate of Catholic Ireland rested in their hands.
44:26Arrive! Marshal!
44:46After the break, we conclude Cromwell, God's Executioner,
44:49as Oliver's army unexpectedly begins to founder,
44:52disease and bad weather prove to be more than a temporary setback,
44:55and the Irish start to feel victory is possible.
45:19A
45:26A
45:29F
45:30A
45:31A
45:31A
45:32A
45:33A
45:33A
45:34A
45:35A
45:37A
45:39pret
45:40A
45:41A
45:41A
45:43A
45:43A
45:43A
45:44A
45:45Transcription by CastingWords