rs was one of vengeance, for the horror of the alleged
massacre remained living in every English breast, and the revolt was
looked upon as a continuance of the massacre. "We are come," he said on
his landing, "to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been
shed, and to endeavour to bring to an account all who by appearing in
arms shall justify the same." A sortie from Dublin had already broken up
Ormond's siege of the capital; and feeling himself powerless to keep the
field before the new army, the Marquis had thrown his best troops, three
thousand Englishmen under Sir Arthur Aston, as a garrison into Drogheda.
Cromwell landed in Ireland on the fifteenth of August 1649; and his
storm of Drogheda in September was the first of a series of awful
massacres. The garrison fought bravely, and repulsed the first attack;
but a second drove Aston and his force back to the Mill-Mount. "Our men
getting up to them," ran Cromwell's terrible despatch, "were ordered by
me to put them all to the sword. And indeed, 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 death about two thousand men." A few fled
to St. Peter's church, "whereupon I ordered the steeple to be fired,
where one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: 'God damn
me, I burn, I burn.'" "In the church itself nearly one thousand were put
to the sword. I believe all their friars were knocked on the head
promiscuously but two," but these were the sole exceptions to the rule
of killing the soldiers only. At a later time Cromwell challenged his
enemies to give "an instance of one man since my coming into Ireland,
not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished." But for soldiers there
was no mercy. Of the remnant who surrendered through hunger, "when they
submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, every tenth man of
the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes." "I am
persuaded," the despatch ends, "that this is a righteous judgement of
God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so
much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of
blood for the future."

[Sidenote: Charles and the Scots.]

A detachment sufficed to relieve Derry and to quiet Ulster; and Cromwell
turned to the south, where as stout a defence was followed by as
terrible a massacre at Wexford. A fresh success at Ross brought him to
Waterford; but the city