and murdering on the pretext of fighting for or
against the king. Cromwell was determined to strike so terrible a blow
as would frighten Ireland into quietude. He knew that mildness would be
thrown away upon this people, and he defended his course, which excited
a thrill of horror in England, upon the grounds that it was the most
merciful in the end. Certainly, nowhere else had Cromwell shown himself
a cruel man. In England the executions in cold blood had not amounted to
a dozen in all. The common men on both sides were, when taken prisoners,
always allowed to depart to their homes, and even the officers were not
treated with harshness. It may be assumed that his blood was fired by
the tales of massacre and bloodshed which reached him when he landed.
The times were stern, and the policy of conciliating rebels and
murderers by weak concessions was not even dreamed of. Still, no excuses
or pleas of public policy can palliate Cromwell's conduct at Drogheda
and Wexford. He was a student and expounder of the Bible, but it was in
the old Testament rather than the new that precedents for the massacre
at Drogheda must be sought for. No doubt it had the effect at the time
which Cromwell looked for, but it left an impression upon the Irish mind
which the lapse of over two centuries has not obliterated. The wholesale
massacres and murders perpetrated by Irishmen on Irishmen have long
since been forgotten, but the terrible vengeance taken by Cromwell and
his saints upon the hapless towns of Drogheda and Wexford will never be
forgotten by the Irish, among whom the "curse of Cromwell" is still the
deadliest malediction one man can hurl at another.

Cromwell's defenders who say that he warred mildly and mercifully in
England, according to English ideas, and that he fought the Irish only
as they fought each other, must be hard driven when they set up such a
defense. The fact that Murrogh O'Brien, at the capture of Cashel,
murdered the garrison who had laid down their arms, and three thousand
of the defenseless citizens, including twenty priests who had fled to
the cathedral for refuge, affords no excuse whatever for the
perpetration of equal atrocities by Cromwell, and no impartial historian
can deny that these massacres are a foul and hideous blot in the history
of a great and, for the most part, a kind and merciful man.

Upon arriving before Drogheda on the 2d of September Cromwell at once
began to throw up his batteries, and opene