Cromwell's Irish campaign

Whirlwind military campaign conducted by the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell in Ireland August 1649–May 1650, following the victory of his Parliamentarians in the English Civil War (1641–49). He aimed to reassert English control over Ireland, where the Great Rebellion against Protestant English rule had erupted alongside the Civil War, and support for the Royalists had been high. The vengeful actions of Cromwell's army in Ireland, particularly the massacres at the battles of Drogheda and Wexford in 1649, have made his name synonymous with English oppression in the minds of Irish nationalists. His campaign effectively ended the military opposition to English parliamentary rule.

Background to Cromwell's campaign During the English Civil War the Gaelic-Irish Catholics and Norman-Irish landowners had sided with King Charles I against the forces of Parliament. In 1641 the Irish Catholics had risen up against the Protestant English planters who had been settled on confiscated Catholic lands during the Plantation of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Loss of their land was making the Irish Catholics economically weak in Ireland. Incidents such as the Portadown Bridge massacre in County Armagh, when Protestant planters were killed by Catholic rebels in November 1641, and the sending of soldiers to support the Royalist armies in England, had infuriated the Puritan Parliamentarians. When King Charles I was executed in 1649, Cromwell wasted no time in crossing the Irish Sea to exact revenge on the rebellious Irish.

Drogheda and Wexford, 1649 Cromwell took battle-hardened troops with him. Many were unpaid for their services in the previous years. The expedition to reconquer Ireland was financed by the merchants of the City of London, who expected a return on their investment in the form of Irish lands and property. In 1649 Cromwell laid siege to the southern garrison towns of Drogheda, County Louth, and Wexford, County Wexford. These had large contingents of rebellious Irish troops who had refused to surrender. When the towns did fall, Cromwell exacted a terrible punishment on the inhabitants. The entire garrisons of both towns were killed along with any Catholic priests who could be found. The killing was indiscriminate and left bodies and blood all over the streets. Many civilians were caught up in the massacre. Cromwell believed he had simply been doing God's work in punishing the unrighteous who had strayed from the true path to religious salvation.

Impact on Irish history The Irish paid a high price for choosing the wrong side in the English Civil Wars. The Old Irish and Anglo-Norman landowners who supported the rebellion in 1641 were stripped of their lands and sent to the province of Connacht, which had the poorest farmland in Ireland. Those who had supported the rebellion suffered the same fate. The choice facing the rebels was summed up in the phrase ‘(go) to Hell or Connacht’. The rebels could either die or move to Connacht.

The lands taken from the rebels were divided up among the unpaid soldiers who had taken part in the events of Drogheda and Wexford. The merchants of the City of London who had financed the expedition were given a large share of land and property, as well as the return on their investment. For the Catholic Irish the work of Cromwell in his few months in Ireland in 1649 advanced the loss of land caused by plantation more swiftly than at any previous time. From controlling 80% of the land of Ireland in 1640, the Catholic Irish had just 20% by 1688. This fundamentally altered the balance of power in Ireland by removing control of the main source of wealth and influence from the Catholic Irish and giving it to the Protestant planters.

Irish nationalists sum up their views of Cromwell's actions and the results of his policy with the phrase: ‘The curse of Cromwell’. For the Catholic Irish, Cromwell was a curse who destroyed their power over the country and left them unable to fight back or support themselves independently.