IRA: Um, Sorry About All Those Bombings and Dead People! Sorry, Sorry....

Yea, right. The Irish 'invited' the Brits in.

And all those young Irish lasses volunteered for indentured servitude to British masters in the American colonies......

Unbelievable.

L

Yea, right. The Irish 'invited' the Brits in.

Indeed they did. To be precise, an Irish king called Dermot MacMurrough, in 1168.

Every time that my Irish cousins welcome Bubba with open arms or lob bombs-I cringe. I find it hard to believe that we share the same genes.

I hear ya. Every time I hear someone make a disparaging remark about the Irish, I think of a bloated, drunken slob from Boston's most infamous crime family and find it hard to disagree with them.

To be precise, an Irish king called Dermot MacMurrough, in 1168. (Invited the Brits into Ireland.)

And old game. A Byzantine Greek faction invited the Turks to intervene in Greek politics during a dynastic dispute. Cleopatra's branch of the Ptolemaic royal family of Egypt invited Caesar's troops to intervene in their struggle for power. (The Romans were quite adept at injecting themselves in quarrels everywhere they wanted to expand.)

Haven't we worried in this country about the German-American Bund, the American Communist Party, and all the leftist Democrats who seemed enthralled by interests other than America's?

It would be nice if there was always unity against a foreign threat, but very often that doesn't happen.

And then they were invited to leave. Several times in fact.

Leave it to the Brits to completely miss the fact that they have utterly and completely worn out their welcome.

America, Singapore, China, India....the list just goes on and on and on.

L

Don't hold your breath.

While there is enough blame to go around in the 20th century to set up quite a match of finger pointing, the English almost never apologise to anyone, especially the Irish.

Too bad the conservatives in Ireland did not get involved early on in throwing off the yoke of English oppression. As it is, the socialist/left gets all the credit for freeing Southern Ireland.

The recent involvement of various IRA para groups with Islamic and drug terrorists is enough to turn the stomach of any right thinking person.

Pray for the island nation of Ireland. Pray for the liberation of the captive northern counties.

Sursum Corda

You two have to be the dumbest morons we have seen on this website. The Irish famine began with a blight of the potato crop that left acre upon acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared. Subsistence-level Irish farmers found their food stores rotting in their cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and Protestant landlords destroyed. Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in the clothes they wore when they died.

Landlords evicted hundreds of thousands of peasants, who then crowded into disease-infested workhouses. Other landlords paid for their tenants to emigrate, sending hundreds of thousands of Irish to America and other English-speaking countries. But even emigration was no panacea -- shipowners often crowded hundreds of desperate Irish onto rickety vessels labeled "coffin ships." In many cases, these ships reached port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease, hunger and other causes.

The Irish Famine of 1846-50 took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease, and changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland in profound ways. The Famine also spurred new waves of immigration, thus shaping the histories of the United States and Britain as well.

The combined forces of famine, disease and emigration depopulated the island; Ireland's population dropped from 8 million before the Famine to 5 million years after. If Irish nationalism was dormant for the first half of the nineteenth-century, the Famine convinced Irish citizens and Irish-Americans of the urgent need for political change. The Famine also changed centuries-old agricultural practices, hastening the end of the division of family estates into tiny lots capable of sustaining life only with a potato crop. In 1169, barely a century after the Norman invasion of Celtic/Saxon Britain gave rise to the entity of England, the expansionist feudal lords of England invaded neighboring Ireland, thereby beginning a history of Irish national resistance to foreign domination, now in its ninth century. For the first 450 years after the invasion, a Hibernicized Anglo-Irish aristocracy administered the area of Dublin and its surrounding "Pale" (the ring of land around Dublin within which the English were able to enforce their rule), while traditional Irish chieftains received feudal titles from English overlords, but maintained a semblance of native Irish society. Periodically the Irish clans rose in revolt against English domination, the last and most dramatic being the insurrection of the O'Neills of Ulster against Queen Elizabeth I during the 1560s. The failed rebellion contributed a host of aristocratic Irish emigres to France, and frightened the English sufficiently to cause them to seek more secure methods of controlling their colonial territory of Ireland.

In 1608, vast tracts of land in northeast Ulster were cleared of their native inhabitants in order to provide space for the "plantation" of English and Anglicized Scots. This undertaking included the annexation of six entire counties (the original six were Donegal, Tyrone, Cavan, Fermanagh, Armagh and Derry, but not include Antrim or Down, which are currently part of the six counties occupied by Britain), totalling over 600,000 acres. The native Irish were removed from all but 50,000 acres in the effected counties. A much smaller plantation attempted previously in the southern province of Munster, under Henry VIII, failed, but having learned from past mistakes, the Plantation of Ulster was to forever transform the course of Irish history. Whereas the English colonists came from the world's first Protestant regime, Ireland never experienced the Reformation. This simple fact gives us the shorthand still used today, "Catholics" meaning the native Irish people and "Protestants" to indicate the descendants of England's settler colonialists. The success of settler colonialism in Ireland proved a blow to peoples throughout the world-within 50 years, settler colonial invasions were planted at Jamestown in North America and Capetown in southern Africa.

Following the Plantation, England's intervention in Irish affairs reached intense levels, and remained there. Cromwell's Parliamentarian army of the English bourgeois revolution may have introduced regicide to the world stage, as Friedrich Engels claimed, but it brought only devastation to Ireland. Cromwell invaded Ireland with the war cry, "To Hell or Connacht," giving the Irish people the choice of withdrawing from their homes to the nation's barren province, or being killed. Connacht remains Ireland's richest reservoir of traditional culture and the Irish language, as Cromwell's troops permitted English colonists and English culture to penetrate throughout the rest of Ireland.

The restoration of the Stuart monarchy did little to alleviate Ireland's suffering under its colonial yoke, rather it set the stage for ever harsher developments. When civil war broke out between Catholic James II and Protestant Mary and her co-monarch William of Orange, James' troops retreated for a last stand in Ireland's Boyne Valley. The victory of William of Orange in Ireland is commemorated each year, up to the present, by Ulster's colonial descendants. That victory brought about the passage of the draconian Penal Laws. The Penal Laws all but outlawed Catholicism in Ireland, beginning an association in popular sentiment of that religion with Irish nationalism. They also deprived Irish Catholic landowners from leaving property to a sole heir, while allowing Protestant settlers to do so, resulting in native held estates being progressively subdivided into increasingly unviable economic units.

And as for your "hero" Cromwell.

The Irish rebellion Oliver Cromwell suppressed in 1649 was the later stage of an uprising that had been going on since 1641. On October 23, 1641, 40 years after the great rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, the Irish rose in revolt, first in Ulster, then later in the rest of Ireland. About 3,000 English and Scottish settlers were killed in the initial uprising. The numbers were inflated by Parliament to hundreds of thousands as a propaganda ploy to prevent King Charles I from making peace and using the Irish against Parliament during the Civil War.

The English forces initially were commanded by James Butler, Duke of Ormonde and lord lieutenant of Ireland. In 1645, however, with Parliament in control of England, the Duke of Ormonde took control of the rebellion and led the Confederacy, an alliance of all Royalists in Ireland. Others, such as Murrough O'Brien, Baron of Inchiquin, an Irish Protestant stationed in Munster opposed the Confederacy and laid waste to Munster, earning him the name Murrough of the Burnings and the hatred of his Irish countrymen. Owen Roe O'Neill, nephew of Tyrone and a "Wild Geese" veteran of the Spanish army, kept his Ulster forces separate from the Duke of Ormonde's, representing a purely Irish Catholic element.

The years 1647 to 1649 were pivotal for the rebellion. First, in 1647 the baron of Inchiquin switched sides for no apparent reason and joined the Duke of Ormonde. Second, Colonel Michael Jones landed with 2,000 troops, expelled the Duke of Ormonde from Dublin and defeated him at Rathmines in August 1649. That broke the Duke of Ormonde's power. All that was left to do was capture the strongholds still in Confederate or Irish hands. Oliver Cromwell set out for Ireland to do just that.

Cromwell faced a bitterly divided Ireland. Native Irish (Catholic), the "Old English" (the descendants of the original Catholic English colonists), New English (Protestant) and Scottish (Protestant), the more recent settlers, all distrusted one another almost as much as they did Cromwell, sometimes more so.

Cromwell's greatest obstacles were not Irish or Confederate troops but the nature of Ireland itself, where conditions were terrible and the climate is even wetter than in England. Plague and influenza proved more devastating to Cromwell's men than Irish arms.

Cromwell set sail for Ireland on August 13, 1649. He arrived in Dublin on the 15th and was greeted by the roar of cannons from the walls and a great, enthusiastic crowd. Cromwell was received so favorably because Dublin was the second city of the English empire and Colonel Jones had expelled all Catholics from the city.

The Duke of Ormonde left Sir Arthur Aston, an English Catholic, at Drogheda with 2,200 infantry and 20 cavalry to delay Cromwell from marauding farther north. Aston was well aware of Cromwell's superior numbers--8,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry--but he was confident that Drogheda's superior position would enable him to survive the Cromwellian onslaught even if he could not hope to take the Lord Lieutenant in the field--or, as he put it, "He who could take Drogheda could take Hell." He also expected war's partners, disease and famine, to weaken the (Protestant) Parliamentary army.

The geography of Drogheda was crucial to the siege. The town was totally contained within a formidable wall one and a half miles long, 20 feet high, and 6 feet wide at the base, narrowing to 2 feet on top. The main town lay north of the River Boyne. To the south, still within the impressive fortifications, was an additional urban area situated on a hill that had to be tackled first by any army coming from the south. In the extreme southeast corner, virtually embedded in the city wall, stood St. Mary's Church. From its lofty steeple the defenders not only had a fine view of the city but were in a good position to fire upon their Protestant attackers.

Flanking the church on the town side was a steep ravine called the Dale, then the heavily guarded Duleek Gate, the entrance to this southern outpost, and behind that an imposing artificial mound called the Mill Mount.

On September 10, Cromwell issued his first official summons to Sir Arthur Aston:

"Having brought the army belonging to the Parliament of England before this place, to reduce it to obedience, to the end the effusion of blood may be prevented, I thought it fit to summon you to deliver the same into my hands to their use. If this be refused you will have no cause to blame me."

Cromwell's Forces commence their bombardment of Drogheda

Aston refused to surrender, and Cromwell's cannons opened fire. The walls of the city began to crumble. Aston quickly realized that he was in danger. The (Protestant) Parliamentary fleet blockaded the harbor. The Duke of Ormonde could send no more reinforcements, his arms and provisions were running short. Worst of all, like all of Ireland, Drogheda was not united. Some of those inside the walls preferred the English Parliamentary force.

Knowing that there could be "no quarter" (no mercy) if he refused to surrender, Aston decided to fight on, writing to the Duke of Ormonde that his soldiers, at least, "were unanimous in their resolution to perish rather than to deliver up the place."

The (Catholic) defenders fought bravely, at first turning back the attackers, but eventually the Parliamentarians crashed through the walls and seized St. Mary's Church. Aston and some defenders fled to Mill Mount. Possessed by bloodlust, the Parliamentarians rushed up the hill, and all defenders, including Aston, were killed by order of Cromwell. The Parliamentarians swept through the streets with orders to kill anyone in arms. Against orders, civilians also were killed in the rush. Priests and friars were treated as combatants by Cromwell's Puritans and executed. Even more horrible was the fate of the defenders of St. Peter's Church in the northern part of the town; the church was burned down around them. By nightfall, only small pockets of resistance on the walls remained. When they managed to kill some (Protestant) Parliamentarians, Cromwell ordered the captured (Catholic) officers to be "knocked on the head" and every 10th soldier (Catholic) executed. Nearly 4,000 (Catholic) Confederates died at Drogheda.

Drogheda's being divided by the river caused some confusion and may have led to the massacre. When forces on one side of the river surrendered, it is alleged that Cromwell, still meeting resistance on the other side, ordered the annihilation of the entire population. "I do not think that thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives," Cromwell later wrote. The survivors were sold as slaves to the sugar plantations at Barbados.

Cromwell Leading the Storming Party at Drogheda
by W.R.S. Stott

After the massacre, Cromwell sought to explain his actions in a letter to William Lenthall, speaker of the English Parliament:

"...I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood, and it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remourse and regret...."

Arthur Wellesley (an Irisman), the famous Duke of Wellington, later said in Cromwell's defense: "The practice of refusing quarter to a garrison which stands an assault is not a useless effusion of blood."

The Duke of Ormonde tried to make excuses for not aiding Drogheda. He said that many of his officers and troops were on the verge of mutiny or were showing a lack of courage, so it was not wise to get close to the enemy. Ormonde later wrote to King Charles II: "It is not to be imagined the terror these successes and the power of the rebels have struck into the people. They are so stupefied, that it is with great difficulty I can persuade them to act anything like men toward their own."

When Owen Roe O'Neill heard of the massacre, he swore an oath that he would retake the town even if he had to storm Hell.

Cromwell set out for the south a fortnight after Drogheda. Winter was fast approaching and no time could be lost if the southern part of the island was to be subdued. He had to follow up before the scattered Irish forces recovered from the initial panic and joined in a stronger union.

Cromwell and his army encamped at the walls of Wexford on October 1, 1649. It was most important to capture that town, for it was through Wexford that the (Catholic) Confederates received their arms and kept in touch with supporters in foreign countries. He hoped the capture would be easy.

Ormonde also realized the importance of the place and sent 1,000 infantry and 300 cavalry to reinforce the garrison. The townspeople, however, did not trust the Duke of Ormonde. They remembered that he had surrendered Dublin a few years earlier; they knew he had recently made common cause with the (Protestant) Baron of Inchiquin; they remembered how he had massacred his own people earlier in the revolt. Their distrust was so strong that they initially refused entry to Ormonde's forces and did so only after the Parliamentary fleet arrived.

Cromwell himself admitted that Wexford was "pleasantly seated and strong." It had a rampart of earth 15 feet thick within the walls to improve its chances of withstanding a siege. It was garrisoned by more than 2,000 men. In the fort and elsewhere were nearly 100 cannons. In the harbor were three ships, one with 34 guns and two with 20. Since it was the middle of October, winter would soon be setting in, and sickness would soon take its toll on troops camped in the open. The Duke of Ormonde was camped 20 miles away at Ross, waiting for a favorable moment to strike.

The (Catholic) Confederates faced a disadvantage that negated the town's impressive fortifications, however: there was a traitor in their midst, Captain James Stafford. Had Stafford's treason not occurred, Wexford would no doubt have been a tougher nut to crack. On October 11, Stafford gave Cromwell entrance to the town. The scenes that followed mirrored those at Drogheda. Many Franciscans and other priests were killed. Three hundred women were massacred while standing at the cross in the public square. They had hoped that being near the cross would soften the hearts of the Christian soldiers. Instead it identified them as Catholics, and they were put to death. The churches were then destroyed. The total number of dead at Wexford was about 2,000.

After Wexford, the English Parliament sent Cromwell reinforcements and an enormous sum of money to buy off his (Catholic) English enemies in Ireland. Cromwell then marched on Ross. Two days after the summons, the town surrendered without a fight, although the Duke of Ormonde had sent 2,500 extra men into the town. The townspeople no doubt were frightened by the events at Drogheda and Wexford. Unable to prevent them from crossing the Barrow River, Cromwell granted terms: the inhabitants were protected from looting and violence, and the garrison was allowed to march away under arms. He turned down a request for freedom of worship, however.

About 500 men from the Ross garrison, mostly the (Protestant) Baron of Inchiquin's men, defected to Cromwell. The reinforcements were welcome, because the expedition was beginning to take its toll on him and his men. At Ross, Cromwell himself suffered from a mild form of malaria. The defection of the troops was a blow to the Duke of Ormonde. The ranks of the (Catholic) Confederacy were discouraged and disaffected. Ormonde wrote to King Charles II that only his presence could hearten his discouraged subjects.

In early November, the Irish cause suffered an even worse blow. The Earl O'Neill died of a mysterious illness. Some say the only Irish commander who could have taken on Cromwell head to head had been poisoned. Before he died, O'Neill signed a treaty with the Duke of Ormonde and sent some of his troops south, but after this severe setback Ormonde had to rely on withdrawal and evasion tactics.

After Ross, Cromwell built a bridge across the Barrow, advanced into Tipperary and captured the Duke of Ormonde's castle. He then joined his son-in-law, General Henry Ireton, at Duncannon. After some deliberation, most of the army was withdrawn from Ross and placed at a less fortified post to form a blockade around Duncannon to prevent supplies coming in from Waterford. That proved unnecessary, because Waterford refused to part with any of its own scanty provisions.

The commander of the fort, Thomas Roche, informed the Duke of Ormonde that there was no way he could hold the fort against Cromwell and that he would have to obey the summons. Ormonde promptly sent Colonel Edward Wogan, a defector from Ireton's ranks, along with 120 cavalry, to replace Roche. They arrived just in time to save the fort. They sent a defiant answer to Cromwell, and he abandoned the siege rather than pursue it in the winter.

Although Duncannon had a reprieve, the (Catholic) Confederates lost a more important place; the garrison at Cork revolted in favor of the Parliamentarians about the same time Cromwell was at Ross. The seeds of the revolt were sown before Cromwell's coming as Protestants sought to break the dominance of Catholics, especially the Confederates.

Cromwell sent agents to widen the differences. One of them was Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, a former royalist who joined Cromwell out of financial need. (A low man who betrayed is King.) Another Cromwell agent was Colonel Richard Townsend, who pretended to be angered at the execution of the king but who was trying to corrupt the Munster forces. Their activities quickly bore fruit. The Munster Protestants had nothing to hope for and everything to fear from the (Catholic) Confederates. Cromwell remarked that "if there had been a man like Boyle in every province, it would have been impossible for the Irish to raise a rebellion."

The result was that Broghill raised 1,500 infantry and a troop of cavalry from his family estates. Townsend led the (Protestant) English troops and citizens of Cork in driving out the (Catholic) Irish and declared the city for the English Parliament. The rising saved Townsend from being executed for hatching a plot to capture the baron of Inchiquin.

The revolt was a greater disaster for the Duke of Ormonde than the mere loss of Cork. The Irish complained that Ormonde showed favoritism to the English, and he was thus compelled to restore Roche at Duncannon. The rest of Inchiquin's English troops deserted, making the campaign a tribal war between Celts and English. Inchiquin was even accused of being a traitor. The accusation was false, but the damage was done, and he lost much of his already scant credibility.

With the capture of Drogheda and Wexford, the major strongholds on the east coast, and the possession of Cork, the first stage of Cromwell's Irish campaign was over. His task was clear: reduce the garrisons that still held out in Munster and bring that province under the rule of the English Parliament. The rising in Cork made that task simpler by widening the gap between the Irish (Catholics) and the Old English (also Catholics). Cromwell spent as much time on diplomatic maneuvering as he did on field operations.

As matters stood in mid-November 1649, the forces of the English Parliament held the east coast from Belfast down to Wexford, plus Cork in the west. Only a few towns in the north remained in Irish hands. Cromwell was still ill, so he sent Jones and Ireton to the county of Kilkenny to secure the garrisons there, cut the Duke of Ormonde off from Waterford and draw him into an open engagement.

The plan was not successful. The (Catholic) Confederates first retired to Thomastown, then to the fortified city of Kilkenny. Ireton sent Colonel Daniel Abbott to take the town, but Abbott found that the River Nore was flooded and the bridge at Thomastown was destroyed. Ireton and Jones had to be content with sending Colonel John Reynolds to take Carriek and returning to Ross with the main army. Weather had joined disease and famine in the fight against Cromwell.

Carrick soon fell, and Cromwell, now recovered from his illness, led his army across the River Suir to Waterford

The Duke of Ormonde lay with 10,000 men on the Kilkenny side of the River Suir opposite Waterford and the (Protestant) Parliamentarians. He sent the Baron of Inchiquin to try to recapture Carrick, but he failed. Cromwell had 7,000 at the beginning of the siege, but wet weather and plague reduced the number to 3,000. At that point, Ormonde could have stopped him. Again, Ormonde's army did not come into play, because of the same disunity that plagued the Irish at Drogheda and Wexford. His army was seen by most Irish as an alien force, just as offensive as Cromwell's. Cromwell sought to exploit this feeling in his summons to Waterford on November 21, 1649. His warning was similar to those given to Drogheda and Wexford, but the result was different. Hunger and disease had taken such a toll on Cromwell's force that eventually he was compelled to retreat.

Cromwell came out of winter quarters at the end of January 1650 and began the conquest of southern Ireland. He offered terms of surrender at the city of Fethard on February 2. Officers, soldiers and priests would be allowed to march away, and the townspeople would be protected from looting. The town of Cashel surrendered without a fight, and Cromwell turned his army on Callan, a city defended by a strong wall and three castles. He attacked with cannons, took two of the castles, put their defenders to the sword and accepted the surrender of the third.

Next Cromwell turned to Cahir, commanded by the Duke of Ormonde's half-brother, Captain George Mathews. When Mathews refused the first demand to surrender, the Parliamentarians tried to scale the walls. A force of Catholic Ulstermen repulsed the attack, but Cromwell brought up his cannons. Mathews realized he could not hold out and surrendered under terms Cromwell agreed to--that the officers, soldiers and clergymen be allowed to march out.

Cromwell pushed on, taking the towns of Kiltenan, Dundrum, Ballynakill and Kildare. He and other Parliamentarians next converged on Kilkenny, headquarters of the Confederacy. He summoned Kilkenny on March 22, 1650:

"My coming hither is to endeavour, if God so please to bless me, the reduction of the city of Kilkenny to their obedience to the state of England, from which, by an unheard of massacre of the innocent English, you have endeavored to rend yourselves."

Sir Walter Butler, governor of Kilkenny and a cousin of the Duke of Ormonde, responded that he would maintain the town for the King. The city was not in good shape, however. Hundreds of the garrison died of plague, and reinforcements had deserted. Nearby Cantwell Castle surrendered to Cromwell. Ormonde and the Supreme Council had long since fled.

Nevertheless, Cromwell found it not so easy to take the town. The city was divided by the River Nore into two parts, Kilkenny proper and Irishtown. A plot to betray the city was discovered, and a Captain Tickell was executed. Butler refused to surrender, and an attack beginning on the 24th at Irishtown was first repulsed, but ultimately succeeded. Butler again refused to surrender, and the Parliamentary attack continued on the 25th. Hours of bombardment caused a breach in the wall of the town proper. Two attacks by the (Protestant) Parliamentarians were repulsed, and a third order to attack was not obeyed, but Butler soon decided that he'd done all he could do and surrendered.

Upon payment of 2,000 pounds sterling, the citizens of Kilkenny were protected from looting, and the officers and soldiers were allowed to march out disarmed for two miles. The clergymen also were allowed to march out.

For some weeks after Kilkenny, Cromwell did not take an active role in operations; instead he directed them, first from Carrick, then from Fethard. He realized that Ormonde was at the end of his resources. On the east coast, only Waterford was not in English hands, and on the west coast the plague-devastated city of Galway. Limerick refused to admit any forces not dominated by the Catholic clergy. Furthermore, the Catholic bishop of Derry was making arrangements with foreign princes to transport several thousand fighting men out of Ireland.

On the combat side, the baron of Inchiquin tried to invade Limerick, but was routed by Broghill. Broghill then joined Cromwell at Clonmel after beating back an invasion of County Cork by David Roche.

By the end of March 1650, there was little to do except to take Clonmel, Waterford and Limerick and reduce the scattered Irish remnants, since the last major Confederate commander besides Ormonde, Inchiquin, was negotiating with Cromwell.

Cromwell's next objective, Clonmel, was commanded by General Hugh Duffy O'Neill, "Black Hugh," who, like his uncle, Owen Roe O'Neill, had previously served with the "Wild Geese" in the Spanish army. At his command were 12,000 troops, mostly (Catholic) Ulstermen and all but 50 of whom were infantry. Ormonde promised to send aid but did not. It was in Black Hugh that Cromwell met his greatest adversary in Ireland.

Cromwell arrived at Clonmel on April 27, a month after Kilkenny. There is no evidence that he summoned the city to surrender. Supplies were running low when he arrived and, as in other places, there was treason to aid Cromwell's effort. A Major Fennell accepted 500 pounds sterling from Cromwell and opened the gates to 500 Parliamentarians. But Black Hugh had some of his uncle's savvy. He discovered the plot and arrested Fennell, who confessed on promise of a pardon. The 500 English Parliamentarians were slaughtered by the Ulstermen.

This was not the beginning Cromwell desired. On April 30, he brought up the guns and began the bombardment. On May 9, the English Parliamentarians poured through a breach--and right into a trap. O'Neill had made breastworks, with a masked battery, 80 yards from the breach. The Irish fired chain shot from their cannons, and the troops maintained a continuous fire from the breastworks. Stone and timber also were hurled at the attackers. More Parliamentarians came in, only to be killed. Finally, the Parliamentarians withdrew with a loss of 2,500 men. Cromwell lost more at Clonmel than he had in all the other battles in Ireland put together. Some speculate that Cromwell would have lost even more men if the promised reinforcements had arrived.

In the end, the Parliamentarians took Clonmel not by force of arms but the lack of supplies and the ineptitude of the Duke of Ormonde. The fact that Hugh O'Neill and his men managed to sneak out of town during the night before Clonmel fell also doesn't say much for Cromwell's vigilance.

Less than a month later Cromwell returned to England, which was facing a threat of invasion from Scotland, which had declared for the exiled King Charles II (a Celt ... a Stuart). He left Ireton in command. The war in Ireland continued on the Duke of Ormonde's forlorn hope that Charles II would come in from Scotland, but, for the most part, the Irish effort had degenerated into bands of guerrillas known as Tories. Two months after Clonmel, Bishop Hebere Mac Mahon led an Ulsterman army of Catholics against Sir Charles Coote, against the advice of Henry O'Neill ... Owen Roe's son. The bishop was captured, hanged, drawn and quartered on the order of Coote and Ireton. The bishop had appealed to Owen Roe O'Neill to spare Coote at the siege of Derry several years earlier. Ireton captured Waterford on June 21 and tried but failed to take Limerick. Coote narrowly defeated the remnants of Owen Roe O'Neill's army at Scariffhollis. At the end of 1650, Ormonde left Ireland and was replaced by the Earl of Clanridarde, who was just as despised as Ormonde and could not unite the factions. Ireton again tried to take Limerick in June 1651, and after a siege of five months, the city, under the command of Black Hugh O'Neill, yielded. Ireton died of the plague in November, but Edmund Ludlow and Charles Fleetwood completed the subjugation. Both of them later became Lord Lieutenants of Ireland. Galway, the last city to resist, surrendered in May 1652. The war that had begun in 1641 was over, and more than 616,000 people died in the 12 years of the war.

No, your "hero" Cromwell has nothing to apologize for that he is not burning in hell for as we speak...

You anti-Irish-Catholic bigots need to get your facts straight before you break wind again...

You anti-Irish-Catholic bigots need to get your facts straight before you break wind again ...

Gee, with a post such as yours, there's no wind left.

By the way, Cromwell offered quarter at Drogheda under the then-prevailing rules of war. It was refused. All very unpleasant from a 'presentism' perspective but something you Hollywood historians routinely omit.

Pardon me if I am again 'bothering' you and your soft sensibilities and adamantine 'analyses'.

You don't liberate your people and nation by saying "Please" to your colonizers.

Sinn Fein!

Yeah, rise up and embrace terrorism to further the cause.

Osage, Crow, Nez Perce, Washoe, Chumash, Kiowa, Creek, Shawnee, Arapaho, Comanche . . . !

When does Great Britain issue it's apology for all the starving women and children caused by the potatoe famine?

Why not let the people of NI decide by referendum? If they want ‘liberation’ then surely they will vote to join a united Ireland.

Read some of that, but it was a bit long. Also read some where that cheap American grain compounded the potato famine as well. I’m sure you know more about that, but with such a long post some facts would have to be omitted I guess.

When someone proves the British created the famine to rid themselves of the Irish.

I think a good job for clinton would be to go around and make insincere apologies for anyone who wants to pay him to do it. He could apologize to the blacks for slavery (actually I think he already did this once) to the Japanese for internment (I think he did this too?) and who knows, maybe even osama is ready to say "sorry" by now, if he's still around. Clinton is already a "sorry a**" so he might as well be a professional "sorry a**" and make a living out of it.

When someone proves the British created the famine to rid themselves of the Irish.

The actions of the British fuedal lords speak for themselves. I know that "anti-terrorist" fervor is at an all-time high and that everything and everyone who disagrees with the tyrannical designs of big governments are branded as such and I also know that not everything the IRA ever did was justified. However, to say that the British were justified in their actions against the Irish is absurd to the point of willful ignorance.

<< You two have to be the dumbest morons we have seen on this website. >>

<< You anti-Irish-Catholic bigots need to get your facts straight before you break wind again... >>

To kellynla, Psychopathological Projection Syndrome suffering and incurably hesporophobic apologist for that envy-motivated and hatred and rage-driven, endemically and leglessly-alcoholic, mass-murdering mob of multinational-murder-for-hire, Marxist-Hitlerist, bank-robbing, drug-dealing, psychopathic, cravenly and anonymously cowardly gangster-bastard barbarians that prefers to be called the 'ira."

Thank you for demonstrating your somewhat limited cut and paste 'abilities,' here.

Not bad, for a pad AND a mick.

I know you jokers find it difficult to even understand that there are those among us who can do more than one thing at a time [Fart AND chew gum, for example] -- but try and imagine the possibility, will yah? And next time being confronted with the truth and/or with reality becomes too much for you -- and you chose to become mindlessly enraged -- see to it that while posting your response you also remember and respect FRee Republic's rule about personal attack.

Or perhaps go and blow the arms and legs off some babies, little old ladies, young women and small children -- or have a cold shower -- instead of wasting bandwidth here?

And in the meanwhile please note that:

MODERN Britain owes the Irish no apologies for Cromwell;

The potato famine was "Britain's fault" in the same way United States of America's Greatest Post-Founding Father President Ronald Reagan was responsible for AIDS [IE your ridiculous assertion is bullshit!] -- and;

There is not and never has been British "repression" and "occupation" in and/or of Ireland.

Cordially -- Brian [Boru of the Bog of] Allen

PS:
My ancestor, the Irish King, Brian Boru of the Bog of Allen, would be interested indeed to have you anonymously and cowardly call one of his descendents an "anti-Irish-Catholic bigot."

Frankly, I do believe that this will happen, in time.

Sursum Corda

Have you read "The Great Hunger"?

Sursum Corda