Editing Oliver Cromwell (section)

=== Irish campaign controversy ===
The extent of Cromwell's brutality<ref>Christopher Hill, 1972, ''God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution'', Penguin Books: London, p. 108: "The brutality of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland is not one of the pleasanter aspects of our hero's career ..."</ref>{{Sfn|Coward|1991|page=65|loc="Revenge was not Cromwell's only motive for the brutality he condoned at Wexford and Drogheda, but it was the dominant one ..."}} in Ireland has been strongly debated. Some historians argue that Cromwell never accepted responsibility for the killing of civilians in Ireland, claiming that he had acted harshly but only against those "in arms".<ref>{{Cite book |last=McKeiver |first=Philip |date=2007 |title=A New History of Cromwell's Irish Campaign |publisher=Advance Press |location=Manchester |isbn=978-0-9554663-0-4}}</ref> Other historians cite Cromwell's contemporary reports to London, including that of 27 September 1649, in which he lists the slaying of 3,000 military personnel, followed by the phrase "and many inhabitants".{{Sfn|Ó Siochrú|2008|pp=83 & 90}} In September 1649, he justified his sacking of Drogheda as revenge for the massacres of Protestant settlers in [[Ulster]] in 1641, calling the massacre "the righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands with so much innocent blood".{{Sfn|Kenyon|Ohlmeyer|2000|p=92}} But the rebels had not held Drogheda in 1641; many of its garrison were in fact English royalists. On the other hand, the worst atrocities committed in Ireland, such as mass evictions, killings and deportation of over 50,000 men, women and children as prisoners of war and indentured servants to [[Bermuda]] and [[Barbados]], were carried out under the command of other generals after Cromwell had left for England.{{Sfn|Lenihan|2000|page=1022|loc="After Cromwell returned to England in 1650, the conflict degenerated into a grindingly slow counter-insurgency campaign punctuated by some quite protracted sieges...the famine of 1651 onwards was a man-made response to stubborn guerrilla warfare. Collective reprisals against the civilian population included forcing them out of designated 'no man's lands' and the systematic destruction of foodstuffs".}} Some point to his actions on entering Ireland. Cromwell demanded that no supplies be seized from civilian inhabitants and that everything be fairly purchased; "I do hereby warn ... all Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or violence toward Country People or any persons whatsoever, unless they be actually in arms or office with the enemy ... as they shall answer to the contrary at their utmost peril."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Carlyle |first=Thomas |date=1897 |title=Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches II: Letters from Ireland, 1649 and 1650 |url=http://www.irishhistorylinks.net/Historical_Documents/Cromwell.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170814042917/http://www.irishhistorylinks.net/Historical_Documents/Cromwell.html |archive-date=14 August 2017 |access-date=6 August 2017 |publisher=Chapman and Hall Ltd, London}}</ref>

The massacres at Drogheda and Wexford were in some ways typical of the day, especially in the context of the recently ended [[Thirty Years' War]],{{Sfn|Woolrych|1990|page=112|loc="viewed in the context of the German wars that had just ended after thirty years of fighting, the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford shrink to typical casualties of seventeenth-century warfare"}}<ref>[http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#30YrW The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) 7 500 000] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110311130500/http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#30YrW |date=11 March 2011}}: "R. J. Rummel: 11.5M total deaths in the war (half democides)"</ref> although there are few comparable incidents during the Civil Wars in England or Scotland, which were fought mainly between Protestant adversaries, albeit of differing denominations. One possible comparison is Cromwell's [[Storming of Basing House|Siege of Basing House]] in 1645—the seat of the prominent Catholic the Marquess of Winchester—which resulted in about 100 of the garrison of 400 being killed after being refused quarter. Contemporaries also reported civilian casualties, six Catholic priests and a woman.{{Sfn|Gardiner|1886|page=345}} The scale of the deaths at Basing House was much smaller.<ref>{{Cite book |first=J. C. |last=Davis |date=2001 |title=Oliver Cromwell |publisher=Hodder Arnold |isbn=0-340-73118-4 |pages=108–110 |author-link=J. C. Davis}}</ref> Cromwell himself said of the slaughter at Drogheda in his first letter back to the Council of State: "I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives."{{Sfn|Cromwell|1929|page=124}} Cromwell's orders—"in the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town"—followed a request for surrender at the start of the siege, which was refused. The military protocol of the day was that a town or garrison that rejected the chance to surrender was not entitled to [[No quarter|quarter]].{{Sfn|Woolrych|1990|page=111}}{{Sfn|Gaunt|2004|page=117}} The refusal of the garrison at Drogheda to do this, even after the walls had been breached, was to Cromwell justification for the massacre.{{Sfn|Lenihan|2000|page=168}} Where Cromwell negotiated the surrender of fortified towns, as at Carlow, New Ross, and Clonmel, some historians{{Who|date=March 2015}} argue that he respected the terms of surrender and protected the townspeople's lives and property.{{Sfn|Gaunt|2004|page=116}} At Wexford, he again began negotiations for surrender. The captain of Wexford Castle surrendered during the negotiations and, in the confusion, some of Cromwell's troops began indiscriminate killing and looting.{{Sfn|Stevenson|1990|page=151}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=Eugene Coyle. Review of ''Cromwell – An Honourable Enemy''. ''History Ireland'' |url=http://www.historyireland.com/resources/reviews/review1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010221184835/http://www.historyireland.com/resources/reviews/review1.html |archive-date=21 February 2001}}</ref>{{Sfn|Ó Siochrú|2008|pp=83—93}}<ref>Schama, Simon, "A History of Britain", 2000.</ref>

Although Cromwell's time spent on campaign in Ireland was limited and he did not take on executive powers until 1653, he is often the central focus of wider debates about whether, as historians such as Mark Levene and [[John Morrill (historian)|John Morrill]] suggest, the Commonwealth conducted a deliberate programme of [[ethnic cleansing]] in Ireland.<!-- GENOCIDE RFF TAG START--><ref>Citations for genocide, near genocide and ethnic cleansing:
{{Refbegin|indent=yes}}
* {{Cite book |last=Axelrod |first=Alan |url=http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/axelrod.htm |title=Profiles in Leadership |date=2002 |publisher=Prentice-Hall |page=122 |quote=As a leader Cromwell was entirely unyielding. He was willing to act on his beliefs, even if this meant killing the King and perpetrating, against the Irish, something very nearly approaching genocide |ref=none |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121010231000/http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/axelrod.htm |archive-date=10 October 2012}}
* {{Cite book |title=Nationalism and Rationality |date=1995 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |editor-last=Breton |editor-first=Albert |page=248 |quote=Oliver Cromwell offered Irish Catholics a choice between genocide and forced mass population transfer |ref=none}}
* ''Ukrainian Quarterly''. Ukrainian Society of America 1944. "Therefore, we are entitled to accuse the England of Oliver Cromwell of the genocide of the Irish civilian population...."
* {{Cite book |url=http://www.soton.ac.uk/history/profiles/levene1.html |first=Mark |last=Levene |publisher=I.B. Tauris |location=London |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216135041/http://www.soton.ac.uk/history/profiles/levene1.html |archive-date=16 December 2008 |date=2005 |title=Genocide in the Age of the Nation State |volume=2 |isbn=978-1-84511-057-4 |pages=55–57 |ref=none}} A sample quote describes the Cromwellian campaign and settlement as "a conscious attempt to reduce a distinct ethnic population." and later: "[The Act of Settlement of Ireland], and the parliamentary legislation which succeeded it the following year, is the nearest thing on paper in the English, and more broadly British, domestic record, to a programme of state-sanctioned and systematic ethnic cleansing of another people. The fact that it did not include 'total' genocide in its remit, or that it failed to put into practice the vast majority of its proposed expulsions, ultimately, however, says less about the lethal determination of its makers and more about the political, structural and financial weakness of the early modern English state."
* {{Cite book |last1=Lutz |first1=James M. |url=https://archive.org/details/globalterrorism00lutz_125 |title=Global Terrorism |last2=Lutz |first2=Brenda J. |date=2004 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/globalterrorism00lutz_125/page/n207 193] |quote=The draconian laws applied by Oliver Cromwell in Ireland were an early version of ethnic cleansing. The Catholic Irish were to be expelled to the northwestern areas of the island. Relocation rather than extermination was the goal. |ref=none |url-access=limited}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Morrill |first=John S. |author-link=John Morrill (historian) |title=Rewriting Cromwell – A Case of Deafening Silences |url=http://utpjournalsreview.com/index.php/CJOH/article/view/11399/10273 |date=December 2003 |journal=Canadian Journal of History |volume=38 |issue=3 |pages=553–578 |publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |doi=10.3138/cjh.38.3.553 |access-date=23 June 2015 |quote=Of course, this has never been the Irish view of Cromwell. Most Irish remember him as the man responsible for the mass slaughter of civilians at Drogheda and Wexford and as the agent of the greatest episode of ethnic cleansing ever attempted in Western Europe as, within a decade, the percentage of land possessed by Catholics born in Ireland dropped from sixty to twenty. In a decade, the ownership of two-fifths of the land mass was transferred from several thousand Irish Catholic landowners to British Protestants. The gap between Irish and the English views of the seventeenth-century conquest remains unbridgeable and is governed by [[G. K. Chesterton]]'s mirthless epigram of 1917, that 'it was a tragic necessity that the Irish should remember it; but it was far more tragic that the English forgot it'. |archive-date=24 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150624014503/http://utpjournalsreview.com/index.php/CJOH/article/view/11399/10273 |url-status=dead |ref=none}}
* {{Cite book |first=David |last=Norbrook |date=2000 |title=Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |ref=none}} In interpreting Andrew Marvell's contemporarily expressed views on Cromwell Norbrook says; "He (Cromwell) laid the foundation for a ruthless programme of resettling the Irish Catholics which amounted to large scale ethnic cleansing."
{{Refend}}</ref><!-- GENOCIDE REF TAG END--> Faced with the prospect of an Irish alliance with Charles II, Cromwell carried out a series of massacres to subdue the Irish. Then, once Cromwell had returned to England, the English Commissary, General [[Henry Ireton]], Cromwell's son-in-law and key adviser, adopted a deliberate policy of crop burning and starvation. Total excess deaths for the entire period of the [[Wars of the Three Kingdoms]] in Ireland was estimated by [[William Petty]], the 17th-century economist, to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 in 1641.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Faolain |first=Turlough |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X-XWAAAAMAAJ&q=william+petty+600000+Irish |title=Blood On The Harp |date=1983 |publisher=Whitston Publishing Company |isbn=9780878752751 |page=191 |access-date=15 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230319213116/https://books.google.com/books?id=X-XWAAAAMAAJ&q=william+petty+600000+Irish |archive-date=19 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=O'Connell |first=Daniel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H19_RUCZzNcC&q=william+petty+600000+Irish&pg=PA317 |title=A collection of speeches spoken by ... on subjects connected with the catholic question |date=1828 |page=317 |access-date=15 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230319213117/https://books.google.com/books?id=H19_RUCZzNcC&q=william+petty+600000+Irish&pg=PA317 |archive-date=19 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Brantlinger |first=Patrick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ai5XAgAAQBAJ&q=william+petty+600000+Irish&pg=PT89 |title=Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 |date=2013 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=9780801468674 |access-date=15 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230319213117/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ai5XAgAAQBAJ&q=william+petty+600000+Irish&pg=PT89 |archive-date=19 March 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The sieges of Drogheda and Wexford have been prominently mentioned in histories and literature up to the present day. [[James Joyce]], for example, mentioned Drogheda in his novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'': "What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the Bible text 'God is love' pasted round the mouth of his cannon?" Similarly, [[Winston Churchill]] (writing in 1957) described Cromwell's impact on Anglo-Irish relations:

{{Blockquote|
[U]pon all of these Cromwell's record was a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the virtual proscription of the Catholic religion, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. 'Hell or Connaught' were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred 'The Curse of Cromwell on you.' ... Upon all of us there still lies 'the curse of Cromwell'.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Churchill |first=Winston S. |author-link=Winston Churchill |title=[[A History of the English Speaking Peoples]] |date=1991 |publisher=Dodd, Mead and Company |volume=III: The Age of Revolution |location=New York |page=9 |quote=We have seen the many ties which at one time or another have joined the inhabitants of the Western islands, and even in Ireland itself offered a tolerable way of life to Protestants and Catholics alike. Upon all of these Cromwell's record was a lasting bane. By an uncompleted process of terror, by an iniquitous land settlement, by the virtual proscription of the Catholic religion, by the bloody deeds already described, he cut new gulfs between the nations and the creeds. "Hell or Connaught" were the terms he thrust upon the native inhabitants, and they for their part, across three hundred years, have used as their keenest expression of hatred "The Curse of Cromwell on you". The consequences of Cromwell's rule in Ireland have distressed and at times distracted English politics down even to the present day. To heal them baffled the skill and loyalties of successive generations. They became for a time a potent obstacle to the harmony of the English-speaking people throughout the world. Upon all of us there still lies 'the curse of Cromwell' |orig-date=1957}}</ref>}}

A key surviving statement of Cromwell's views on the conquest of Ireland is his ''Declaration of the lord lieutenant of Ireland for the undeceiving of deluded and seduced people'' of January 1650.{{Sfn|Cromwell|1929|pages=196–205}} In this he was scathing about Catholicism, saying, "I shall not, where I have the power... suffer the exercise of the Mass."{{Sfn|Cromwell|1929|page=202}} But he also wrote: "as for the people, what thoughts they have in the matter of religion in their own breasts I cannot reach; but I shall think it my duty, if they walk honestly and peaceably, not to cause them in the least to suffer for the same."{{Sfn|Cromwell|1929|page=202}} Private soldiers who surrendered their arms "and shall live peaceably and honestly at their several homes, they shall be permitted so to do".{{Sfn|Cromwell|1929|page=205}}

In 1965 the Irish minister for lands stated that his policies were necessary to "undo the work of Cromwell"; circa 1997, [[Taoiseach]] [[Bertie Ahern]] demanded that a portrait of Cromwell be removed from a room in the Foreign Office before he began a meeting with [[Robin Cook]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cunningham |first=John |date=4 March 2012 |title=Conquest and Land in Ireland |url=http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/03/04/book-review-conquest-and-land-in-ireland/#.UM41RTORiSo |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130417083153/http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/03/04/book-review-conquest-and-land-in-ireland/#.UM41RTORiSo |archive-date=17 April 2013 |access-date=16 December 2012 |publisher=Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press}}</ref>