The opinions of the Cromwellians respecting the connexion between Ireland and England, though sufficiently strange and absurd, were such as were acted upon by the most enlightened statesmen during the early part of the last century. They believed that the PEOPLE of England had absolute right and authority over Ireland; and consequently, that any resistance to whatever government had been established in Britain, was an act of rebellion. The Irish were now in arms for their king against the parliament; but by this curious argument it was established, that loyalty to the sovereign was identical with treason. By a similar process of reasoning, the forfeiture of the estates of those who supported their rightful monarch, James II., against the Prince of Orange, was justified. But the Irish parliament of that day improved on the principle, and decreed several confiscations for acts of what they called treason, committed on the very day that William landed in Torbay.

The rhymes of another are scarcely less whimsical.

"In the reign of King Charles the First,

Look back to the year forty-one,

When thousands that lie in the dust,

Were murdered by the clan."

The seventeenth century produced one loyal stave which may match with the preceding.

"Row de dow dow,

The French are a-coming:

Lock up your doors,

And bury your money."

CHAPTER II.

The Cromwellian War.

CROMWELL having waited some time in Dublin, to refresh his army, and to settle the civil and military government, then determined to besiege Drogheda, then called Tredagh, and advanced against the place at the head of ten thousand men. The town was garrisoned by Sir A. Aston, with two thousand picked soldiers and a regiment of horse, besides several volunteers. On coming before the town, Cromwell sent a formal summons to the governor, which was peremptorily rejected, and a blockade accordingly commenced. The besiegers were delayed some time by the want of artillery; but when the cannon arrived from Dublin, they opened a tremendous fire from their batteries, which the walls of Drogheda were unable to resist. A practicable breach was soon effected, but the attempt at storming was twice repulsed with great slaughter. Cromwell rallied his men to a third effort, and placed himself at their head. The resistance was vigorous; but the Irish Colonel Wall being killed at the head of his regiment, his soldiers were so dismayed that they threw down their arms on the promise of quarter, and the parliamentarians forced their way into the town. Though quarter had been promised by his officers, Cromwell refused to ratify the agreement, and ordered the garrison to be put to the sword. The inhuman massacre was continued during the two following days. Thirty of the brave defenders of Drogheda alone survived; and these, by a dubious mercy, were sold as slaves to the plantations.

The excuse for this atrocious barbarity, was the necessity of striking immediate terror into the Irish, in order to prevent them from future opposition. It failed, as such detestable policy always must; and had Owen O'Neill lived, the effect would have been the direct contrary.

Wearied out by the follies and jealousies of the confederates, who seemed determined to do nothing for their own preservation, and to prevent all others from effecting it as far as they could, Ormond hastened to conclude his treaty with O'Neill; and that leader put his army in motion to join the royalists. He ordered the general who commanded his advanced guard to avoid an engagement when there was not an absolute certainty of success, and to trust to the passes and the season, which would defeat Cromwell without trouble or risk. But, while the Ulster general was advancing with his main body to the south, he was attacked by a defluxion of the knees, a disease said to have been occasioned by a pair of poisoned boots prepared for him by one Plunket, an agent of the confederates. Notwithstanding his sickness, O'Neill would not allow the march of the army to be retarded, and was conveyed in a litter at the head of his men. The motion, however, aggravated the disease, and he died at Clough Outer Castle. With O'Neill perished the last hope of the Irish cause, for he alone would have been a fit match for Cromwell. His death, at such a crisis, is probably the principal ground for the suspicion of poison. It was an event decisive of the fate of the kingdom. Few leaders, in ancient or modern times, merit the epithet of hero better than Owen O'Neill. He left rank, station, and command abroad, to assist his countrymen in their struggle for their rights and properties. He was successful in all his enterprises; and he never sullied his laurels by treachery, cruelty, or inhumanity. His only error was that he did not treat the

council of Kilkenny as Cromwell afterward did the British parliament, by dispersing at the point of the bayonet an imbecile assembly, whose folly and stubbornness was manifestly accelerating the ruin of the country. But O'Neill was too nobly minded to effect even a good purpose by criminal means; and his virtues served to injure the cause which he supported, since a reverence for good faith kept him from taking the only measures which would ensure its success.

Cromwell had in the mean time received accurate information of the dissensions which distracted the counsels of the confederates, and hastened to reap the advantages of their folly. He sent Venables into the north to reduce the Ulster Scots, or rather, to support that portion of them which was inclined to favour his designs. He himself, with the main body of the army, advanced along the sea-coast, through the county of Wicklow, attended by the fleet to supply his men with provisions. Before leaving Dublin, he issued two proclamations, which were of greater value than double the number of victories. One forbade his soldiers, under pain of death, to offer any injury to the peaceable inhabitants; the other strictly enjoined that payment should be made for all provisions supplied by the peasants. No previous invader had thought fit to conciliate the peasantry by promising justice and protection. The royalist army, especially that portion commanded by Inchiquin, had treated the country people with studied injury and insult. Even the confederates, proud of their Norman descent, seized the property of the tillers of the soil without scruple. From this time forward, the opinion began to gain ground that Cromwell was more favourably disposed towards the native Irish than the royalists under Ormond and Inchiquin, or the descendants of the original invaders who sat in the council of Kilkenny. As far as Cromwell was personally concerned, this belief seems

not to have been groundless; but even he was not sufficiently powerful to check the intolerant hatred of popery, which, like a popular phrensy, had seized on the people of England; and he continued to act unjustly, when an attempt to do justice would have accomplished no good purpose, and might probably have caused his own destruction.

The Marquis of Ormond was in the meantime doomed to feel the evil effects of that want of confidence which his own insincerity had occasioned. The commissioners of trust watched his every motion with galling jealousy. The cities, suspicious of his designs, denied admittance to his garrisons, though the enemy had advanced almost to their walls; and he had not the power of removing from the most important garrisons those governors whose treachery or incapacity was all but proved. Cromwell, too, like Philip of Macedon, had learned the art of "fighting with silver spears," and found too many ready to sacrifice their honour and their country for a paltry bribe. But it is ever thus in a nation divided by parties; no man feels that universal love for all his countrymen which forms the very essence of patriotism; and many even without a bribe, will be found ready to inflict remediless evils on their country and themselves, for the mere purpose of spiting their political antagonists. There are few countries which cannot furnish examples of this criminal folly, but none more abundantly than Ireland.

In the beginning of October, Cromwell, with nine thousand men, sat down before Wexford: he would not at such a season have ventured to besiege so important a place, if he had not had some reason to depend on those within the town, who were disaffected to Ormond and the confederates. In fact, the partisans of the nuncio through the kingdom, were so filled with hatred against the council of Kilkenny, that they were determined to make Cromwell the instrument of their revenge, even though such conduct