Product Description

This re-examination of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland argues that the viewpoint of Cromwell as a genocidal maniac and religious fanatic lacks solid evidence. Placing his conquest within the rules of war at the time, it concludes he was the first successful military conqueror of Ireland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356142 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Author
This book is ahead of its time
As author of this book, I feel that many historians in Ireland are not ready yet for 'an honourable' Cromwell - nor indeed are the people of Ireland. I thought that I would change the history books and public opinion about this much maligned historical figure by publishing the truth about Cromwell's Irish campaign. The reaction - among the under forties on the whole - was good, but among historians and the over forties it was bad. They can't seem to accept that an amateur could discover such a fundamental flaw in Irish history ie that neither Cromwell or his men ever engaged in the killing of any unarmed civilians throughout his entire nine month campaign. The facts are there for all to see. But God bless Ireland the past is still the present here and we MUST have our English hate figures - despite the truth. How sad is that?

Tom Reilly Author - Cromwell An Honourable Enemy

Customer Reviews

Flawed but challenging
While I sympathise with the earlier reviewer's comments on the unpolished character of Reilly's written style and the often clumsy structure of his arguments this is a challenging book, worthy of the attention of anyone who brings an open mind to the study of Irish history. Those who simply want to have their prejudices confirmed will doubtless hate the book: how dare anyone - especially an Irishman from Drogheda - challenge Irish nationalism's most cherished myth!

The previous reviewer is right that Reilly does not satisfactorily explain away Cromwell's own reference to civilian casualties at Drogheda but the fact that civilians may have died in the heat of action (today we would call it collateral damage) does not make a massacre. Reilly does, in my opinion, convincingly demolish the reliability the testimony of Woods, the only eyewitness to describe deliberate atrocities committed against civilians during the battle, by showing that he had good reasons to wish to present Cromwell in a bad light. If Wood's evidence is discounted then there is no real evidence of a massacre of civilians: all other sources, including those that the earlier reviewer mentions, are second hand and, like Woods, have an interest in presenting Cromwell in a bad light. The consequences for Ireland of the Cromwellian conquest were quite bad enough without making the man into something he was not. I would hope that Reilly's book might help encourage a less self-serving approach to Irish history if it was more widely read.

Thought-provoking interpretation
Historian Tom Reilly was born in Drogheda, the site of one of Cromwell's most notorious alleged massacres. In this remarkably independent-minded book, he studies Cromwell's Ireland campaign of 1649-50. He finds that, contrary to myth, Cromwell did not indiscriminately massacre ordinary unarmed Irish people.

Before he started the campaign, Cromwell issued a proclamation, "I do hereby warn ... all Officers, Soldiers and others under my command not to do any wrong or violence towards Country People or persons whatsoever, unless they be actually in arms or office with the enemy ... as they shall answer to the contrary at their utmost perils." This was no empty threat: before even reaching Drogheda, Cromwell ordered two of his soldiers to be hanged for stealing hens.

His forces killed the military defenders of Drogheda and Wexford, not the townspeople, acting according to standard 17th-century military norms. Yet Jesuit Father Denis Murphy wrote, more than 200 years later, "to none was mercy shown; not to the women nor to the aged, nor to the young." He gave vivid descriptions of the killings of priests, but none of any killing of women or children. In fact, there are no eye-witness accounts of indiscriminate slaughter, or of the death of even one unarmed defender or of one woman or child.

Yet a leading historian, Professor Roy Foster, the Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University, wrongly claims that the massacre of Drogheda's townspeople was `one of the few massacres in Irish history fully attested to on both sides'.

After the Restoration, Cromwell was the main target of political and religious attack. The Royalists attacked him on everything, especially the Irish campaign. Irish nationalists, Catholic publicists and infantile leftists assisted with fabrications and propaganda. The Irish bishops lied that Cromwell's religious policies could not be `effected without the massacring or banishment of the Catholic inhabitants', so the propagandists had to allege the massacres.

History is not a matter of opinion, or of repeating allegations without investigation. We are obliged to use evidence, primary sources, and eye-witness accounts, and we are duty-bound to stick to the verified facts, at whatever cost to our previous judgements.

A good revisionist history - and about time too
As someone of proud Irish parentage from the Drogheda area, but born and raised in England, I really hope that this book will make a step towards ridding Irish history of some crude nationalistic elements and remnants of plain propaganda. As a result maybe one day I can have a discussion about Ireland and England that doesn't end up in vitriol. Having had first-hand experience of some startlingly personal and acerbic reactions over the years it has long been a personal aim of mine to discover if it was ever justified.

This is where I have found enormous value in a book written by an undaunted author such as Reilly. He has effectively had to go against the official history and the educational establishment in Ireland that essentially maintains the view that Cromwell was a murderous contemptible bastard. A man who willingly ordered the butchering of thousands of innocent men, women and children in the towns of Drogheda and Wexford in his campaign to subjugate the rebellious Irish.

Context is laid out, Cromwell was eliminating the last vestiges of Royalist power in Ireland, which threatened the Commonwealth. Royalist military garrisons in Ireland were put to the sword as was Cromwells right and an accepted custom at the time. It is not a dismissal of the consequences of Cromwells actions in Ireland, namely that of the freedom to practice the Catholic faith and the dispossessing of Catholic land. What the author does do however is effectively dismiss the claim that Cromwell actually went out and intentionally killed the civilian population of Ireland at both Drogheda and Wexford. He has essentially done what no other writer has done on the topic properly examined the veracity of the sources and shown that on the whole they are either unreliable due to not being eyewitness accounts, not contemporaneous, biased by religious hatred or just an attempt to blacken the name of a regicide following the Restoration. He also ahows that the numbers do not add up as to the claim that entire town populations were killed. In fact, Reilly actually shows that Cromwell took care to protect the Irish population throughout his campaign. Despite his intolerant antipathy towards the Catholic Church as well as an uncomfortable (to modern eyes at least) justification of the massacres as divine retribution for the 1641 massacres of Protestants in Ireland he did not go out to teach Ireland a lesson.

This is not to say that Cromwell's invasion was not yet another subjugation of the Irish - to any patriot a foreigner who occupies his land and imposes his will, religion and colonisers upon you will always be a figure of hatred. And Reilly shows that Cromwell did not always have it his own way in Ireland and suffered one the worst military defeats of his career at Clonmel. I feel this book has effectively shown that the sinister reputation of Cromwell - that he was another English devil terrorising Ireland is plainly undeserved and not backed up with concrete evidence. How much of this will be swallowed by Irishmen who have long been brought up on these so-called evil deeds? On the basis of a scathing review of this book written by a Jason McElligott and other reviews here on Amazon - not much. It cannot be allowed that Cromwell's actions are mitigated or the historical record reviewed!

Credit to Reilly though, he thanks McElligott in his foreword for alerting him to to the necessity of providing proof of his findings and that surely is the chief strength of this book.