Cromwell in Ireland
men getting up to them were ordered by me to put them all to the sword, and, indeed, being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men. Divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed St. Peter's Church steeple; these being summoned to yield to mercy refused, whereupon I ordered the steeple to be fired, when one of them was heard to say, 'God damn me—God confound me—I burn! I burn.'"
This extract deserves notice, first for the fact that Cromwell admits the massacre was done by his orders, "I forbade them to spare," he says, as though they had been wishful to show mercy; and, secondly, because there is something in the sentence that appears to have escaped the notice of history. It is the detailed account of the exclamations of the dying wretch who was perishing in the flames of the burning steeple—flames lit by Cromwell's own orders. Did ever general commanding any army descend to such miserable detail? He is here the Commander-in-Chief of the army of the so-called Parliament of England; he is writing to the speaker of that Parliament, yet he positively gloats over the
42
