Cromwell in Ireland
frenzied exclamations of a poor burning soldier, whom he has himself committed to this awful death, and deems the incident such welcome news to his Parliament that he gives it prominent place in his official despatch. A writer who has given a lifetime of study to the period with which we are dealing, and whose recent work has not received the attention it deserves—l allude to Colonel Colomb—justly characterises as "fiendish" this laboured description of Cromwell's. To me it is more; it is the measure of the man, and of the people to whom he was writing. I admit that the age was a rude and cruel one; I admit that the minds of men had in the eight years of civil strife become inured to deeds of blood—it was the age of Tilly, Wallenstein, Bernard of Saxe Weimar, Mansfield, and countless others of their kind; but where, I ask, in any despatch from general in the field, or from sack of city at the time, abroad or at home, can parallel example be found for such petty publication of savagery, such intense liplicking of vengeance as we have here revealed to us? Is this a really great mind expressing itself to a mighty assembly?
Leaving Drogheda weltering in the blood of its garrison and inhabitants, Cromwell went back to Dublin, where he caused the heads of Aston
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