Cromwell in Ireland
the storming of the town was a chance event undertaken by his soldiers on their own initiative against his wishes. How then the scaling ladders, and the assaulting parties all ready? The whole thing had been deliberately planned and arranged. The wretched inhabitants were duped into a pretended negotiation. The Commissioners were sent out to Cromwell, one of them being the traitor Stafford, who has already arranged to admit the storming parties into his portion of the defences. "The townsmen," says the historian, "were first made aware of Stafford's treachery by seeing the enemy's colours floating on the summit, and its guns turned against their walls." All was confusion in the town. The Cromwellian troops poured in over the walls and began a slaughter equal to that of Drogheda; none were spared. There is a tradition that two or three hundred women and children were put to death in the market-place, whither they had flocked round the great stone cross which stood there.
They knelt around the Cross divine—
The matron and the maid;
They bowed before redemption's shrine
And fervently they prayed.
Three hundred fair and helpless ones,
Whose crime was this alone
Their valiant husbands, sires, and sons,
Had battled for their own.
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