Cromwell in Ireland
rendered without a blow. But in this he was disappointed. Waterford held out. The winter now broke in rain and tempest, and after seven days of fruitless attempt Cromwell raised the siege, leaving some of his heavy artillery in the mud, and marched for Dungarvan on December the 2nd; it "being so terrible a day," he wrote, "as I never marched in in all my life." He had lost over 1,000 men in the week before Waterford, and his army was reduced to a remnant of 3,000 fit for duty.
"T tell you," he wrote to the Parliament, "that a considerable part of your army is fitter for the hospital than the field. If the enemy did not know it I should have held it impolitic to have writ this." Then he turns to discant upon what it hath pleased the Lord to do "for your interest in Munster" in the matter of the treacherous mutiny of garrisons he had corrupted. "Sir," he asks, "what can be said of these things? Is it an arm of the flesh that hath done these things? It is the Lord only. God will curse the man and his house that dares to think otherwise, God gets into the hearts of men and persuades them to come under you." "These are the seals of God's approbation upon your great change of Government." Terrible words of blasphemy and presumption these—unexampled in any record
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