Sir,—To date I have written four books about Oliver Cromwell: Cromwell at Drogheda (Broin Print, 1993); Cromwell: an honourable enemy (Brandon Books, 1999); Cromwell was framed (Chronos Books, 2014); and The Protector: the fall and rise of Oliver Cromwell (Top Hat Books, 2022), the latter being a fictional biography.
Recently (HI 29.5, Sept./Oct. 2021, Big Book), Micheál Ó Siochrú, a professor in modern history at Trinity College, Dublin, made some disparaging remarks about my work on Cromwell in Ireland in your magazine. This is not the first time that Professor Ó Siochrú has challenged my contentions regarding the allegations of large numbers of deliberate deaths of innocent civilians—men, women and children—at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649, which I believe I have proven did not occur.
As a non-academic historian I easily assume the subordinate role in this discussion. However, it continues to astound me how the professor (a titan in the world of early modern history) persists in denying the facts. Furthermore, his glib dismissal of my work, which many in the early modern field now embrace, is very puzzling. Cromwell has been used in the past to justify atrocities in the North of Ireland. A glance at any post about Cromwell on social media reveals a unique level of vitriol that proves this subject to be a tinderbox still, and the fuse is remarkably short.
I would therefore like to issue a challenge to Professor Ó Siochrú through the medium of your magazine. Perhaps he might condescend to outline in clear detail where the evidence is that suggests that significant numbers of old women and men, babies, toddlers, teenagers, innkeepers, merchants, lawyers, seamstresses, fishmongers, domestic servants, doctors, vagabonds, brewers, grannies and grandads (you get the picture), etc., who were not directly involved in the military conflicts of either Drogheda or Wexford, were massacred by Cromwellian troops in large numbers. Armed inhabitants are a horse of a different colour; an armed civilian is no longer a civilian. Of course I would not expect the good professor to accept this challenge from a somewhat repugnant amateur. We should just accept what he says. Well, after all, he is the expert.
Unless historians are specific in their description of precisely what the word ‘civilians’ means when discussing Drogheda and Wexford, anti-English sentiment will continue to thrive and non-historians will continue to accept the traditional nonsense that Professor Ó Siochrú seems hell-bent on continuing to endorse, i.e. that large numbers of ordinary harmless people, members of the general population of both Drogheda and Wexford, were massacred in cold blood during the sieges that took place in both towns—and de Valera’s Ireland will still be alive and well. Show us the evidence, professor!—Is mise le meas,
TOM REILLY
Drogheda
Micheál Ó Siochrú addresses the controversies over Drogheda and Wexford in chapter 4 of his book God’s executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland (Faber and Faber, 2009).