it from the batteries,' hastened forward and led on the new attack: My pretty men, we must positively not be repulsed; we must enter here, we cannot do at all without entering!-The rest of these Irish Letters may, I hope, tell their own tale.

LETTER LXX.

'To the Honorable John Bradshaw, Esquire, President of the Council

of State: These.'

'Dublin,' 16th September, 1649.

SIR, It hath pleased God to bless our endeavors at Drogheda.* After battery, we stormed it. The Enemy were about 3,000 strong in the Town. They made a stout resistance; and near 1,000 of our men being entered, the Enemy forced them out again. But God giving a new courage to our men, they attempted again, and entered; beating the Enemy from their defences.

The Enemy had made three retrenchments, both to the right and left 'of' where we entered; all which they were forced to quit. Being thus entered, we refused them quarter; having the day before summoned the Town. I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think Thirty of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did, are in safe custody for the Barbadoes. Since that time, the Enemy quitted to us Trim and Dundalk. In Trim they were in such haste that they left their guns behind them.

This hath been a marvellous great mercy. The Enemy, being not willing to put an issue upon a field-battle, had put into this Garrison almost all their prime soldiers, being about 3,000 horse and foot, under the command of their best officers; Sir Arthur Ashton being made Governor. There were some seven or eight regiments, Ormond's being one, under the command of Sir Edmund Varney. I do not believe, neither do I hear, that any officer escaped with his life, save only one Lieutenant, who, I hear, going to the Enemy said, That he was the only man that escaped of all the Garrison. The Enemy upon this were filled with much terror. And truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God.

This is Oliver's spelling; contrary to what was then usual, almost universal.

I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs. 'As' for instruments, they were very inconsiderable the work throughout. * * *

I rest,'

Captain Brandly did with forty or fifty of his men very gallantly storm the Tenalias; for which he deserves the thanks of the State. Your most humble servant,

OLIVER CROMWELL.*

Tenalia,' I believe, is now called Tenaille by engineers; a kind of advanced defensive-work, which takes its name from resemblance, real or imaginary, to the lip of a pair of pincers.

The 'Sir Edmund Varney' who perished here was the son of the Standard-bearer at Edgehill. For Sir Arthur Ashton see Clarendon. Poor Sir Arthur had a wooden leg which the soldiers were very eager for, understanding it to be full of gold coin; but it proved to be mere timber: all his gold, 200 broad pieces, was sewed into his belt, and scrambled for when that came to light.† There is in Wood's Life‡ an old-soldier's account of the Storm of Tredah, sufficiently emphatic, by Tom Wood, Anthony's brother, who had been there.

LETTER LXXI.

'For the Honorable William Lenthall, Speaker of the Parliament of England: These.'

Dublin, 17th September, 1649.

SIR, Your Army being safely arrived at Dublin; and the Enemy endeavoring to draw all his forces together about Trim and Tecroghan, as my intelligence gave me,-from whence endeavors were made by the Marquis of Ormond to draw Owen Roe O'Neil with his forces to his assistance, but with what success I cannot yet learn,—I resolved, after some refreshment taken for our weatherbeaten men and horses, and accommodations for a march, to take the field. And accordingly, upon Friday, the 30th of August last, rendezvoused with eight regiments of

* Whitlocke, p. 412. † Ibid.

Prefixed to the Athenæ Oxonienses.

§ Friday is 31st; this error as to the day of the month continues through the Letter.

foot, six of horse and some troops of dragoons, three miles on the north side of Dublin. The design was, To endeavor the regaining of Drogheda; or tempting the Enemy, upon his hazard of the loss of that place, to fight.

Your Army came before the Town upon Monday following.* Where having pitched, as speedy course was taken as could be to frame our batteries; which took up the more time because divers of the battering guns were on shipboard. Upon Monday, the 9th of this instant, the batteries began to play. Whereupon I sent Sir Arthur Ashton, the then Governor, a summons, To deliver the Town to the use of the Parliament of England. To the which receiving no satisfactory answer, I proceeded that day to beat down the Steeple of the Church on the south side of the Town, and to beat down a Tower not far from the same place, which you will discern by the Chart enclosed.

Our guns not being able to do much that day, it was resolved to endeavor to do our utmost the next day to make breaches assaultable, and by the help of God to storm them. The place pitched upon was that part of the Town-wall next a Church called St. Mary's; which was the rather chosen because we did hope that if we did enter and possess that Church, we should be the better able to keep it against their horse and foot until we could make way for the entrance of our horse; and we did not conceive that any part of the Town would afford the like advantage for that purpose with this. The batteries planted were two: one was for that part of the Wall against the east end of the said Church; the other against the Wall on the south side. Being somewhat long in battering, the Enemy made six retrenchments: three of them from the said Church to Duleek Gate; and three of them from the east end of the Church to the Town-wall and so backward. The guns, after some two or three hundred shot, beat down the corner Tower, and opened two reasonable good breaches in the east and south Wall.

Upon Tuesday, the 10th of this instant, about five o'clock in the evening, we began the Storm: and after some hot dispute we entered, about seven or eight hundred men; the Enemy disputing it very stiffly with us. And indeed, through the advantages of the place, and the courage God was pleased to give the defenders, our men were forced to retreat quite out of the breach, not without some considerable loss; Colonel Cassel being there shot in the head, whereof he presently died; and divers officers and soldiers doing their duty killed and wounded. There was a Tenalia to flanker the south Wall of the Town, between Duleek Gate and the corner Tower before mentioned;-which our men entered, wherein they found some forty or fifty of the Enemy, which

they put to the sword. And this 'Tenalia' they held: but it being without the Wall, and the sally-port through the Wall into that Tenalia being choked up with some of the Enemy which were killed in it, it proved of no use for an entrance into the Town that way.

Although our men that stormed the breaches were forced to recoil, as is before expressed; yet, being encouraged to recover their loss, they made a second attempt; wherein God was pleased so to animate them that they got ground of the Enemy, and by the goodness of God, forced him to quit his entrenchments. And after a very hot dispute, the Enemy having both horse and foot, and we only foot, within the Wall, -they gave ground, and our men became masters both of their retrenchments and 'of' the Church: which indeed, although they made our entrance the more difficult, yet they proved of excellent use to us; so that the Enemy could not 'now' annoy us with their horse, but thereby we had advantage to make good the ground, that so we might let in our own horse; which accordingly was done, though with much difficulty.

Divers of the Enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount; a place very strong and of difficult access; being exceedingly high, having a good graft, and strongly pallisadoed. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers considerable Officers being there, our 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, some the west Gate, and others a strong Round Tower next the Gate called St. Sunday's. being summoned to yield to mercy, refused. Whereupon I ordered the steeple of St. Peter's Church to be fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames: "God damn me, God confound me: I burn, I burn."

These,

The next day, the other two Towers were summoned; in one of which was about six or seven score but they refused to yield themselves: and we knowing that hunger must compel them, set only good guards to secure them from running away until their stomachs were come down. From one of the said Towers, notwithstanding their condition, they killed and wounded some of our men. When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head; and every tenth man of the soldiers killed; and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes. The soldiers in the other Tower were all spared, as to their lives only; and shipped likewise for the Barbadoes.

I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon

with the others, found himself deserted by his very soldiers, and obliged to go to England; where this policy of his, very useful as Monk had thought, is indignantly disavowed by the Authorities, who will not hear of such a connexion.* Owen Roe O'Neil appears to have been a man of real ability: surely no able man, or son of Order, ever sank in a more dismal welter of confusions unconquerable by him! He did no more service or disservice henceforth; he died in some two months, of a disease in the foot, -poisoned, say some, by the gift of a 'pair of russet-leather boots' which some traitor had bestowed on him.t

Such was the Storm of Tredah. A thing which, if one wanted good assurance as to the essential meaning of it, might well 'work remorse and regret:' for indisputably the outer body of it is emphatic enough! Cromwell, not in a light or loose manner, but in a very solemn and deep one, takes charge for himself, at his own peril, That it is a Judgment of God: and that it did 'save much effusion of blood,' we and all spectators can very readily testify. The execrable policy of that Regicide,' says Jacobite Carte on the occasion, had the effect he proposed. It spread abroad the terror of his name; it cut'-In fact, it cut through the heart of the Irish War. Wexford Storm followed (not by forethought, it would seem, but by chance of war) in the same stern fashion; and there was no other storm or slaughter needed in that Country. Rose-water Surgeons might have tried it otherwise; but that was not Oliver's execrable policy, not the Rose-water one. And so we leave it, standing on such basis as it has.

Ormond had sent orders to burn' Dundalk and Trim before quitting them; but the Garrisons, looking at Tredah, were in too much haste to apply the coal. They marched away at doublequick time; the Lord Lieutenant got possession of both Towns unburnt. He has put Garrisons there, we see, which 'drink up' some of his forces. He has also despatched Colonel Venables, of whom we shall hear again, with a regiment or two to raise what Siege there may be at Derry, and assist in settling distracted Ulster; a service they rapidly accomplished, without much hurt,

* 10 August, 1649 (Commons Journals, vi., 277). † Carte, ii., 83.