Oliver Cromwell: An Illustrated History.
Author: LITTON, Helen.
Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 2000. 106 pages. Illustrated. Paperback.
‘I forbid 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…’ OLIVER CROMWELL REPORTING FROM DROGHEDA, 17 September 1649.
Oliver Cromwell spent less than ten months in Ireland but the impact of his offensive has never been forgotten. For centuries his infamous reputation has been iron-cast in the Irish mind. The bitter memories of slaughter at the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford, the scenes of transportation and transplantation — immortalised in the cry ‘To Hell or Connaught!’ — have been slow to fade.
From Cromwell’s rise to prominence amidst the Puritan fervour of seventeenth-century England, through the two civil wars there to the invasion, subjugation and mass settlement of Ireland, Helen Litton provides a fascinating and factual account of Cromwell’s Irish campaign. She also gives a concise overview of the complex political situation in Ireland prior to the Cromwellian invasion, from the Rising of 1641 to the formation of the Confederation of Kilkenny.
The fifth in this highly acclaimed series, Oliver Cromwell: An Illustrated History captures the primary events of a pivotal period which changed Ireland’s political and social structure irrevocably.
ISBN: 0863277454
See also the chapter on Cromwell from P. W. Joyce’s Concise History of Ireland on LibraryIreland.com
|
