Re: Jagger/Richards and Greenway on The English Revolution

["Alan Bradley" <alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Julio Pino
> that genocidal maniac Oliver Cromwell.

This is unjustified.  Cromwell's atrocity count was nothing special.

His most famous one, Drogheda, is actually justifiable.  The garrison of
Drogheda were largely English parole violators.  That is, they were war
criminals:  they had had their lives spared on the basis that they did not
take up arms again against Parliament, and had reneged.  Their lives were
legally and morally forfeit.

Of course, the Irish civilian population were caught up in the massacre,
but that was nothing special in 17th century warfare.  (See the 30 Years
War for comparison...)

Cromwell's campaigns were merely the last in a decade long war in Ireland,
in which at least two non-cooperating factions fought Royalist, Protestant
Irish and Scots Covenanter armies.  (The Covenanters were the bourgeois
revolutionaries in Scotland, kind of.  They were both allies and enemies of
the English revolutionaries at various times.)  This war was extremely
nasty, long before Cromwell came along.

The English Revolution is quite an interesting phenomenon, contradictions
and all.

Alan Bradley
alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx