On Loving Oliver was Re: Jagger/Richards and Greenway on The EnglishRevolution

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I cannot believe I am reading this, Alan.  Cromwell butchered his way
around Ireland.  To say that others had done the same hardly excuses
it.  And what in the name of Jezuss is this legalistic bullshit about
parole violation about?  Are you saying they deserved to be
slaughtered?  How revolutionary of you!

Crowmwell was nine months in Ireland and Drogheda was not the only
massacre.  There was also a very bad one at Wexford. It is recognised that
Cromwell regarded the Irish as ignorant superstitious savages and he showed
them no mercy.  He also believed the lie about the so-called massacre of
English settlers in 1641 and he set about getting revenge.  After the
slaughter at Drogheda he himself wrote that this would be an example.  So
he was aiming to eencourager les autres as the French say.

I had no idea that there was such a fanatical Round Head up in sleepy
boring old Toowomba.



Gary





At 08:57  23/09/00 +1000, you wrote:
> > 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