Cromwell in Ireland
be made before we can settle on a safe peace. I pray you spare none, but indict all of quality and estate. We have done so hereabouts to many thousands and have already executed some." (The italics are not in the original.)
What, I ask, was the offence for which these men were thus despoiled of all they possessed? It was devotion to their King. As surely as Cromwell and the other regicides, whose names appear in the list of lenders from which I have quoted, were opposed to the King, so surely were the so-called "Irish rebels" faithful to him. Carlyle, with all his partiality for Cromwell (a partiality which a modern writer has characterised as "prostituted enthusiasm and brutal buffoonery")—even Carlyle has to admit of this Irish war that the Irish claim, "as we can now all see, was just, essentially just."
But the question of the Irish Rebellion is too large to be here discussed. History has been called the playground of liars, and never since the days of Herodotus has that field been used to more mendacious purpose than when this Irish Rebellion of 1641 has been the chosen theme.
Delayed by the many interruptions we have briefly related, Cromwell was not able to set out
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