Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland - The Siege of Drogheda

The Siege of Drogheda

Upon landing, Oliver Cromwell proceeded to take the other port cities on Ireland’s east coast, in order to secure an efficient supply of reinforcements and logistics from England. The first town to fall was Drogheda, about 50 km north of Dublin. Drogheda was garrisoned by a regiment of 3000 English Royalist and Irish Confederate soldiers, commanded by Arthur Aston. When Cromwell’s men took the town by storm, the majority of the garrison and Catholic priests were massacred on Cromwell’s orders. Many civilians also died in the sack. Arthur Aston was beaten to death by the Roundheads with his own wooden leg.

The massacre of the garrison in Drogheda, including some after they had surrendered and some who had sheltered in a church, was received with horror in Ireland and is remembered even today as an example of Cromwell’s extreme cruelty. However, it has recently been argued (for example by Tom Reilly in Cromwell, an Honourable Enemy, Dingle 1999) that what happened at Drogheda was not unusually severe by the standards of 17th century siege warfare.

Having taken Drogheda, Cromwell sent 5000 men north under Robert Venables to take eastern Ulster from the remnants of a Scottish Covenanter army that had landed there in 1642. They defeated the Scots at the Battle of Lisnagarvey and linked up with a Parliamentarian army composed of English settlers based around Derry in western Ulster, which was commanded by Charles Coote.