The Massacre
Cromwell, upon riding into the town, was enraged by the sight of heaps of Parliamentarian dead at the breaches. Morril states "it was the sight of fallen comrades that was the occasion of Cromwell issuing the order for no quarter". In Cromwell's words, "In the heat of the action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town...and, that night they put to the sword about two thousand men".
After breaking into the town the Parliamentarian soldiers pursued the defenders through the streets and into private properties, sacking churches and defensible positions as they went. There was a drawbridge that would have stopped the attackers reaching the northern part of the town, but the defenders had no time to pull it up behind them and the killing continued in the northern part of Drogheda.
Read more about this topic: Siege Of Drogheda
Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)