Customer Reviews

Cromwell in Ireland

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Professor Wheeler's book is an excellent military and political history of the tumultuous and devastating decade in Irish history of the Cromwellian conquest. This Irish disaster unfolds slowly, but seems a foregone conclusion almost from the start, given the deep political divisions between Gaelic Irish, Old (Catholic) English, and Royalist Protestants that prevented the development of an effective anti-Cromwellian coalition. Furthermore, the generally brave, but notoriously undisciplined Irish levies were no match for Cromwell's New Model Army. (Although when well-led, the Irish were capable of giving Oliver a bloody nose, as at Clonmel, perhaps Cromwell's weakest display of generalship.) The only major criticism of this volume is it lacks somewhat in the flashes of color and character that give pleasure to posterity.

Wheeler documents the surprising brutality of both sides. Any reader seeking the ancient roots of the deep sectarian hatred in Ulster today would find this volume a good starting point.

It occurs to this contemporary reader that the furies and fanaticism of the era, and the figures of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Ludlow, with their inhumanity, bigotry, violence, and barbarity, are eerily and unpleasantly familiar. For what is Osama bin Laden but Cromwell with a Kalashnikov, what are the Taliban but Roundheads with rocket launchers?

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