an enemy, will be led to believe, that the provocation was of a similar character with that which, according to Phædrus, was given by the lamb, drinking at the lower part of the stream, to the wolf, who was allaying his thirst above, and who charged the innocent animal with muddying the waters. The strong probability is, that some individual resisted the rape of his wife or daughter, or the plunder of his property, and that the foiled ruffians magnified the affair into a violation of the protection. But be that as it may, it does not diminish our horror of the merciless Ireton, who issued the murderous mandate to slaughter "man, woman, and child;" as it must be obvious, that, if there were really a violation of the articles, a large portion of the men were probably wholly innocent: and, at all events, the women, and more especially the children, could not have deserved the extermination from which they were so hardly rescued.

To the wretched Irish, neither caves, nor castles, nor churches, afforded any security. The murderous spirit of their enemies pursued them in every quarter, with as little mercy as the tiger displays towards the bleating lamb.

Three thousand men, women, and children, of all ranks and ages, took refuge in the cathedral of Cashel, hoping the temple of the Living God · would afford them a sanctuary from the butcheries that were laying the whole country desolate. The barbarian Ireton forced the gates of the

church, and let loose his blood-hounds among them, who soon convinced them how vain was their reliance on the temple or the altar of God. They were slaughtered, without discrimination.* Neither rank, dignity, nor character, saved the nobleman, the bishop, or the priest; nor decrepitude, nor his hoary head, the venerable sage, bending down into the grave; nor her charms, the virgin; nor her virtues, the respectable matron; nor its helplessness, the smiling infant. Butchery was the order of the day,—and all shared the common fate.

"Behold the furious and unpitying soldier, Pulling his reeking dagger from the bosoms Of gasping wretches. Death in ev'ry quarter, With all that sad disorder can produce,

To make a spectacle of horror.

"Distracted mothers

Kneeling before their feet, and begging pity;
Their naked, mangled breasts besmeared with blood,
And ev❜n the milk, with which their fondled babes
Softly they hush'd, drop in anguish from them."549

That the leaders of the forces of the government perpetrated the most atrocious cruelties, we have fully proved. We shall now give a few strong facts, to satisfy the reader, that they gloried in their guilt, and regarded the extent of

"Having brought together an army, he marched into the county of Tipperary, and hearing that many priests and gentry about Cashel had retired with their goods into the church, he stormed it, and being entered, put three thousand of them to the sword, taking the priests even from under the altar."550 550 Ludlow, I. 106.

549 Otway.

their murders as constituting their merits. The sanguinary lord Orrery, bending down into the grave, being seventy-six years of age, in urging the claims of the earl of Barrymore and his two sons on the speaker of the English House of Commons, appears to lay his chief dependence for success on the desolation they had perpetrated. The first, he says, lately hung up "forty-three notable rebels for a breakfast."* It is not difficult to conceive what hideous havoc and carnage the constant repetition of these breakfasts, and of dinners and suppers of the same character, must have produced.

The merit of the two sons of lord Orrery far transcended that of lord Barrymore; as they, in the course of a few months, destroyed above three thousand of the Irish.† This afforded them a sure claim to the favour and protection of go

vernment.

* "The earl of Barrymore "hath nothing but what he fighteth with the rebels for, and getteth by his sword; he having lately hanged forty-three notable rebels for a breakfast.”551

†“I do affirm, and will make good this undeniable truth, that my two sons, Kynalmeaky and Broghill, with those forces that I have raised and satisfied, and they command, have been the destruction of above three thousand rebels, since the beginning of the insurrection."552 This letter is dated August 25, 1642; and the insurrection had not spread into Munster until December, 1641. This affords a clew towards forming an estimate of the horrible carnage perpetrated throughout the kingdom on the wretched Irish.

551 Orrery, I. 12.

552 Idem, 15.

Sir William Cole, with one regiment of foot, of five hundred men, and one troop of horse, is recorded by Borlase to have slain 2,417 swordsmen, in various skirmishes and battles, and to have "starved and famished of the vulgar sort," whose property they had previously plundered, no less than 7,000 persons," and thus, adds he "the English in all parts fought, so as indeed the rebels lost, in the general, many men, and much of their substance." That they lost "much of their substance," and that their enemies were as justly celebrated for their skill in plunder as for their thirst of blood, is beyond doubt. The following circumstance will shed additional light on this subject.

Sir Richard Cox, in the subsequent war between James II. and William, boasted that he had, in the single county of Cork, killed and hanged three thousand of the Irish;* made preys to the amount of twelve thousand pounds; and divided

* "As for the enemy, I used them like nettles, and squeezed them (I mean their vagabond partyes) soe hard, that they could seldom sting; having, as I believe, killed and hanged not less than three thousand of them, whilst I stayed in the county of Cork; and taken from them, in cattle and plunder, at least to the value of 12,000l. which you will easily believe, when you know that I divided 3801. between one troop (colonel Townsend's) in the beginning of August. After which colonel Beecher and the western gentlemen got a prey worth 3,000l. besides several other lesser preys, taken by small partyes, that are not taken notice of."554

553 Borlace, 87.

554 Sydney Papers M. I. 168.

three hundred and eighty pounds among one troop. This, it is to be presumed, is a pretty fair specimen of the slaughter and rapine that extended throughout the kingdom.

When a view is taken of the various thousands which we have gleaned up in the preceding pages; 3,000 in one place; 7,000 in another; 4,000 in another; 3,000 in another, and so on in succession; and when regard is had to the novel circumstance of our utterly excluding all the histories on the Irish side of the question, no man can doubt, that in this war of extermination, originally founded on the manifest perjury of O'Conally, provoked by the most savage cruelty, and protracted by the combined influence of devouring avarice, religious bigotry, and the most rancorous national hostility, there were, as we have already stated, from Sir William Petty, above FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND OF THE IRISH "wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship, and banishment, between the 23d October, 1641, and the same day, 1652;" that Ireland, during that war, exhibited as dreadful a scene of rapine and slaughter as either Mexico or Peru, when invaded by the Spaniards; and that none of the sanguinary exploits of Cortes or Pizarro could exceed, for atrocity, the deeds of Coote, St. Leger, Monroe, Inchiquin, Grenville, Hamilton, Tichbourne, Ireton, and Cromwell.

555 Petty, 18. Sir William states the precise number of

504,000.