He killed th entire population of Ireland and a few hundred thousand "others" for good measure?
Let's make some small effort to be factual with our "history".
“The country of Ireland was wasted. Desease and plague reigned .Famine was constant.
Whole counties lay waste and deserted with neither man nor beast nor bird. Mountjoys methods of distroying all the crops to subdue the Irish.
The Commissioners and Colonel Jones advised that no peace could last without removing priests, sept heads and men with arms out of the land. Many starved along the roads or were killed by wolves.
TheBlack Plague raged killing as many.
Wolves increased to such an extent that a bounty was laid on them, 5 lbs for a dog and 10 lbs for a bitch. Irish wolf hounds were not allowed to be taken out of the country. Tide waiters stood at the ports to seize any hounds for the public huntsmen.
The Puritans additionally wanted to eliminate Priests. A Price on their heads as well as for Fryers Monks and Nuns. Harboring a priest or religious required forfiet of any lands and life. Some were able to escape to Spain with retiring soldiers.They needed passports to leave.They were all officiallly declared , without trial, guilty of High treason and those who helped them were felons.
Any pretext to clear the country of its natives was seized;
Descendants of rebels and
those with no visible means of support were transported.
Bands of outlaws roamed the bogs and dence forests as Tories.
Thousands of priests, captured children and young girls wer sold to slavery for Jamica and Barbados, known than as the tobacco islands. These were sold to the planters for a number of years [indentured]
The outlaws were identified and prices set on ther heads 40 s for a common one, 5 lbs for a lord.
3/4ths of the pre war cattle stock had been wiped out.Cattle had to be imported from Wales for breeeding stock.
4//5 of the land lay waste.
Waste land was let to officers for 5 years for a reasonable rent provided they till sow and manue the land.
Ireland was now a ‘blank sheet of paper on which the English Commonwealth might write the characters they pleased’
http://irishhistorysynopsis.blogspot.com/2007/07/irish-history-synopsisthe-cromwell-era.html
“Let’s make some small effort to be factual with our “history”.”
Just posting a snippet of history.
I have no idea of millions. I think they may be thinking of the cumulative effect of the English occupation leading up to and including the potato famine. Or I could be wrong.
It’s millions if you include the totality of time from Cromwell to the Potato Famine under English occupation.
Agreed; this is plainly an overstatement.
However: The Irish potato famine killed 1.1 to 1.5 million. Irleand once nearly 9 million people. By 1911, it had only 4.4 million. Of course, much of the loss was due to emigration, but even so, up to 1/3rd of the passengers on the so-called “coffin ships” died en route; yet conditions in Ireland were so dire people boarded these ships eagerly.
Now, of course, there’s a difference between deliberate killings and killings due to the secondary effects of barbarous and malicious government policies. But, then again, the Roman Catholic church did not kill the Huguenots, either; rather it was the frenzy of a condemned mob.
As noted by Irish activist John Mitchell: “The English, indeed, call the famine a ‘dispensation of Providence;’ and ascribe it entirely to the blight on potatoes. But potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe; yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first, a fraud - second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.”
Indeed, the potato famine was caused by the complete reliance of the Irish people on potatoes due to their British oppressors. And the bureaucrat who called “a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence” was charged by Her Royal Majesty with overseeing the “relief effort.”
And this attitude has not abated. In one of my Shakespeare classes, my professor approvingly noted that the famine was a “final solution” to Britain’s “Catholic problem,” as if oblivious to the fact that she was echoing Adolf Hitler. When I complained, the administration’s response was that I shouldn’t infer that she was representing her own values; her views were representative of the mainstream of literary thought.
I spoke wrongly. You are correct. I was a little flustered and the hyperbole flowed
Cromwell’s war, however, did lead to almost 40% of Ireland being dead or in exile.