Atrocity, Codes of Conduct and the Irish in the British Civil Wars 1641-1653

To introduce the principle of moderation into the theory of war itself would always lead to logical absurdity.

Clausewitz¹

In Ireland, Oliver Cromwell's name will for ever be associated with the storming of the towns of Drogheda and Wexford in the autumn of 1649. The massacre of troops and civilians in both cases shocked contemporary Irish opinion and left a deep legacy of bitterness towards English colonial rule. Condemned by his critics for unprecedented savagery, Cromwell's apologists excused his conduct as merely reflecting the bloody and unprincipled nature of the war in that country, and of warfare in general during the mid seventeenth century. The widely publicized horrors of the Thirty Years War in Germany confirmed contemporary perceptions of the all-destructive impact of prolonged armed conflict.² However, in a seminal article on the laws of war, Geoffrey Parker argues that most modern conventions concerning restraint in combat appeared in Europe between 1550 and 1700, initially in theory and (not surprisingly) more slowly in practice.³ These restrictions had their antecedents in medieval Europe, through initiatives such as the Peace of God, but it was Renaissance writers such as Francisco de Vitoria, Balthazar Ayala, Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius who first published detailed treatises outlining legitimate and acceptable behaviour during conflict.⁴ Their work, based on classical precedent, largely disregarded contemporary practice and therefore, in order to understand the moral context of warfare at the time, it is necessary to extract some general rules from the 'untidy and variable body of customary law'.⁵ Barbara Donagan does exactly that, identifying three distinct categories in her study of the English Civil Wars during the mid seventeenth century. The first of these, 'the law of nature and nations', focused on the behaviour to be expected of any reasonable, moral Christian, including the protection of non-combatants. The second category, the 'laws of war', dealt with issues such as surrender on the battlefield and the etiquette of sieges. Adherence to these customary laws, although subject to local variation, was considered both Christian and honourable. Only the third category, 'military law', consisted of a series of formally codified articles.⁶

From the late sixteenth century, this military law acted as an important moderating influence. The Spanish, Dutch and Swedes all published articles to regulate the behaviour of their troops while on campaign, and reached agreement with their opponents on issues such as the exchange of prisoners.⁷ Parker attributes this increasing restraint to a number of factors: stricter central control over armies; the gradual deconfessionalization of conflict; revulsion towards excesses; and, finally, the spread of reciprocity.⁸ With the important exception of religious divisions, all these factors are directly applicable to the war in Ireland, which began in October 1641 with the revolt of the Catholic Irish, and continued for twelve years until the final victory of the English parliamentary forces in 1653. Yet, the belief persists that the conflict in Ireland somehow operated outside the acceptable laws of war as understood in the seventeenth century. In a recent volume on massacres in history, Robin Clifton states that, unlike in England and Scotland, it was only in Ireland 'that civil war unleashed humanity's full capacity for wholesale and pitiless slaughter'; while Nicholas Canny argues that despite the efforts of some professional soldiers, 'it quickly became apparent that warfare in Ireland was constrained by no moral economies'. Similarly, according to John Morrill, Cromwell's extreme behaviour at Drogheda and Wexford merely reflected the codes of military conflict in the Irish theatre.⁹ The reality, however, is more complex, and the war, in fact, went through a number of distinct phases. Indeed, only by examining the entire conflict in its broader context, encompassing events in the three Stuart kingdoms as well as on the Continent, can the nature of warfare in Ireland during the 1640s and 1650s be properly assessed.

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The conduct of war became increasingly bloody in Ireland from the mid sixteenth century, due to a potent mix of religious and ethnic tensions between Catholic Irish...