2. =Parties in Ireland. 1647-1649.=--In Ireland the conjunction formed at the end of =1641= between the Catholic lords and the native Irish broke down in =1647=. Rinuccini, the Papal Nuncio (see p. 550), discovered that Ireland could only be organised to resist English Puritanism under the authority of the Papal clergy, as there was not sufficient union amongst the Irish themselves to admit the existence of lay national institutions. He was unable to carry his idea into effect. Ormond, the king's Lord-lieutenant, who was himself a Protestant, left Ireland, and handed over Dublin to the Parliamentary troops under Michael Jones, rather than see it in the hands of Rinuccini and the Celts. Even the Catholic lords objected to become the servants of a clerical State, and Rinuccini, baffled on every side, was obliged to return to Italy. In September, =1648=, Ormond returned to Ireland, where he soon afterwards entered into a close alliance with the Catholic lords, who were to receive religious toleration, and in return to defend the king. After the king's execution, Charles II. was proclaimed in Ireland. Ormond, having now an army in which Irish Catholics and English Royalist Protestants were combined, hoped to be able to overthrow the Commonwealth both in Ireland and in England. 3. =Cromwell in Ireland. 1649-1650.=--To Cromwell such a situation was intolerable. His Puritan zeal led him to regard with loathing Ormond's league with the Catholics, and he was too thorough an Englishman not to resolve that, if there was to be a struggle, England must conquer Ireland, and not Ireland England. On August 15 he landed at Dublin. On September 11 he stormed Drogheda, where he put 2,000 men to the sword, a slaughter which was in strict accordance with the laws of war of that day, which left garrisons refusing, as that of Drogheda had done, to surrender an indefensible post, when summoned to do so, to the mercy or cruelty of the enemy. Cromwell had a half-suspicion that some farther excuse was needed. "I am persuaded," he wrote, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon those barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future--which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." At Wexford, where the garrison continued to defend itself after the walls had been scaled, there was another slaughter. Town after town surrendered. In the spring of =1650= Cromwell left Ireland. The conquest was prosecuted by his successors, Ireton and Ludlow, with savage effectiveness; and when at last, in =1652=, the war came to an end, a great part of three out of the four provinces of Ireland was confiscated for the benefit of the conquering race. The Catholic landowners and other persons who had borne arms against the Parliament were driven into the wilds of Connaught, to find there what sustenance they could.