On the 17th of October, Cromwell sat down before Ross, and sent in a trumpeter, calling on the commander to surrender, with this extraordinary statement, "Since my coming into Ireland, I have this witness for myself, that I have endeavoured to avoid effusion of blood;" which must have been read with wonder, after the recent news from Drogheda and Wexford. General Taaffe refused. There were one thousand soldiers in the place, and Ormond, Ardes, and Castlehaven, who were on the other side of the river, sent in fifteen hundred more. Yet on the 19th the town surrendered, the soldiers being allowed to march away. O'Neil had now joined Ormond at Kilkenny with two thousand horse and foot, and Inchiquin was in Munster. Soon after Cork and Youghal opened their gates, Admiral Blake co-operating by water. In the north, Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connaught, took Coleraine by storm, and forming a junction with Colonel Venables, marched on Carrickfergus, which they soon after reduced. Cromwell marched from Ross to Waterford, his army having taken Inistioge, Thomastown, and Carrick. He appeared before Waterford on the 24th of November. Here, too, he received the news of the surrender of Kinsale and Bandon Bridge, but Waterford refused to surrender, and Cromwell was compelled to march away to Cork for winter quarters. His troops, however, took the fort of Passage near Waterford; but they lost Lieutenant-General Jones, the conqueror of Rathmines, by sickness at Dungarvan. Cromwell did not rest long in winter quarters. By the 29th of January, 1650, he was in the field again, at the head of thirty thousand men. Whilst Major-General Ireton and Colonel Reynolds marched by Carrick into Kilkenny, Cromwell proceeded from Youghal over the Blackwater into Tipperary, various castles being taken by the way; they quartered themselves in Fethard and Cashel. On March 28th Cromwell succeeded in taking Kilkenny, whence he proceeded to Clonmel. In this campaign the Royalist generals accuse him of still perpetrating unnecessary cruelties, though they endeavoured to set him a different example. "I took," says Lord Castlehaven, "Athy by storm, with all the garrison (seven hundred) prisoners. I made a present of them to Cromwell, desiring him by letter that he would do the same to me, if any of mine should fall into his power. But he little valued my civility, for in a few days after he besieged Gouvan, and the soldiers mutinying and giving up the place with their officers, he caused the Governor Hammond and some other officers to be put to death." Cromwell avows this in one of his letters. "The next day the colonel, the major, and the rest of the commissioned officers were shot to death; all but one, who, being very earnest to have the castle delivered, was pardoned." And this, he admits, was because they refused to surrender at his first summons. He seemed to consider a refusal to surrender at once and unconditionally, a deadly crime, and avenged it bloodily.