Cromwell, in his despatch to the speaker of the English Parliament, called this brutal achievement “an exceeding great mercy,” and, blasphemously, gave all the praise of the universal slaughter to the most High God! There is absolutely no excuse for the regicide’s outrageous conduct at Drogheda, although Froude, Carlyle, and other British historians have vainly sought to make apology for his inhuman actions. Many of the garrison were English and Protestant, so that race and creed did not entirely influence him, as the same considerations undoubtedly did at other places in Ireland. His cold-blooded idea was to “strike terror” into Ireland at the outset of the campaign; and in this he certainly succeeded only too well. It made his subsequent task of subjugation much easier than it would, otherwise, have been. Having accomplished his work in the fated city, and left it a smoking ruin, he counter-marched to Dublin, rested there for some days, and then marched toward Wexford, capturing several small towns, which offered but feeble resistance, on his way. His lieutenants had, meanwhile, added Dundalk, Carlingford, and Newry to his conquests in the North. Wexford prepared for a brave defence, but was basely betrayed by Captain James Stafford, an officer of English ancestry, who surrendered the outer defences, without the knowledge of his chief, Colonel David Sennott. Quarter was refused, as at Drogheda, and three hundred maids and matrons, many of the latter with infants in their arms, who fled to the market square, and took refuge, as they thought, under the sacred shadow of the gigantic cross which stood there, were butchered, notwithstanding their pleadings for mercy. Nearly all of these people were Catholic in creed, if not all of Celtic race, so that Cromwell manifested what may be called an impartial spirit of cruelty on both bloody occasions. His hatred for the English Protestant royalists was as hot, to all appearance, as that which he entertained toward the Irish Catholics, who had embraced the Stuart cause. But his remorseless policy of general confiscation of the lands of the vanquished, and the sending into banishment, as veritable slaves, of the unhappy survivors, have left a deeper scar on the heart of Ireland than all the blood he so cruelly, and needlessly, shed on her soil.