With the death of the king in 1649 came the real beginning of the end. This is no place to discuss the merit or demerit of a step so serious that it only finds a partial parallel in the action of Elizabeth towards Mary of Scotland. But two great results grew out of it: the proclamation of Charles II. as King of Scotland, and the invitation of Ormond to Ireland, where also Charles was hailed as the new sovereign. From this came the last two wars of the Commonwealth, the first of which was fought in Ireland. There anarchy reigned. Petty war was the normal condition of the rather more than half-savage clans. There had been a massacre of Protestants, variously estimated at from forty thousand to a hundred thousand, under circumstances of the “most revolting barbarity; ... men, women and children they indiscriminately murdered, in a manner of which the details recall those of the massacre of Cawnpore.” This fact must be gravely borne in mind in considering the English invasion, and must be added to the fierce religious hatred and the increasingly intense political antagonism which the latest events had once more brought to the front. There is much to be said for the bitter revenge taken by the stern Protestant party, which composed the army sent to destroy the Irish people who had done their utmost to aid the monarchical cause in the late war. To the sectaries it was no mere word-painting to say that Papacy was “Anathema,” and the Pope “Antichrist.” To break down the “carved images” was infinitely less a figure of speech in Irish churches than it was in English fanes. War in Ireland was to them a crusade, a religious war, a war of creeds as well as people; and the antagonism of peoples was little less than the antagonism of creeds. So alien were the Irish deemed, that, long before this, Pigott of Clotheram disinherited his eldest son merely for marrying an Irishwoman! Often conquered before, never had this unhappy land been more completely subdued than now. Yet even with this “curse of Cromwell” came peace and prosperity. “Districts which had recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the red men, were in a few years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings and new roads were everywhere seen.” Rightly or wrongly, he held that war was not made with rosewater any more than omelettes without breaking eggs. He may have been, and probably was, quite conscientious when he wrote: “Truly I believe this bitterness will save much effusion of blood.”