It is not just to severely condemn Cromwell for his action in Ireland. He lived in the seventeenth, not the nineteenth century, and acted according to his lights. His Irish campaigns have been described as “a series of blood-massacres, the just punishment of atrocious deeds, or as the fanatical orgie of a tyrant. This was a complete perversion of fact, and Cromwell’s conduct in Ireland had yet to be judged impartially by a candid historian and by a competent thinker on war. No doubt he was a stern and severe conqueror; no doubt they turned their eyes away from Wexford and Drogheda; no doubt Cromwell and his avenging host regarded Celtic Papists as accursed idolaters, dripping with the carnage of 1641, and to be trodden under foot, like the doomed tribes of Palestine were crushed ‘at the bidding of the Lord’; but when he set foot in Ireland, he had to deal with a nation in armed and furious revolt, which had a country difficult in the extreme to penetrate. The experiences of previous Irish wars had shown, that under conditions like these, it was essential to strike hard at once, and the peculiarities of the Irish climate, fatal in the seventeenth century to British troops, made it necessary to avoid the inland districts, and, if possible, to obtain immediate success. These considerations explained his deeds in Ireland. He was pitiless and inexorable, but he acted upon a far-sighted policy, and his generalship was bold, decided, and brilliant. His severity at Drogheda, he told them himself, was calculated ‘to prevent the effusion of blood.’ Just as Villars deliberately starved Fribourg, just as the garrison of Pampeluna would have been put to the sword had it not yielded to the summons of Wellington.”[12] Whatever be the criticism of the means he employed, the end was that all open rebellion had ceased by 1653. Meanwhile, in Scotland, too, the war-cloud had again burst; and though Fairfax resigned rather than invade that country, Cromwell either had less scruples, or was more firmly determined to put down all armed insurrection to the Republic, and assumed command of a fresh army of the North. But the actions were, except that at Dunbar, disconnected and inconclusive. There were the usual small affairs, minor sieges and operations in an exceptionally difficult country. Whether Cromwell wilfully left the doorway into England open or not is doubtful, though Colonel Walford is of opinion he did; but be that as it may, the Scotch army fell into a trap, marched into England as far as Worcester, and there met what Cromwell and his party thought the crowning mercy of defeat. His army had marched to that victory for twenty-four days, and had covered in that time 350 miles.