Customer Reviews
Reilly's excuse for Cromwell - By: The Jackal, 23 Sep 2008 
This book fails to apply critical historigraphical methods, is overblown & is really the sort of misplaced hagigraphy we might expect to see from a New Yorker on the 300th anniverary on Osama bin Laden, offering excuses for his excesses - of course Cromwell/bin Laden is innocent of evil intent. The following review is also useful:
Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy
Tom Reilly
(Brandon Press, 17.99) ISBN 0863222501
Tom Reilly is a local historian & has published several local history books on Cromwell & Drogheda. This book he claims is a long overdue evaluation of Cromwell's campaignin Ireland & challenges all the conventional interpretations of events. According to the accepted version Cromwell was appointed Commissioner by the English Parliament to seek out & eliminate all Royalists & Catholic Confederates. In September 1649, he ordered the massacre of the Drogheda garrison & most of the civilian populacein a deliberate policy of terror, partly as a response to the governor's refusal to surrender. A month later, the garrison & civilians of Wexford suffered a similar fate. These massacres have passed into resentful Irish folk memory. Reilly claims to reveal the untold story of Cromwellin Ireland, to acquit him of the 'charges of wholesale & indiscriminate slaughter of the ordinary unarmed people of Ireland' & to express 'Cromwell's compassionate policy towards Irish civilians'. Both the Cromwellian & the Interregnum period have been extensively researched & appraised by Irish & English historians since the appearance of Antonia Fraser's Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973). However, according to Reilly the 'period is left continually unrevised, the dubious traditional viewpoint is now generally accepted as authentic' but he offers little evidencein support of this claim.
The first hundred pages or so give a fair & reasonably accurate account of Cromwell's early life & his campaign, including the sacking of Drogheda, from a variety of well-known sources. The Wexford, Munster & Clonmel campaigns are adequately covered & give a good balanced local history background. If the book had simply described the Cromwellian campaignin Ireland as a series of battles it would have provided a local history reference book on the Cromwellian campaign. However, it is writtenin an emotive, excitable style with irrelevant extraneous material. For example, did you know that Drogheda is the European headquarters of Coca-Cola & has a McDonnells? In the case of Wexford, he alleges that the recent 1798 bicentennial commemorations had a definite Irish republican slant.
Where this book disappoints isin the two chapters on the assessment & analysis of the Cromwellian campaignin both Drogheda & Wexford. In the chapter 'DroghedaAn Analysis' the author dismisses both the eyewitness accounts, including that of Cromwell himself, & the contemporary accounts as Royalist propaganda or as having been written for 'dishonest political reasons'. He contradicts what has been established by a large number of modern professional historians such as Michael Burke, Peter Gaunt, John Morrill, Antonia Fraser & others. For example, Cromwell justified the Drogheda massacrein which nearly 3,500 died as 'that this is the righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their handsin so much innocent blood'. About 2,800 of these 'wretches' were Royalist soldiers which left between 500 to 700 civilians & clerics. It is Tom Reilly's contention that only clerics & armed civilians died & that Cromwell honoured the military procedures of seventeenth-century siege warfare. He also maintains that 'there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate the stories of the massacre...not those [words] transcribed years later which nationalist historians have so far relied upon'. Yet eyewitnesses record the fate of Drogheda's garrison commander Aston who had his brains beaten out with his own wooden leg. His head & those of his officers were sent to Dublin on poles. Reilly makes reference to what happenedin St Peter's church & claims it as a part fabrication. In fact, according to Cromwell himself, a party of eighty sought refugein the tower of the Protestant St Peter's church & refused to surrender. He ordered that church furniture be piled up & set ablaze. Most died as they tried to escape. It is generally accepted that popular nineteenth century nationalist historians have distorted the accounts. For example, Fr Denis Murphy described tales of young virgins killed by soldiers, Jesuit priests pierced with stakesin the market place & children used as shields during the attack on St Peter's.
Reilly's treatment of the massacre at Drogheda is disingenuous & he ignores the conclusion, long recognised by generations of historians, that Cromwell lost his self-control at Drogheda. When Cromwell landed near Dublin on 15 August 1649, he urged his New Model Army to execute 'the great work against the barbarous & bloodthirsty Irish & the rest of their adherents & confederates'. There may have been good military reasons for behaving as he did, but they were not the motives which encouraged him at Drogheda, during the day & night of organised & approved butchery. Cromwell knew exactly what he was doing at Drogheda whether the order for 'no quarter' was given or not. Burke maintains that there was slaughter of civilians on a large scale to ensure that all the clergy were killed as Cromwell stated that there were 'the satisfactory grounds for such action'.
The historical evidence presented by Reilly is not convincing. He frequently refers to 'respective partisan nationalist elements' who are reluctant to accept 'the rehabilitated version of Oliver Cromwell' who was 'merely onein a long line of English oppressors'. The author's style is often superficial, volatile, tendentious & partisanin the face of known historical evidence. The book adds little to our understanding of the actions of Cromwell at Drogheda or at Wexford. His general thesis that Cromwell may well have had no moral right to take the lives at Drogheda or Wexford 'but he certainly had the law firmly on his side' does not stand up to examination. There is a need for a new book on the Irish Cromwellian campaign but unfortunately but this is not it.
Eugene Coyle
Publish and Be Damned! - By: History Boy, 08 Jan 2008 The ambition is good: re-write the history of the greatest bogeymanin Ireland. Unfortunately Reilly merely fits the facts to suit his pre-determined argument. He also ignores other facts, & is simply unaware of others.
Reilly's argument is cobbled together from bits & bobs of later history books, with passages quoted selectively when they suit his argument, & ignored when they don't.
You wouldn't trust a doctor who had never used a stethescope. You wouldn't trust a builder who had never used a hammer. Why would anyone trust a writer who had never looked at any of the original sources that he purports to analyse?
Much Needed Antidote - By: BadgerBorg, 27 Oct 2007 
When I studied this period as an undergraduate there was always something uncomfortable not just about what we studied & believed happened, but also the way the evidence was compiled & usedin what appeared to be an uncritical way.
Tom Reilly has shown me why I felt so uncomfortable, - the evidence isn't good & much of it is politically motivated, Despite criticismsin the reviews posted here Reilly clearly knows more about Drogheda & Wexford than any other living writer, & his balancing & use of evidence is clearly explained.
He has clearly touched a nerve, as criticism of an author's literary style (which I found unconventional but enthusiastic) seems to me to be a fairly low point of attack.
The fact is that Cromwellin Ireland is an intensely political matter, even today, & whatever the truth there are many who aren't prepared to hear it. Read this book & believe.
A good revisionist history - and about time too - By: VanGo, 16 Jun 2006 
As someone of proud Irish parentage from the Drogheda area, but born & raisedin England, I really hope that this book will make a step towards ridding Irish history of some crude nationalistic elements & remnants of plain propaganda. As a result maybe one day I can have a discussion about Ireland & England that doesn't end upin vitriol. Having had first-hand experience of some startlingly personal & acerbic reactions over the years it has long been a personal aim of mine to discover if it was ever justified.
This is where I have found enormous valuein a book written by an undaunted author such as Reilly. He has effectively had to go against the official history & the educational establishmentin Ireland that essentially maintains the view that Cromwell was a murderous contemptible bastard. A man who willingly ordered the butchering of thousands of innocent men, women & childrenin the towns of Drogheda & Wexfordin his campaign to subjugate the rebellious Irish.
Context is laid out, Cromwell was eliminating the last vestiges of Royalist powerin Ireland, which threatened the Commonwealth. Royalist military garrisonsin Ireland were put to the sword as was Cromwells right & an accepted custom at the time. It is not a dismissal of the consequences of Cromwells actionsin Ireland, namely that of the freedom to practice the Catholic faith & the dispossessing of Catholic land. What the author does do however is effectively dismiss the claim that Cromwell actually went out & intentionally killed the civilian population of Ireland at both Drogheda & Wexford. He has essentially done what no other writer has done on the topic properly examined the veracity of the sources & shown that on the whole they are either unreliable due to not being eyewitness accounts, not contemporaneous, biased by religious hatred or just an attempt to blacken the name of a regicide following the Restoration. He also ahows that the numbers do not add up as to the claim that entire town populations were killed. In fact, Reilly actually shows that Cromwell took care to protect the Irish population throughout his campaign. Despite his intolerant antipathy towards the Catholic Church as well as an uncomfortable (to modern eyes at least) justification of the massacres as divine retribution for the 1641 massacres of Protestantsin Ireland he did not go out to teach Ireland a lesson.
This is not to say that Cromwell's invasion was not yet another subjugation of the Irish - to any patriot a foreigner who occupies his land & imposes his will, religion & colonisers upon you will always be a figure of hatred. And Reilly shows that Cromwell did not always have it his own wayin Ireland & suffered one the worst military defeats of his career at Clonmel. I feel this book has effectively shown that the sinister reputation of Cromwell - that he was another English devil terrorising Ireland is plainly undeserved & not backed up with concrete evidence. How much of this will be swallowed by Irishmen who have long been brought up on these so-called evil deeds? On the basis of a scathing review of this book written by a Jason McElligott & other reviews here on Amazon - not much. It cannot be allowed that Cromwell's actions are mitigated or the historical record reviewed!
Credit to Reilly though, he thanks McElligottin his foreword for alerting him to to the necessity of providing proof of his findings & that surely is the chief strength of this book.
Flawed but challenging - By: , 11 Jan 2002 While I sympathise with the earlier reviewer's comments on the unpolished character of Reilly's written style & the often clumsy structure of his arguments this is a challenging book, worthy of the attention of anyone who brings an open mind to the study of Irish history. Those who simply want to have their prejudices confirmed will doubtless hate the book: how dare anyone - especially an Irishman from Drogheda - challenge Irish nationalism's most cherished myth!
The previous reviewer is right that Reilly does not satisfactorily explain away Cromwell's own reference to civilian casualties at Drogheda but the fact that civilians may have diedin the heat of action (today we would call it collateral damage) does not make a massacre. Reilly does,in my opinion, convincingly demolish the reliability the testimony of Woods, the only eyewitness to describe deliberate atrocities committed against civilians during the battle, by showing that he had good reasons to wish to present Cromwellin a bad light. If Wood's evidence is discounted then there is no real evidence of a massacre of civilians: all other sources, including those that the earlier reviewer mentions, are second hand and, like Woods, have an interestin presenting Cromwellin a bad light. The consequences for Ireland of the Cromwellian conquest were quite bad enough without making the man into something he was not. I would hope that Reilly's book might help encourage a less self-serving approach to Irish history if it was more widely read.
