Qualla: Siege of Drogheda

Siege of Drogheda: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit After Samuel Cooper, Public domain. At five in the afternoon on 11 September 1649, after eight days of siege and an artillery bombardment that had opened two breaches in the medieval walls, Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army broke into Drogheda. By the morning of 13 September, somewhere between 2,800 and 4,000 people were dead. Soldiers who had surrendered on a promise of quarter had been clubbed to death at a windmill. About a hundred men who took refuge in the steeple of St Peter's Church were burned alive when the soldiers set the steeple on fire on Cromwell's orders. The dead included Royalist English, Confederate Irish, Catholics and Protestants, and an uncertain but substantial number of civilians. It was the worst single act of state violence in the seventeenth-century history of these islands, and it still casts a long shadow over Cromwell's name.

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Image: After Samuel Cooper | Public domain

Siege of Drogheda: Why Drogheda

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kevin King, CC BY 2.0. Cromwell landed near Dublin in August 1649, six months after the execution of King Charles I, to reconquer Ireland for the new English Commonwealth. The country was held by an alliance of Irish Catholic Confederates and English Royalists who had named the dead king's son Charles ...

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Image: Kevin King | CC BY 2.0

Siege of Drogheda: The Summons

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 10 September, Cromwell's guns had opened two breaches in the medieval walls south of the river. He sent a letter under flag of truce to Aston. The contemporary laws of war were brutally clear: if a garrison refused a summons and was then taken by assault, the attacker had lega...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Drogheda: No Quarter

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cianwal, CC BY-SA 4.0. Riding into Drogheda over the bodies of his own men piled in the breaches, Cromwell gave the order: no quarter to any man under arms. In his own words afterwards, written to the Speaker of the Commons - I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town, and that night the...

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Image: Cianwal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Siege of Drogheda: The Steeple of St Peter's

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0. About a hundred men - some soldiers, possibly some civilians - took refuge in the wooden steeple of St Peter's Church at the northern end of town. On Cromwell's orders, Colonel John Hewson set fire to the steeple. The men inside burned to death. There is no record of their names....

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Image: Diliff | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of Drogheda: How Many

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henry Edward Doyle, Public domain. The total dead at Drogheda will never be known exactly. The Parliamentary chaplain Hugh Peters - on Cromwell's own council - reported 3,552 dead, of whom about 2,800 were soldiers, leaving 700 to 800 civilians killed. The Royalist press a week later claimed 2,000 of 3,000 dead we...

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Image: Henry Edward Doyle | Public domain

Siege of Drogheda: What Cromwell Wrote

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gardiner, Samuel Rawson and F.S. Weller (illustrator), Public domain. In his letter to Parliament, Cromwell called the killing a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches. Historians have argued for three centuries about who he meant by barbarous wretches. Some have read it as Catholics generally, in reprisal for the 1641 Irish rebel...

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Image: Gardiner, Samuel Rawson and F.S. Weller (illustrator) | Public domain