Cromwell Sacks Drogheda

September 11, 1649

Oliver Cromwell, crossing to Ireland to crush royalist and Catholic resistance, stormed the town of Drogheda and massacred the garrison and many civilians. Three thousand were killed. Cromwell called it a righteous judgment of God. The Irish have remembered the sack for nearly four centuries, and his name remains a byword for English cruelty in Ireland to this day.