ept. The surprise was thus completely reversed. Six
thousand of the confederate troops were killed or forced to surrender,
and Ormond, with the remainder, had to fall back upon Kilkenny.

[Illustration: JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND. (_From an engraving by White,
after a picture by Kneller_.)]

The battle of Baggotrath does not figure amongst the more famous battles
of this period, but it was certainly the turning-point of the Irish
campaign. With his crippled forces, Ormond was unable again to take the
field, and Jones was therefore left in undisputed possession of Dublin.
A week later, in August, 1649, Cromwell had landed there with 12,000
troops at his back.

XXXIX.

CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

Cromwell had hardly set foot upon Irish soil before he took complete
control of the situation. The enterprise, in his own eyes and in those
of many who accompanied him, wore all the sacred hue of a crusade. "We
are come," he announced, solemnly, upon his arrival in Dublin, "to ask
an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed, and to endeavour
to bring to an account all who, by appearing in arms, shall justify
the same."

Three thousand troops, the flower of the English cavaliers, with some of
the Royalists of the Pale--none of whom, it may be said, had anything to
say to the Ulster massacres--had been hastily thrown by Ormond into
Drogheda, under Sir Arthur Ashton, a gallant Royalist officer; and to
Drogheda, accordingly in September Cromwell marched. Summoned to yield,
the garrison refused. They were attacked, and fought desperately,
driving back their assailants at the first assault. At the second, a
breach was made in the walls, and Ashton and his force were driven into
the citadel. "Being thus entered," Cromwell's despatch to the Parliament
runs, "we refused them quarter. I believe we put to the sword the whole
number of the defendents. I do not think thirty escaped. Those that did
are in safe custody for the Barbadoes.... I wish," he adds, a little
later in the same despatch, "all honest hearts may give the glory of
this to God alone."

From Drogheda, the Lord-General turned south to Wexford. Here an equally
energetic defence was followed by an equally successful assault, and
this also by a similar drama of slaughter. "There was lost of the
enemy," he himself writes, "not many less than two thousand; and, I
believe, not twenty of yours from first to last." The soldiers, he goes
on to say, "got a very good booty in