Titans of History

After some negotiations Ashton rejected the terms offered to him. Cromwell, at the head of a 12,000-strong army and impatient for a quick success, launched his attack on September 11. Speaking to his soldiers, he “forbade them to spare any that were at arms in the town.” As his men broke into Drogheda, all of the defenders were put to the sword—even those who quickly surrendered. Hundreds of civilians were also murdered. Catholic priests were systematically targeted, and those who had sought refuge from the fighting in St. Peter’s Church were burned alive when the besiegers torched the building. Of the Royalist troops, Cromwell stated, “I do not think thirty of their number escaped with their lives.” Those who did were promptly sold into slavery in Barbados. One estimate put the total death toll at 3500, of whom 2800 were soldiers and the rest clergy and civilians.

Modern research shows that the massacres have been exaggerated but, nonetheless, there is no doubt they were war crimes. Cromwell later accounted for himself before the English Parliament. “I am persuaded,” he said, “that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.”

In 1650–1 Cromwell led his armies to victory over the Scots at Dunbar and over Prince Charles’s Anglo-Scottish adventure at Worcester (1651). The prince famously escaped to France, helped by disguise and a convenient oak tree, but his subsequent nine years of exile left Cromwell as king in all but name. In 1653, he chose to assume the traditional title of Lord Protector rather than seeking to become Oliver I.

The 1650s were remarkable for their diversity of opinions, religious and political, and it fell to Cromwell to try to rein in the forces that might split the country apart. To his enemies, then and now, he was a military dictator, the former upholder of parliamentary rights who himself happily dismissed parliaments when they became inconvenient. But Cromwell had to bridge the radical, almost socialist, views among the army ranks and the deeply held traditions of 17th-century middle England, at core Royalist and conservative.

It could have all gone disastrously wrong, and it is to Cromwell’s credit that he produced serious achievements. He ensured political representation from Scotland and Ireland. In wars with the Dutch and Spanish, the navy, under Admiral Blake, achieved notable success. Cromwell negotiated for the Jews to be allowed back into England, a historic decision. And he remained devoted to social justice for the poor.

In 1657 Parliament offered Cromwell the crown—his chance, had he so wished, to revert to a type of government everyone understood and to beget a dynasty. He declined the crown, but on his death in 1658 his son Richard succeeded him as lord protector. The resulting power vacuum under Richard showed just how dependent Cromwellian England was on the talents, force and personality of the man himself.

Richard’s rule was short: Tumbledown Dick lacked any of his father’s acumen. General Monck—one of Cromwell’s commanders—marched south and presided over the restoration of Charles II, receiving the dukedom of Albermarle as his reward. So ended the republican experiment, but not without marking Oliver Cromwell’s place in history as a man of conscience, fearless leadership, military brilliance, piety and severity.

AURANGZEB

1618–1707

I have sinned terribly, and I do not know what punishment awaits me

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Aurangzeb’s alleged death-bed confession

Aurangzeb, known as Alamgir (world-seizer), was the last of the great Mughal emperors of India, expanding his empire and ruling for almost half a century, but his cruelty to his father was shameful even by the standards of dynastic rivalries and his intolerant repression and imposition of Muslim orthodoxy undermined the admirably tolerant tradition of his great predecessors, the emperors Babur and Akbar the Great. He thus alienated his millions of Hindu subjects, weakened his empire and started the rot that led to the British conquest.

The third son of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, in the dynasty descended from Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, Aurangzeb was a pious Muslim from an early age. As a young man he proved himself a capable administrator and proficient soldier in his father’s service, but resented the fact that Shah Jahan nominated his eldest and favorite son, Dara Shikoh, his heir, leaving Aurangzeb out of the line of succession. This led to a rift between father and son, and a growing rivalry between Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh.