State of emergency: The English subjection of early modern Ireland

With good reason the September 1649 storming of Drogheda by Oliver Cromwell's parliamentary army is remembered as probably the worst atrocity ever committed by English forces in Ireland. It was certainly among the bloodiest. Thousands were killed, mostly royalist soldiers, but a high proportion of the victims were also civilians, including women and children. However, when discussing the legacy of English state violence in Early Modern Ireland it is important to realise that the Cromwellian conquest of 1649-50, brutal though it was, was actually the second English conquest of the country in just over a hundred years, following an earlier and more prolonged conquest by the Tudor monarchy, 1534-1603. This chapter draws the two conquests together, examining the reasons that motivated English military intervention, and the types of measures that were deployed, often extreme, up to and including elements of genocide.