Life imprisonment is not only more kind, you have a less dangerous overhead if the Royalists end up winning. 
They should have done what the Russians did, and get rid of the heirs too.
But they didn’t. That’s the point.
And when they come back, like Charles II, they might be really, really pissed. If you just locked Uncle Nicky up for a few months, it’s one thing. If you killed his Wife, kids, Physician, servants and various hangers on, it’s another.
I’m not. Aston and the men who surrendered with him probably shouldn’t have been killed. It was wrong.
[quote]
In Ireland, Cromwell’s army were the invaders. They killed children and other noncombatants. The stain of some evils can’t be washed away.?/QUOTE]
Again, Prince Rupert killed noncombatants at Birmingham. And the Irish killed a whole lot of non-combatants during the 1641 Rebellion. But under most circumstances, the New Model Army didn’t harm non-combatants. The Ireland campaign (and Naseby) was an exception.
Ireland was in rebellion and allied with the Royalists, so it seems like the invasion, if you want to call it that, was legitimate. It’s not like Ireland was a foreign country. It belonged to Britain, and as far as Parliament was concerned, they were the legitimate government of Britain.
OK - what the Russians tried to do.
Then plowed the fields with salt, or whatever.
They want martyrs? We’ll give them martyrs.
Undecided.
By political conviction a Leveller, so probably fighting for the roundheads until knifed in the back. By haircut a cavalier. Also, living where I do I would have been living inside the walls of a Cavalier stronghold, three times besieged by the roundheads, personally relieved by Rupert, and so on.
Drogheda had not been involved in the 1641 rebellion.
As for the Irish being in rebellion, one could also argue that they were merely against what they saw as an illegitimate usurper, and one who surpressed their religion and their culture. It wasn’t simply Drogheda – Cromwell hated the Irish and he hated Catholicism. Ireland saw him as a threat to their way of life, and rightly so.
And thus, I could never be persuaded to support the bastard.
Look, I’m not one for an absolute monarchy – a constitutional monarchy, as Britain has now is much much better. However, as for Qin’s comments on what life would have been like under the Caveliers – it wouldn’t have been much different under any other kind of government. People were used to being poor, hungry and sad to say, many children didn’t survive to adulthood. That was true for the rich, as well as the poor. (Charles himself lost a son, I believe, at three years old)
+1
Besides, if Cromwell hadn’t pogrom’d the Irish, who knows where I would be now…
No argument there, but by doing that, they sealed their fate. They chose to go into rebellion, and they chose to stay Catholic, and they knew the cost of that.
Well- I am not catholic about much, and certainly not in the churchgoing sense- but I don’t think a true believer could choose… Not to stop believing- perhaps to stop behaving as such…
Yet you will defend one against a Parliamentary based regime, when both sides committed essentially equivalent actions which in current times would be considered war crimes.
Note – I said in this case. I don’t believe in any absolute government. HOWEVER, I would be forced to choose the lesser of two evils. I’m Irish and I’m Catholic (well lapsed), so I’m not going to support the guy who wants to wipe me out.
(And we’re not talking about current times – Qin asked who we would have supported in the English Civil War. I’m assuming he meant if we had been alive back then)
In the fine old English tradition, I would support the nearest gang of highwaymen.
Yes but mostly Anglicans especially high-church ones not Non-Conformists.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. There was no such thing as a “government of Britain,” legitimate or otherwise, at the time. Cromwell’s army was English. Many of them moved directly from the invasion of Ireland to an invasion of Scotland. And frankly the English largely treated Ireland as a foreign, subject country through most of their shared history, even in the 18th and 19th centuries when the bonds were far tighter than in Cromwell’s day.
Would support the Cavaliers because, from all I’ve heard, the Roundheads were basically a bunch of Puritans, and I’m thoroughly with H.L. Mencken on this issue.
Why does everyone have this image of Puritans as a bunch of 17th Century Taliban? They were, regardless of their “Puritanism”, fighting against absolutist monarchy. Also Puritans were the ones who really built America as we know it to-day-they founded Harvard, Yale, Princeton, they made Boston the intellectual centre of Anglophone North America for two hundred fifty years, and made New England the most industrialized, prosperous part of America.
Fighting against a wrong doesn’t make you the good guys. You can’t just “regardless” away something by pointing to wrongdoing on the other side. It’s perfectly possible to, say, fight against one form of absolutist rule because you would prefer a different kind of absolutist rule that favours you. The king is dead, long live the king, and all that.
Ok, so government of England. (Sorry, I put Britain further back in my head than it really was…confused the act of Union with the Dual Monarchy). But Parliament was the English government, and Ireland belonged to England.
No place and people “belong” to another if they require an invasion and massacres to hold it.