Tom Reilly in History Today writes:
'Incredibly, the first document I consulted was the only one that was missed by almost all other Cromwellian scholars – Drogheda’s municipal records of 1649. Here I read about the activities of hundreds of Drogheda people who went about their daily business in the days immediately after Cromwell’s visit. So it couldn’t have been the ‘entire population’ of Drogheda then. Yet there was a written tradition of generations of academics promoting this as historical fact.
And so the journey began. I became familiar with all of the usual sources and those not so usual. As I read more about Cromwell, it became difficult (although not impossible) to reconcile how a man with such lofty moral ethics could engage in the senseless slaughter of Ireland’s innocents, even amid the frenetic environment of 17th-century warfare. I wiped the slate clean and evaluated the evidence of those people who were actually in Drogheda and Wexford at the time the massacres took place. It was shocking to realise that not one person in either town left written details of the deaths of even one unarmed civilian. Obviously small numbers of male civilians could have died as the result of collateral damage. To argue otherwise is folly. But there was no policy to kill the innocent either before, during or after the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford.'
http://www.historytoday.com/tom-reilly/ ... h-questionAnother book I read many years ago mentions this lack of evidence. I forget the author and the book's name but he points out that the day before the massacre the town council were discussing the problem of dogs in the city. The day of the massacre there was no council meeting. Understandable in the circumstances. The day after the massacre the council were discussing the problem of stray dogs in the city.
by Mick Harper » 4:31 pm