#siege of Wexford

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

After the fall of Drogheda in September 1649, the Marquis of Ormond retreated to Kilkenny with his remaining forces, abandoning the garrisons of Trim and Dundalk. With the losses sustained at Rathmines and Drogheda, Ormond was unable to muster an army strong enough to challenge Cromwell, which left the north-western approaches to Dublin secure for the Parliamentarians. While Colonel Venables…

[cromwellrex2]

Cromwell in Ireland, August-November 1649: ‘I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches,’

Drogheda and Wexford

Cromwell in Drogheda. Source: GettyImages

THE SITUATION in Ireland which, since the initial eruption of the Old Irish rebellion in 1641, had stabilised into an armed truce between the Catholic Confederates on one side, and the Presbyterian Scots on the other, with the English garrisons under the Royalist Lord Lieutenant James Butler, Earl of Ormond, maintaining an uneasy neutrality. This state of affairs was completely altered by the execution of the King and the hasty establishment of an English Commonwealth under the Rump Parliament and the New Model Army. The Prince of Wales, now crowned King Charles II in Breda and in absentia in Edinburgh, cast his net wide in a search for allies to help him regain his father’s throne. Like Charles I, his exiled son hoped the Irish Confederates could perhaps provide him with the military resources he craved; equally, the Prince also made overtures to the Covenanter Scots, who had proved unexpectedly loyal to the House of Stuart; finally there was Ormond himself, an unequivocal English Royalist, whose small garrison forces also declared for Charles. Therefore in a matter of months, the various protagonists in the Irish rebellion found themselves effectively on the same side all, to a greater or lesser degree, proclaiming support for the exiled King, and opposition to the Commonwealth.

For Cromwell, the shifting alliances that had produced this unforeseen coalition, actually simplified matters. His task was now not simply to reconquer Ireland for the English Parliament, but to cleanse the country, not only of Popery, but also of Protestant schematics and recidivist King’s men. Cromwell’s sense of religious certainty and destiny was manifested in its purest sense during the Commonwealth assault on Ireland - with significant consequences for not only the immediate future of the country, but also for Ireland’s sense of itself in the centuries to come.

Cromwell led an army of 12,000 men into Ireland, mostly troops with experience of fighting in the two civil wars, and landed in Dublin on 14th August 1649. The fact he was able to do this with relative ease was not a given. Until recently, Dublin, garrisoned by soldiers loyal to the Parliament under the command of Colonel Michael Jones, had been besieged by Ormond’s Royalist forces. On 2nd August, Jones had led 4,000 of Dublin’s defenders on a daring sortie, catching the 19,000 strong besiegers completely by surprise and routed them at Rathmines, not only breaking the siege, but winning one of the most remarkable military victories of the British civil wars. For a delighted Cromwell, this scattering of the main Royalist army in Ireland was proof positive of divine favour and God’s support for his mission to extirpate the Catholic revolt and to avenge the atrocities of 1641.

From Dublin, Cromwell decided the next objective of the Commonwealth campaign would be the walled city of Drogheda, some thirty miles to the north. Drogheda was strongly fortified by Confederates and English Royalists, under the command of the veteran Royalist officer, the wooden-legged Sir Arthur Aston. It also straddled the River Boyne and in addition to being a major trading centre, also commanded the approaches to Ulster and the heartland of Scottish Presbyterianism in Ireland. Cromwell arrived before Drogheda on 3rd September. His invitations to the Irish/Royalist garrison to surrender were rejected after which Cromwell positioned his twelve field guns and eleven mortars, which had arrived by sea, on the rising ground surrounding the city. The bombardment began on 10th September soon after the refusal to surrender was received and by the end of the day, breaches had appeared in the walls. The following day, Cromwell ordered a full scale assault. The fighting was fierce and the New Model forces were initially repulsed, taking significant casualties. A second attack which Cromwell himself led personally, succeeded in entering the city. The gates were opened by the Commonwealth infantry and the New Model cavalry stormed in. Despite the fall of the city now only being a matter of time, the defenders, rallied by the indomitable Aston, refused to surrender and it was at this point an exasperated Cromwell ordered that no quarter be given to any men under arms. It was this order that sealed Cromwell’s reputation in Ireland as a cold-hearted killer and the taking of Drogheda as an atrocity.

There is no doubt that an order to give no quarter was highly unusual in the civil wars. Quarter was generally freely given in order to induce surrender and occasions where mercy was not shown were rarely as a result an official military order. Cromwell himself certainly viewed Catholicism as superstitious nonsense and the Irish as an uncivilised sub-species of humanity, guilty of massacres of Protestants, on whom clemency should not be wasted. It is also true that many of the New Model soldiers had been brutalised by seven years of near continuous fighting and needed little encouragement to kill their enemies. The lurid contemporary and later accounts of the slaughter of women and children by the attacking English soldiers are almost certainly false, but the killing of surrendering enemies was indefensible and a deserved blot on the character and reputation of Oliver Cromwell. The entire garrison, between 3,000 and 4,000 men, including Aston, was put to the sword.

Cromwell’s next target was the south eastern city of Wexford, chosen again for its strategic importance, particularly given its proximity to continental Europe and its potential as a rallying point for Royalists. The Commonwealth forces reached Wexford on 2nd October. The Irish garrison, emboldened by reinforcements sent by Ormond, refused terms and, like Drogheda before it, was subjected to heavy English bombardment. Negotiations between Cromwell and the city leaders however continued and it seemed likely at one point a settlement could have been reached, but this all changed when Captain James Stafford, commander of the castle at Wexford, dramatically surrendered, throwing open the gates to the Parliamentary besiegers. Fighting continued street by street, but the defenders were doomed. Unlike Drogheda no order to give no quarter was issued to the Commonwealth troops, but by then the precedent was set: all men under arms, including civilians and all Catholic priests caught, were killed. Over 2,000 men died, cut down by a remorseless enemy, or drowned trying to escape the massacre. Cromwell’s culpability for the extent of the death and destruction at Wexford is less easy to establish than at Drogheda, but he was unmoved by it, almost gleefully reporting later that ‘our forces… put all to the sword that came in their way.’

With the fall of Wexford, most of Munster and all lands between Cork and Dublin fell under Commonwealth control. The dreadful example of the two sacked cities led to many other garrisons surrendering without a fight or fleeing before Cromwell’s army reached them. The reconquest of Ireland was not complete, but the brutal taking of Drogheda and Wexford demonstrated the implacability of Cromwell’s mission in Ireland and ended any Royalist hopes that Ireland could be a realistic springboard for the return of the monarchy to England.

[st-just]

Today Cromwell will follow up the sack of Drogheda, the largest siege massacre in Irish history, with the sack of Wexford. The second largest siege massacre in Irish history.

-line from a podcast I probably shouldn't find the delivery of funny.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.27 (before 1960)

1096 – Count Emicho enters Mainz, where his followers massacre Jewish citizens. At least 600 Jews are killed. 1120 – Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death. 1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland. 1199 – John is crowned King of England. 1257 – Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral. 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon defeats rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing. 1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg. 1798 – The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia. 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland. 1813 – War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George. 1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins the Siege of Palermo, part of the wars of Italian unification. 1863 – American Civil War: The first Union infantry assault of the Siege of Port Hudson occurs. 1874 – The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria. 1883 – Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia. 1896 – The F4-strength St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing over $10 million in damage. 1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins. 1915 – HMS Princess Irene explodes and sinks off Sheerness, Kent, with the loss of 352 lives. 1917 – Pope Benedict XV promulgates the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the first comprehensive codification of Catholic canon law in the legal history of the Catholic Church. 1919 – The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight. 1927 – The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A. 1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public. 1933 – New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission. 1935 – New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495). 1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California. 1940 – World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive. 1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency". 1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men. 1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later. 1950 – The Linnanmäki amusement park is opened for the first time in Helsinki. 1958 – First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II.

[shetheyshenanigans]

Ik I’m currently on an Irish language roll, but I keep thinking about the American man who told me I didn’t have an Irish accent and now I’m pissed off

So

1. Irish names such as Aisling, Roisín, Ciarán, Ruairí etc, are not “weird names”. They are perfectly pronounceable to us, and they’re not “weird English” they are a different language. Making videos where you try and fail to pronounce our names and laugh about it, isn’t funny it’s just prejudiced. Shut up.

2. We do not all sound like Jamie Dornan in the Siege of Jadotville. Side note king, you’re literally Northern Irish, where did that accent come from???? There are different accents across the island, mine is a Limerick accent, my mom’s is an Offaly accent, my dad’s uncles have Wexford accents etc. we’re all Irish. Leave us alone.

3. Dublin is not the only city in Ireland. Moving on.

4. We have Wifi. I’m even using it to type this out. We are not stuck in the 1700s, we have technology. Even the rural areas that do have cottages and bungalows etc, also have TVs and electricity.

5. Most importantly, we are not British. We are not part of the United Kingdom, except for Northern Ireland which was forcibly taken over by the British. Stop calling us English, and do not refer to us as Brits.

6. The Famine was a genocide. You call us stupid for relying on one crop only, I tell you that English landlords sold everything else and all the poor could do was plant potatoes and hope they wouldn’t rot. The English continued to sell our food in the middle of the Famine. The man they put in charge of Famine Relief, Charles Trevalayn, decided that if he helped us we would become lazy. So he made people build “Famine Roads”, roads that went nowhere, for a pittance when they were already half starved. The genetic effects of the Famine carried on too, studies have found that Irish people had higher rates of mental health issues for one hundred and fifty years after the Famine. We fucking remember.

7. Our language was banned. I am fortunate enough that my parents sent me to an all-Irish school and that I’m fluent, whereas they went to English speaking schools and don’t have much Irish now. But, is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Bearla cliste. The British tried to kill Irish and they did not succeed. We’re still here and we still speak.

Stereotypes about Ireland are generally wrong, and people could stand to learn a lot more about us and our history before they go around making “jokes”. You’re not funny.

[clairebeauchampfan]

Two sides to every story

So....I just saw a repost by a blogger who usually posts sympathetically about Outlander,   about bigotted Ulster Unionists, which came with a slew of comments  about  how dreadful they are, f*cking British colonists, and with even more comments below about  how everything about the English is wrong and how horrid we were and are because of  our history as slavers and genocidal colonials, cultural vandals and ruthless Imperialists  (rich if some of that is coming from American bloggers, but that’s another story)

I try not to get involved in politics on my blog , least of all the god-awful  politics of Northern Ireland, that  benighted but beautiful corner of the Emerald Isle that is torn by ethnic and sectarian conflicts that have been intractable for, what, 400 years? Usually the comments I read on Tumblr about the horrors of the British Empire and how beastly the English have been and STILL ARE, pass me by.  If you are English you get used to being the world’s whipping boy for every real or imagined sin of your slave freeing, democracy promoting Nazi defeating ancestors. No one much liked the Romans, either, the bastards. What did they ever do for us? 

 But in this case I have, as they say, skin in the game.  MY Irish  ancestors were Southern Irish whose family had been in Ireland probably before the Mayflower; I don’t know. They certainly thought of themselves as Irish and sounded Irish, but  their names were not Mcthis or O’that, so I assume they were ‘planted’ at some time. Like 10% of pre-Independence Ireland they were Protestants, and like many they were driven out of Ireland during and after the civil war; their houses burned, their people intimidated or murdered,  their churches now ruins, in a determined bout of Bosnian style ethno-social cleansing that Republian Ireland would much rather forget. 

The Protestant population of the Republic of Ireland now stands at about 2%

“Over a large part of the country the already sparse congregations are being reduced to vanishing point – memories of the ‘terror’ have burnt very deep – anyone who knows Southern Ireland knows also the undercurrent of feeling urging the elimination of Protestantism ... the fact remains that a migration of younger clergy has begun.” - 1921 Church of Ireland Report

The future of Ireland in the 1920s and the 1930s under de Valera, as I read,  was of a closed, priest ridden society that harked back to a mythical time of agrarian self-sufficiency, a sort of Kim Il Jong ‘juche’ ideology in the Atlantic ocean, an Ireland where regardless of their tradition every school child was forced to learn Irish Gaelic, that indispensible international tool for a largely  Anglophone country.  It was an introverted Ireland which for fifty years seemed largely cut itself off from  the rest of the world, (until Ireland joined the European Union and became a ‘Celtic Tiger’) . An Ireland whose leadership,  in order to spite Britain, declared Ireland  neutral in the struggle against the worst tyranny the world had then ever seen, and whose leader signed a book of condolences at the German Embassy when he learned that Adolf Hitler was dead. As you would. 

Unsurprisingly MY Protestant Irish ancestors felt persecuted and the whole lot fled to the welcoming arms of Australia, back in the 1920s. .  You can learn more about the fate of the Southern Irish protestants in the book ‘Buried Lives, the Protestants of Southern Ireland”, by Robin Bury.

Like I say, there are two sides to every story. You’ve heard and you will  hear a lot about how terrible the English were in Ireland and I’m sure most  of it is all too true. You’ll hear about Cromwell, the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford, the Irish Famine, the absentee landlords, the gallant Fenians of 1798 and the Easter Rising and all. You’ll hear about the struggle for civil rights and about the English boot trampling on the neck of the oppressed peasantry and those gallant IRA boyos fighting to free the six counties from John Bull’s tyranny.

You won’t hear about the Portadown massacres in Ulster,  or the Protestants dragged from their homes and massacred in Cork, or driven into the night with their homes blazing behind them, or the Ulster protestants blown to pieces in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday. You wouldn’t understand the siege mentality of a people clinging to their identity against the flood tide of history. 

But then, to be fair, you probably won’t hear about the 50,000 brave Irishmen (some sources put the figure much higher) who volunteered to fight for Britain against Hitler and were shunned by the Irish government on their return, their contribution to the fight against fascism and Naziism ignored by official Ireland until 1995.  

You certainly won’t hear about  the grenade they threw into my grannie’s garden in Dublin, and if you did, I’m sure you could justify it.   They were unionists, after all, even if they didn’t speak with that strange strangulated accent of the Ulster Unionist politicians that we all  find so off-putting, or beat the Lambegh drum and sing ‘The sash my father wore and bait the Taigs every summer. 

But, like I say, there’s two sides to every story.  Now I’ll get off my soap-box and wait for the brick-bats. Filthy English scum that I am.

(Thank God, I also have Scottish ancestry too, unsullied by any profits from English Imperialism! Like most people with a Scottish connection  I now keep very quiet about the plantations in the West Indies, the ranches in Canada and the properties in Australia and New Zealand,  and the careers they made in the Honorable East India Company, which generated  the money that built all those fine neo-Classical houses in Edinburgh and Ayrshire and those Scottish Baronial Castles  so beloved of tourists)

#two sides to every story

[delux2222]

On this day in 1649, the Sack of Wexford took place. After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops (under Oliver Cromwell) stormed the town of Wexford, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians. The English Parliamentarian troops broke into the town while the commander of the garrison was trying to negotiate a surrender - massacring soldiers and civilians alike. Along with the Siege of Drogheda, the sack of Wexford is still remembered in Ireland as an infamous atrocity.

[jjkenny10]

''At the Siege of Wexford in October 1649, another massacre took place under confused circumstances. While Cromwell was apparently trying to negotiate surrender terms, some of his soldiers broke into the town, killed 2,000 Irish troops and up to 1,500 civilians, and burned much of the town''

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 9 August:

1690 – Siege of Limerick commences when William of Orange encamps just outside the walls of the old city, with an army of about 26,000; the Irish defenders were similar in number though not nearly as well armed. 1850 – Irish Tenant League is founded. 1878 – Birth of architect and furniture designer, Eileen Gray, in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. She was a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture.…

[cromwellrex2]

The Defeat of Irish Royalism, 1650: ‘We are come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels who… live as enemies of human society,’

The End of the Confederate Rebellion

Source: Wikipedia

IN LATE 1649 Cromwell made overtures to the Irish Confederates, but they were couched in the language of uncompromising Puritanism. The Parliamentary general issued his declaration in response to a rallying cry from the Irish Church to the whole of Ireland to encourage resistance to the English invasion and to support the cause of the King. Cromwell proclaimed that the Irish would be treated leniently; that their lands would not be confiscated, and that there would be no judicial punishment for their rebellion. However, all the rebels heard was the unforgiving righteousness of the Calvinist godly: because Cromwell added that in order for there to be a peaceable end to the rebellion, the Catholics would have to give up their fight and their religion, their support for the king and to accept an imposed Protestant settlement on their country. Perhaps Cromwell thought his declarations reasonable in the context of a bitter civil war that had allegedly seen massacres of Protestant settlers by the rebels. However, to the supporters of a nine year nationalist rebellion rooted in the Roman Catholic religion, his words were those of conqueror to the vanquished.

So the war continued. In January 1650, a reinforced Cromwell continued his campaign of reducing Royalist and Confederate strongholds one by one. In contrast to the atrocities committed at Drogheda and Wexford, and to Cromwell’s subsequent baleful reputation in Ireland, he offered generous terms to defenders, permitting them to march out of surrendered towns and castles under arms and with banners flying. This way the Commonwealth forces were able to capture Fethard, Cashel and Cahir in quick succession. The route was then open for a march on Kilkenny, the capital of the Confederate rebellion. In March 1650, Cromwell invested the city. After five days of negotiations, the Confederate commander agreed to surrender the city and the garrison vacated Kilkenny, marching away with full honours and the centre of the rebellion was, rather suddenly, in English hands.

With the loss of Kilkenny, Ormond knew that the Royalist cause in Ireland was almost spent, but if Charles I’s former Lord Lieutenant despaired of now being able to aid his sovereign’s son to the throne, Cromwell himself was not so sanguine. He believed the danger of invasion from Ireland remained the greatest threat to the longevity of the upstart Commonwealth, for all Charles II’s rumoured courting of the Scots. Despite the absence of any rebel field army worth the name, the Confederates continued to hold several strongholds, all well garrisoned and therefore, from Cromwell’s perspective, comprising the core of a potential Royalist revival. The Parliamentary general resolved not to leave Ireland until each and every hold out had been reduced.

Cromwell began his campaign with Clonmel, a walled city in the south under the command of the formidable Hugh Dubh (“Black Hugh”) O’Neill, a veteran on the Catholic side of the Thirty Years’ War, known for both his military skill and his strategic cunning. O’Neill led an experienced garrison of 1500 rebels and had the support of the townspeople to resist the invaders and so when Cromwell arrived before the walls of Clonmel on 27th April and offered terms, Black Hugh refused to negotiate and a siege commenced. Cromwell concentrated artillery on the hills overlooking the city from the north and began a bombardment. Morale within the town however remained high and O’Neill sent several sorties out to attack the besiegers and disrupt their supply and communication lines. The rebel commander lived in hope that if he could tie down the Commonwealth forces long enough, Ormond may yet put a Royalist army into the field and come to his relief.

This was a folorn hope, but Black Hugh made the best of his situation. By the middle of May, the English gunners had made a major breach in Clonmel’s walls. It seemed the fall of the city was imminent and on the 17th, Cromwell ordered his infantry to advance into the breach. Unknown to the Parliamentary commander, O’Neill had turned this tactical disadvantage into an ambush. He had his men construct a makeshift wall around the edge of the breach, and secreted canon and sharpshooters within the new defensive line. As Cromwell’s forces surged forward, they were met by withering artillery and musket fire that cut them down in their droves. After an hour of one-sided combat, over a thousand New Model troopers lay dead or dying in the killing ground. When Cromwell arrived personally to oversee what he expected to be the final street by street battle for the town, he found his men in retreat and Clonmel still defiant. Black Hugh had arguably inflicted the only defeat suffered by Cromwell in his lengthy career fighting in the many and varied British Civil Wars.

However, O’Neill knew the chances of repeating this success were limited. With ammunition and food running low, and the continuance of the bombardment assured, he took the view that Clonmel was impossible to hold. That night he and his remaining soldiers slipped out of the city and made their way to Waterford. On the 18th a frustrated Cromwell took the surrender of the city from the town’s mayor - a victory perhaps, but one that probably felt like a defeat. Nontheless, however hard won, the taking of Clonmel effectively ended Royalist hopes in Ireland and Charles indeed gave up the slim hope that Ormond’s forces could be the vehicle for a restored monarchy. The Rump Parliament agreed. Their nervousness was focused entirely now on the danger from Scotland and they wanted their all-conquering general home, despite the fact the Catholic rebellion was not fully suppressed. On 29th May, Cromwell left Ireland and returned to London to a hero’s welcome. The task of stamping out the last of the Catholic rebellion, which would carry on for a further two years, fell to Cromwell’s fellow Grandee, Henry Ireton, who would eventually die in this, his last campaign in the Parliamentary cause.

Cromwell could count his Irish campaign a success. In just nine months he had destroyed Royalist hopes in Ireland and fatally crippled the Confederate rebellion but at lasting cost to his reputation. If the atrocities at Drogheda and Wexford were exaggerated and there is also evidence elsewhere of Cromwell’s leniency and political skill, there is no doubt the behaviour of the general and his army to the Irish was brutal and contemptuous in equal measure. And if there is little or no evidence of deliberate wholesale massacre of non combatants in the two notorious sieges, the cold-eyed killing of the entire garrisons of each city, whether the men were fighting or surrendering, is enough to justifiably condemn Cromwell as a callous military murderer for posterity.

[wittypenguin]

Looking at 1968 to Learn How to Survive 2020

It’s been suggested recently that this is the worst year in modern American history, which would make it worse than 1968, when both Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy were killed, plus a US Presidential Election brought to power Richard Milhous Nixon and the Uber-corrupt Spiro Theodore Agnew. This year we’ve already had COVID-19, the resurgence of the struggle for equal treatment under the law for People of Colour (which has been essentially ignored and left un-dealt with for well over a century), plus a complete nitwit of a President* who seems to be trying to create either a ‘Police State’ or an ‘untouchabe Emperor Structure of Governance,’ and we’re not even half-way through the year yet!

The Silent Parade was organized by W.E.B. DuBois on July 28, 1917 in New York to protest violence against African Americans nationally. Universal Animated Weekly, Vol 5, Issue 83, 1917. This clip was recovered in 1978 after having been buried in Dawson City, Yukon, for 49 years. pic.twitter.com/Hm7Nydgqcq

Check out the GIF through that link. See? That’s 1917. And that’s only what we have film of, and the first instance of human trafficking in what we now call the United States was in the early 1600s.

So… let’s take look at what people had to deal with in 1968, not with an eye to state we’ve got it so bad right now and to feel hard-done-by in comparison to the ‘Boomers,’ but to see what they dealt with, and then considering what we can learn about how they didn’t go insane while dealing with all the crap they had to. This way, we can protect our mental health in order to get through what we’ve got now.

I’ve grouped events to the end of May into three chronological blocks — Civil Rights (mostly U.S. events, but also elsewhere), General (political events of mostly non-North American locales), and the Vietnam War (including other formalized military events not directly part of the Vietnam conflict) — with the mid-March protests at Howard University being placed in both the ‘Civil Rights’ and ‘Vietnam’ categories, owing to both of those being fundamental to the causation of that particular event.

Civil Rights Events:

February 8: a civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken up by highway patrolmen; 3 college students are killed

February 13: civil rights ‘disturbances’ occur at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

March 1: the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 receives Royal assent in the UK [learn more about that here]

March 6: the then un-recognized nation of Rhodesia executes 3 black citizens, the first executions since unilaterally declaring its independence

March 19–23: students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. by staging rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in; laying siege to the administration building; shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War; and demanding a more inclusive and Afrocentric curriculum

April 2: while filming an NBC television special, white British singer Petula Clark touches African American singer Harry Belafonte affectionately on the arm [read about the details of the filming here]

April 3: the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in Memphis, Tennessee

April 4: the Rev Dr King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, casing riots in major American cities lasting for several days afterwards

April 6: a shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including the 17-year-old treasurer and the first Panther recruit Robert James "Lil’ Bobby” Hutton, who was walking towards the police bare-chested with his hands raised

April 8: Ms Clark’s television special is broadcast by NBC with high ratings, critical acclaim, a Primetime Emmy nomination, and is the first instance on American television of physical contact between a black man and a white woman

April 11: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968

April 20: English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK of the variety which was blocked in March by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968

Events in General:

January 8: British Prime Minister Harold Wilson endorses the I'm Backing Britain campaign for working an additional half-hour each day without pay as an economic stimulus measure, causing rifts within his Labour Party supporters who see him as kow-towing to Big Business and un-doing decades of efforts by labour organizations

January 15: an earthquake in Sicily kills 380 and injures around 1,000

February 19: the Florida Education Association (FEA) initiates a mass resignation of teachers to protest state funding of education; in effect the first statewide teachers' strike in the USA

February 27: singer Frankie Lymon is found dead from a heroin overdose in Harlem. Mr Lymon was formerly the lead singer of the squeaky-clean doo wop group “The Teenagers,” noted for being one of rock music's earliest successes and being rock's first all-teenaged act

March 2: Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in the Black Country of England (environmentally good, but little was done for workers’ job placement in new positions)

March 12: U.S. President Johnson barely edges out antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy [no, not that McCarthy] in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, and the party, over Vietnam

March 15: the U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party George Brown resigns after many months of public drunkenness and wide-spread unacceptable behaviour, culminating in him shouting incoherently at the PM in his office

March 16: U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination

March 22: eight French students occupy the administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that lead France to the brink of revolution two months later

March 24: Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashes en route from Cork to London near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 passengers and crew

March 28: Brazilian high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto is shot by the police in a protest for cheaper meals at a restaurant for low-income students; being one of the first major events against the military dictatorship

March 31: President Johnson announces he will not seek re-election

April 2: bombs explode at midnight in two department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main; Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin are later arrested and sentenced for arson; months later, the two escape from prison and with other people form the anarchist/extremist group  Red Army Faction (also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group)

April 6: a double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana, the first caused by faulty natural gas lines, the second caused inside the building above by a store of gunpowder; 41 are dead, 150 are injured, and a total of forty buildings are eventually condemned; given racial tensions of the time, some are understandably panicked

April 8: the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) is created under the Department of Justice, thereby codifying the racialization of the ‘War on Drugs’ we see today; [read this ACLU document]

April 10: the ferry TEV Wahine strikes a reef at the mouth of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand, with the loss of 53 lives, during Cyclone Giselle (still the windiest conditions ever recorded in New Zealand)

April 11: Josef Bachmann attempts to assassinate the most prominent member and unofficial spokesman of the left-wing student movement Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO,) Rudi Dutschke, in Germany

April 11: the same day — also in Germany and unrelated to the above —  German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested (one of them being Ulrike Meinhof; remember him?)

May 13: one million people march through the streets of Paris, sparking the period called “May 68,” which includes demonstrations, general strikes, the occupation of universities and factories, and causing both the brief cessation of a functioning government (after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled to Germany) as well as the nation’s economy to come to a complete halt

May 16: just two months after opening, a 23 floor tower block in Canning Town, east London, called Ronan Point, partially collapses after a gas explosion, killing 5

Vietnam War (and others):

January 21: the Battle of Khe Sanh begins

January 21: a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs

January 30: the Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam

January 31: Việt Cộng soldiers attack the US Embassy, Saigon

February 1: the Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém is executed by a South Vietnamese National Police Chief in the middle of the street, the event photographed by Eddie Adams as well as an NBC film crew, which makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and swaying U.S. public opinion against the war.

February 12: the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre

March 19–23: students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. by staging rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in; laying siege to the administration building; shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War; and demanding a more inclusive and Afrocentric curriculum

February 24: the nearly month-long Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnam recaptures Huế

February 25: the Hà My massacre

March 7: the First Battle of Saigon ends

March 8: the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sinks with all 98 crew members, about 90 nautical miles (104 miles / 167 km) southwest of Hawai’i

March 10–11: the Battle of Lima Site 85, the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members during the (at the time) secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War

March 14: nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, immediately killing 6,249 sheep over 30 miles away in Skull Valley, Utah, as well as necessitating the euthanisation of a further 1,877 after they are declared ‘unmarketable’ even for their wool

March 16: American troops kill scores of civilians in the My Lai Massacre, which will first become public in November 1969, helping to further undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam

March 17: a demonstration against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in London's Grosvenor Square leads to violence; 91 people are injured, and 200 demonstrators are arrested

March 19–23: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S., with students staging rallies, protests, a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demanding a more inclusive and Afrocentric curriculum

April 23–30: student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university

April 26: the 1.3Mt nuclear weapon "Boxcar" is tested 1.16km underground at the Nevada Test Site in the biggest detonation of Operation Crosstie

May 17: Catholic activists called ‘The Catonsville Nine’ enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take 378 draft files, pour homemade napalm over them in the parking lot, and burn them, all as a protest against the Vietnam War; some of the Nine being out on bail after pouring human blood on draft cards the previous October

May 19: Nigerian forces capture Port Harcourt and form a ring around the Biafrans, contributing to a humanitarian disaster as the then surrounded population were already suffering from hunger and starvation

May 22: the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores

The next three weeks see the shooting and subsequent death of Robert Kennedy; the arrest of the American white supremacist, fugitive, and felon who assassinated the Rev Dr King, Jr. (their trial and conviction taking place the next year); the first round of the French elections to be held as a result of the protests the month before; and the official establishment of the CIA’s “Phoenix Program,” involving cooperation between American, South Vietnamese and Australian militaries.

So… that’s where they were at this point in the year. While I’m not about to list all of the things that have happened to us in the last five months (this has taken me a good five hours to assemble, for one thing), it’s probable that 2020 is a fair  equal to 1968, if not actually surpassing the collective effect of the earlier year by this point in the calendar.

How did they get through it then? Good question! I’m gong to call my mid-70s-aged Father to find out. You should call someone at least 65 years old and do the same, as everyone copes in different ways. After reading all of this, at least you’ll have a common understanding of what they went through.

Good luck to us all.

[sveniasblog]

(9) Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

When he came to Ireland with 12,000 troops of his New Model Army (best trained and organised army in Europe) in 1649, he had already proven himself one of the most capable English generals in history in the English Civil War. His cruelty at the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford earned him a place as one of the greatest villains of Irish history.

Joseph McCullough - A Pocket History of Ireland

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.27

1096 – Count Emicho enters Mainz, where his followers massacre Jewish citizens. At least 600 Jews are killed. 1120 – Richard III of Capua is anointed as Prince two weeks before his untimely death. 1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland. 1199 – John is crowned King of England. 1257 – Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral. 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon defeats rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing. 1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg. 1798 – The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland; Irish rebel leaders defeat and kill a detachment of militia. 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeat the French at Winterthur, Switzerland. 1813 – War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George. 1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification. 1863 – American Civil War: First Assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson. 1874 – The first group of Dorsland trekkers under the leadership of Gert Alberts leaves Pretoria. 1883 – Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia. 1896 – The F4-strength St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing over $10 million in damage. 1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins. 1915 – HMS Princess Irene explodes and sinks off Sheerness, Kent, with the loss of 352 lives. 1917 – Pope Benedict XV promulgates the 1917 Code of Canon Law, the first comprehensive codification of Catholic canon law in the legal history of the Catholic Church. 1919 – The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight. 1927 – The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A. 1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public. 1933 – New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission. 1935 – New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495). 1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California. 1940 – World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 99 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops; two survive. 1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an "unlimited national emergency". 1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men. 1942 – World War II: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is fatally wounded in Prague; he dies of his injuries eight days later. 1950 – The Linnanmäki amusement park is opened for the first time in Helsinki. 1958 – First flight of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. 1960 – In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celâl Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office. 1962 – The Centralia mine fire is ignited in the town's landfill above a coal mine. 1965 – Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam. 1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census. 1967 – The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline. 1971 – The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal. 1977 – A plane crash at José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, kills 67. 1971 – Pakistani forces massacre over 200 civilians, mostly Bengali Hindus, in the Bagbati massacre. 1975 – Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33 – the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom. 1980 – The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more. 1984 – The Danube–Black Sea Canal is opened, in a ceremony attended by the Ceaușescus. It had been under construction since the 1950s. 1988 – Somaliland War of Independence: Somali National Movement launches a major offensive against Somali government forces in Hargeisa and Burao, then second and third largest cities of Somalia. 1996 – First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire. 1997 – The 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak occurs, spawning multiple tornadoes in Central Texas, including the F5 that killed 27 in Jarrell. 1998 – Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot. 2001 – Members of the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002. 2006 – The 6.4 Mw  Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of VIII (Damaging), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured. 2016 – Barack Obama is the first president of United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha. 2017 – Andrew Scheer takes over after Rona Ambrose as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. 2018 – Maryland Flood Event: A flood occurs throughout the Patapsco Valley, causing one death, destroying the entire first floors of buildings on Main Street in Ellicott City, and causing cars to overturn.

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

After the fall of Drogheda in September 1649, the Marquis of Ormond retreated to Kilkenny with his remaining forces, abandoning the garrisons of Trim and Dundalk. With the losses sustained at Rathmines and Drogheda, Ormond was unable to muster an army strong enough to challenge Cromwell, which left the north-western approaches to Dublin secure for the Parliamentarians. While Colonel Venables…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

After the fall of Drogheda in September 1649, the Marquis of Ormond retreated to Kilkenny with his remaining forces, abandoning the garrisons of Trim and Dundalk. With the losses sustained at Rathmines and Drogheda, Ormond was unable to muster an army strong enough to challenge Cromwell, which left the north-western approaches to Dublin secure for the Parliamentarians. While Colonel Venables…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

#OTD in 1649 – Sack of Wexford.

After the fall of Drogheda in September 1649, the Marquis of Ormond retreated to Kilkenny with his remaining forces, abandoning the garrisons of Trim and Dundalk. With the losses sustained at Rathmines and Drogheda, Ormond was unable to muster an army strong enough to challenge Cromwell, which left the north-western approaches to Dublin secure for the Parliamentarians. While Colonel Venables…