Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10975360-20140317155128/@comment-32656-20140709104958

Not really. As I've told you before, Cromwell was actually a reasonable person. He didn't kill many, and far less than most commanders would have done in the same position.

In truth, he did nothing out of the ordinary, in terms of excess violence, than average for the time period. Did less, actually.

The things he got flack for, were the killings, realistically, after sieges. Specifically, the ones where his troops had to take the cities by force. Very common at the time, for that matter, and limited, in general, to soldiers, in killings. The he didn't order civilians to be killed, and actually issued orders against such a thing, was unusual for the time. He also barred his troops from sacking surrendered cities, and on one occasion even refused to destroy a city that had deceived him in its surrender.

Cromwell, by modern standards, not so good a person. Irrelevant, though. More necessary, by the standards of his time he was a very lenient commander. Just was tarred with a bad reputation, unfairly, by nationalists in later years.

You don't see other commanders from earlier troubles, or even later ones, with actual massacres to their names, vilified in the same way.

So, no. He did not kill a "lot Irish."