ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

[Gil Boyd]

The Ransacking of Wexford Oliver Cromwell

The NEW MODEL ARMY a formation and brilliance that was to reflect in all military formations for the next 450 years.

The Sack of Wexford took place on the 11th of October 1649, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell took Wexford town in south-eastern Ireland.
The English Parliamentarian troops broke into the town while the commander of the garrison, David Sinnot, was trying to negotiate a surrender – massacring soldiers and civilians alike.
Much of the town was burned and its harbour was destroyed. Along with the Siege of Drogheda, the sack of Wexford is still remembered in Ireland as an infamous atrocity.

Wexford was held by Irish Catholic forces throughout the Irish Confederate Wars. In the Irish Rebellion of 1641, over 1500 local men mustered in the town for the rebels.

In 1642, Lord Mountgarret, the local Commander of the Confederate Catholic regime, ordered Protestants to leave Wexford. About 80 English Protestant refugees drowned when the boat evacuating them from Wexford sank.
Wexford was also the base for a fleet of Confederate privateers, who raided English Parliamentary shipping and contributed 10% of their plunder to the Confederate government based in Kilkenny.

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