Ireland is an island in southwest England. During the British bourgeois revolution, Cromwell led an expedition to Ireland on 1649 after suppressing the egalitarian movement. How to treat Cromwell's expedition?
As early as the second half of the12nd century, British troops invaded Ireland. From the16th century, Britain began to plunder Irish land, colonize and plunder. During the reign of Charles I, the Irish people could not bear the blackmail of the British colonial governor and brewed an anti-British uprising.
164 1 year, an anti-British uprising broke out in Ireland. The uprising led by the Catholic Union was carried out under the banner of Catholicism. The ongoing British bourgeois revolution was carried out under the banner of Puritanism against Catholicism. Therefore, Ireland's anti-British uprising is not only against British colonial oppression, but also hostile to British bourgeois revolution. As far as the Catholic Union, the leading group of the uprising, is concerned, the latter factor is greater than the former one. For example, when Charles I was guillotined, his son who fled to Holland was immediately declared king by the Scottish Presbyterian Church and called charles ii. At that time, the Presbyterian church in Ireland also actively colluded with the royalists of the British colonial authorities and the Catholic League in Ireland. The royalists, led by Aumund, the British Governor in Ireland, colluded with the Catholic League to try to persuade the Irish to join the Republic they opposed to the Puritan leadership in England. The leader of the Irish uprising also decided to help the British royalists militarily. Even charles ii has high hopes for the Irish incident. In other words, during the English Civil War and peacetime, Ireland and Scotland actually became rebel bases of feudal forces.
It was in this situation that Cromwell landed in Dublin, Ireland in August 1649 and began a three-year (1649.8- 1652.5) Irish expedition. British troops first advanced to Xandro, north of Dublin. After fierce fighting, it captured the fortress and carried out devastating burning, killing and looting. Then Li went south to Wedges Fidele, a coastal city in southeastern Ireland, where he suffered the same fate as Drouet. By the end of 1649, Cromwell reported to Congress that he had completely controlled the eastern coast of Ireland and basically eliminated the threat from the royalist forces in Ireland. The following spring, Cromwell handed over the task of continuing to suppress the remnants of the Irish Catholic League and the Royal Party to his assistant. He left Ireland to solve the problem of the Scottish Presbyterian Church.
1652 in may, the British military operations in Ireland basically ended. The British Parliament moved the law of confiscating criminals and Catholic land to Ireland and began to realize the so-called "land disposal" plan. The British government used a large area of land in Ireland to pay off the debts borrowed from businessmen and industrialists during the Civil War and pay off the salaries owed to officers and soldiers. But many soldiers need cash, so they have to sell Irish land bonds to officers or land speculators at very low prices. As a result, many officers, businessmen and various land speculators became big landlords in Ireland.
Cromwell's expedition to Ireland had serious consequences for Ireland and Britain.
First of all, it has brought endless disasters to the Irish people. A large number of homeless and displaced Irish people were forcibly moved to western Ireland. Either shipped to America or fled to continental Europe; The death caused by the Holocaust, famine and plague, as well as the escape from death, reduced Ireland's original population of1500,000 by half, seized two-thirds of the land and destroyed the whole village. Long-term oppression even changed the Irish character. Two hundred years later, Engels wrote this when talking about Ireland with Marx; "This country is characterized by ruins everywhere ... famine, immigration and debt settlement have jointly created this country. In the field, there is not even the shadow of livestock. The land is completely wasteland and nobody wants it. ..... Due to constant oppression, they have been artificially turned into a completely degenerate nation, and now they shoulder a notorious position, that is, supplying Britain, the United States, Australia and other places as prostitutes, temporary workers, prostitutes, thieves, fraudsters, beggars and hooligans. "
Secondly, it has also had a bad influence on Britain itself. The Irish expedition and plunder turned many people in the bourgeoisie and new noble into big landlords, thus forming a "foreign landlord class" in Britain. They tried their best to take action to consolidate their vested interests. This kind of interest tends to be consistent with the interests of feudal landlords, which increases the social foundation of British conservative forces. In particular, many military officers became members of this "field landlord class" and became the pillars of conservative forces that protected vested interests and tended to be consistent with feudal landlords. Cromwell himself is a typical representative. He acquired 2 million acres of land in Ireland and became the largest landowner in Britain at that time. So Marx said, "In fact, the Republic of England in Cromwell's time was destroyed because of Ireland." After Cromwell's expedition to Ireland, the revolution was not allowed to continue, but gradually regressed, and he embarked on the road of military dictatorship, restoring the upper house and establishing a feudal hereditary uncrowned king. So Engels said, "If one nation enslaves another, how unfortunate it is for itself. All the meanness in Britain comes from the Irish problem. I should still study the Cromwell era, but in any case, I think there is no doubt that if there is no need to implement military-style rule in Ireland and establish a new aristocracy, even the situation in Britain will present another situation. "
To sum up, the historical event of Cromwell's expedition to Ireland cannot be simply attributed to the colonial plunder war. Because in addition to the bad motives of colonial plunder and the bad consequences of destroying Ireland and corrupting the British Revolutionary Army, there are also positive factors such as rebelling against the base areas in order to destroy the Wang Party and smashing charles ii's attempt to attack the Republic from Ireland. It should be said that it is the male expression of the British bourgeois revolutionary class struggle, which can not be separated from the British bourgeois revolution; It is closely related to the British bourgeois revolution and is one of the important events in this revolution.