Four regiments of foot and one of horse were then chosen by lot, and the men were informed that they need not go to Ireland unless they wished, but that if they refused they would be discharged from the Army. Several hundred men thereupon at once threw down their arms and were dismissed; but by some blunder, which was none of Cromwell's, not a word was said about the payment of the arrears that were due to them. The idea spread through the ranks that they must either go to Ireland or forfeit those arrears; discontent was naturally aroused and presently burst out into formidable mutiny. Fairfax and Cromwell, however, could depend on their own regiments, and faced the danger with extraordinary swiftness and energy. The mutineers were suppressed with a strong hand. One ringleader was executed in St. Paul's Churchyard, a cornet and a corporal were shot before the eyes of their comrades against the walls of Burford Church, and discipline was again restored. Shortly after, Parliament passed an Ordinance to relieve the financial difficulties of the soldiers, and the preparations for the Irish campaign were resumed. It is curious to note the extreme slowness with which the civilians learned that soldiers were after all men of flesh and blood, not puppets to be hugged or broken according to the caprice of the hour.
The details of the preparations for the war in Ireland may still be read in the State Papers of the time. There are still to be seen the orders for fifteen thousand cassocks, "Venice-red colour, shrunk in water," the like number of pairs of breeches "of grey or other good colour," ten thousand shirts, ten thousand hats and bands,[176] one thousand iron griddles, fifteen hundred kettles, giving a curious picture of the equipment of the first English regular army for what was then esteemed to be foreign service. But I shall not follow the red coats through the terrible Irish campaign of 1649. It was not, like the later war with the Scots, an honourable contest for supremacy: it was rather the stern suppression of a rebellion, wherein the spirit of the masters was inflamed by the insolence of long superiority, by the bitterness of religious hatred, and by the recollection of past outrages which, even if truly reported, would have kindled men to vengeance, and when exaggerated by rage and fear fairly blinded them to mercy. If any Englishman doubted whether the Irish could fight with desperate gallantry he was undeceived at the storm of Drogheda and at Clonmel: but they could not stand, untrained and unorganised as they were, against the veterans of the New Model. Much has been said about Cromwell's cruelty, and that he was ruthlessly severe there can be no question; but when we speak of cruelty we should take at any rate some account of the standard of humanity in the warfare of the seventeenth century. The Irish War was a war of races, a war of creeds, and a war of vengeance. That there should therefore have been such slaughter as at Drogheda and at Wexford is nothing surprising,[177] however deplorable. What is really remarkable in such a war is that Cromwell, from the moment of landing, should have paid his way, visited plunder with the sharpest penalties, and upheld the sternest and most inflexible discipline. Forty years later, when the conquest of Ireland was undertaken by a former marshal of France and a king long schooled in war against the first generals of the time, they were glad to search out Cromwell's plans for his Irish campaign and follow them at such a distance as they might.