29 MAY

CROMWELL’S TROOPS MASSACRE THE INHABITANTS OF WEXFORD [ 11 October 1649 ] One month earlier [ 11 September 1649 ] Oliver Cromwell, commanding British parliamentary forces in Ireland, had ordered his soldiers to offer no quarter to the royalist garrison at Drogheda, and had slaughtered almost all those who had surrendered, along with many of the town’s…

REDCOATS SHOOT DEAD FIVE BOSTONIANS WHO HAD BEEN HURLING SNOWBALLS [ 5 March 1770 ] The anniversary is commemorated every year with an annual reenactment in Boston, Massachusetts, but is virtually forgotten in Britain. CABINET ‘MAD KEEN TO LAND BRITISH TROOPS SOMEWHERE’ [ 5 March 1956 ] On 5 March 1956, ministers were briefed at number…

BRITISH BURN HOMES, DESTROY RICE STORES AND SHOOT CATTLE TO PUNISH REBEL VILLAGES [ 7 June 1818 ] On this day in 1818, a short newspaper article in the Windsor and Eton Gazette carried an opinion piece on the latest reports from Ceylon, which denounced the brutality of the British authorities in their use of extreme…

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GENERAL ON HIS TROOPS ‘BURNING EVERY VILLAGE WITHIN REACH’ [ 20 August 1920 ] On 20 August 1920, Major General George A.J. Leslie, commanding the 17th Indian Division in Iraq, wrote to his wife Edith in India, informing her that Brigadier General H.A. Walker’s column, comprising two British and six Indian battalions was ‘slowly working…