Siege of Wexford

Part of the Irish Confederate Wars

Date	2 –11 October 1649
Location	Wexford, south eastern Ireland
Result	English Parliamentarians take town and massacre the garrison.

Belligerents

Irish Catholic Confederate and English Royalist troops

English Parliamentarian New Model Army

Commanders and leaders

David Synnot †

Oliver Cromwell

Strength

c4,800

6,000

Casualties and losses

c.2000 troops and up to 1,500 civilians killed

20 killed.

The Sack of Wexford took place in 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. By 1649, there were over 40 such vessels operating from the town, many of them originating in Dunkirk, but attracted to Wexford by the prospect of plunder. English Parliamentary sources reported that the privateers' raids were severely disrupting shipping between Dublin, Liverpool and Chester. The Confederate privateers fought a "dirty war" with English Parliamentarian naval forces. In 1642, Parliamentary ships began throwing captured Wexford sailors overboard with their hands tied. In reprisal, 150–170 English prisoners were kept in Wexford and threatened with death if such killing continued.

In 1648, the Confederates and Royalists in Ireland signed a treaty joining forces against the English Parliament. After Cromwell's landing in Ireland in August 1649, therefore, Wexford was a key target for the Parliamentarians, being an important port for the Royalist alliance and a base for the privateers.

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