The whole of England seemed to be holding its breath, but this inertia did not last for long. Charles had a son and he very soon set about trying to reclaim his birthright, the crown of the Stuart dynasty. Yet another round of hostilities erupted: a Third Civil War. His attempts to engineer some kind of unification of all the disparate factions in Ireland failed disastrously when Cromwell defeated the Royalist sympathisers and brutally suppressed any dissidence. He slaughtered the garrison of Drogheda for failing to surrender to him, outraging Catholics across Europe who were told by their Church that the three thousand corpses incurred were those of women and children. This was untrue, they were mainly Royalist soldiers, but no religion has ever cared for the truth if it doesn’t suit its own ends, and so the tragic legend stuck and was enhanced by the Army running amok in Wexford shortly after. Cromwell cared not a fig for the opinion of any religion other than his own; the young Stuart’s plans for Ireland had been shattered and that was all that mattered.
