His name is celebrated as an important figure of parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom. Cromwell dispatched a tyrannical king, was the first Republican and an advocate for democracy. In Ireland his lasting effect is one of a genocidal tyrant. His consideration of the Irish people as inhuman and was self-professed , and the inhumanity for which he inflicted arguably places him in a position of contempt higher than any royal.In Irish folklore this contempt is plain to be seen, Cromwell is written as the personal assistant of the satan, if not the devil incarnate. 'An cogadh a chriochnaigh Éire' - The war that finished Ireland. This is what a conquest of the country during the War of the Three Kingdoms was dubbed. An ethnic cleansing headed by one man. In 1641 when all was said and done, total excess deaths for the entire period was estimated by Sir William Petty, the 17th-century economist, to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 - that is around 42% of the population. 42%