Portadown massacre

Portadown massacre
Part of the Irish Rebellion of 1641
Engraving of the massacre by Wenceslaus Hollar, published in James Cranford's Teares of Ireland (1642)
Location	Portadown, County Armagh, Ireland
Coordinates	54°25′16″N 6°27′30″W / 54.421027°N 6.458244°W / 54.421027; -6.458244
Date	November 1641
Attack type	Drowning, shooting
Deaths	c.100
Perpetrators	Irish rebels

The Portadown massacre took place in November 1641 at Portadown, County Armagh, during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Irish Catholic rebels, likely under the command of Toole McCann, killed about 100 Protestant settlers by forcing them off the bridge into the River Bann and shooting those who tried to swim to safety. The settlers were being marched east from a prison camp at Loughgall. This was the biggest massacre of Protestants during the rebellion, and one of the bloodiest during the Irish Confederate Wars. The Portadown massacre, and others like it, terrified Protestants in Ireland and Great Britain, and were used to justify the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and later to lobby against Catholic rights.