Cork City, Éire, may soon become home to the world’s smallest public monument: a statue commemorating the mosquito — or perhaps midge — alleged to have bitten Oliver Cromwell during his brutal Irish campaign, gifting him the “ague” that eventually carried him to his grave in September 1658 after weeks of fever and delirium. Historians still debate the exact cause of Cromwell’s death, though malaria combined with kidney complications remains one of the leading theories. Cork, naturally, has decided to focus on the insect.
The proposal, brought before Cork City Council by Councillor O. Moran, suggests a monument “to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during his siege of the city, later causing his death through ‘Cork fever’.” The fact that the proposed statue would also be “the world’s smallest public statue” feels entirely appropriate. After all, history often turns on tiny things: a microscopic parasite, a loaf of stale bread, a wrong turn in Sarajevo, Trump’s brain, an overconfident Protector with unfortunate circulation.
Cromwell himself remains one of the most divisive figures in Irish history. To some English Protestants he was a stern republican reformer who helped overthrow monarchy and advance parliamentary power. To many in Ireland he remains synonymous with massacre, dispossession, religious persecution, and colonial brutality — particularly after the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford. There is also the lingering irony that the man who helped execute a king and denounced tyranny eventually ruled Britain as Lord Protector in a manner suspiciously adjacent to becoming a king himself, right down to the elaborate ceremony, military pomp, and quasi-imperial authority. One suspects that had events continued long enough, Cromwell might eventually have declared himself “Emperor of the Commonwealth and Defender of Very Serious Hats.”
But history had other plans. Or perhaps entomology did.
The interwebs have already begun embellishing the tale. Some insist it was not a lone mosquito at all, but a coordinated insurgency: a clandestine alliance between mosquito and midge operating under the shadowy banner of The Conspiracy of Midges. Tiny wings beating beneath the reeds. Sleeper agents in stagnant water. The long revenge of the bogs.
There is even talk of an inscription beneath the statue:
Remember, remember,
The 3rd of September,
The fever, the bite and the itch.
Though armies had failed
The midges prevailed —
Small wings brought low England’s false King.
Because of the monument’s almost microscopic scale, several practical viewing solutions have reportedly been discussed. One proposal involves installing an enormous brass magnifying glass in the city square so visitors may peer reverently upon the heroic insect. Another suggests schoolchildren be issued commemorative jeweller’s loupes, though traditionally schoolboys with magnifying glasses are one of the natural enemies of insects. Tourism officials are said to be delighted by the possibility of guided “micro-monument walking tours,” in which tourists spend several minutes squinting at paving stones while guides solemnly whisper, “There. Just beside the chewing gum.”
Should the statue proceed, Cork may become the first city on Earth to honour not a conqueror, not a general, but the tiny whining emissary of swamp-borne vengeance that achieved what armies could not. History’s smallest revolutionary.
A counter proposal for a monument to Margaret Thatcher’s empathy was also rumoured to have been considered, but given the technology to view such an object is beyond our current scientific capability, the suggestion was moot.
Councillor O. Moran’s motion to Council, which we can only assume some hoped got lost in the fine print, is below.
STATUE TO THE MOSQUITO OR MIDGE THAT BIT OLIVER CROMWELL
•That Cork City Council will erect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during his siege of the city, later causing his death through ‘Cork fever’ (malaria); and that this statue shall be the ‘world’s smallest public statue’
(Proposer: Cllr. O. Moran 26/266)
Party Whips – 25/05/2026
