A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

by Jonathan Bardon

  Fresh English troops arrived in Dublin in July 1598. The queen’s marshal, Sir Henry Bagenal, agreed to use these soldiers to bring food and ammunition to Blackwater Fort. He led northwards three hundred cavalry and four thousand foot-soldiers—the largest armies to have entered Ulster for many years. Hugh O’Neill had long prepared for this opportunity. For months his men had been engaged in digging a deep trench a mile long between two treacherous bogs. His plan was to draw the crown forces towards this trench into a carefully laid ambush. He himself was in command on the left, Red Hugh O’Donnell on the right, Randal MacDonnell was close by, and Sir Hugh Maguire led the Irish horsemen.

  As Bagenal thrust across country his army was assailed by caliver and musket shot fired from the woods, where the Irish were safe from the English cavalry. Pack-horses and four cannon dragged by bullocks held up regiments marching behind, widely separating English troops at the front who were advancing into O’Neill’s trap. Then a heavy cannon stuck fast in the bed of a stream oozing from a bog—the yellow ford which gave the battle its name. Bagenal rode back to help pull the gun out, but when he raised the visor of his helmet he was shot in the face and fell, mortally wounded. The Irish closed in as the English threw down their weapons and fled back wildly to the mêlée at the ford. This defeat became a disaster when a soldier, refilling his powder horn, exploded two barrels of gunpowder with his slow-burning match. Finally, it was reported, the Irish ‘came on amain with a full cry after their manner’.

  It was the greatest victory the Gaelic lords of Ulster had ever achieved over the crown. The northern rebellion spread southwards, and English rule in Ireland was shaken to its foundations.

  Episode 72

  ‘A QUICK END MADE OF A SLOW PROCEEDING’: THE EARL OF ESSEX’S FAILURE

  The Battle of the Yellow Ford, fought in the heart of Tyrone during the summer of 1598, was almost certainly the most disastrous defeat the English ever suffered at the hands of the Irish. News of the victory won by the Gaelic lords of the north spread rapidly southwards. In Connacht Red Hugh O’Donnell of Tír Conaill won almost total control. In the midlands the O’Mores and the O’Connors slaughtered families which had been settled by the English crown on their lands. In the far south the Munster plantation—that is, the colony of English promoted by Queen Elizabeth in that province—completely collapsed. Some settlers had their tongues cut out and their noses cut off by the rebellious Irish. One survivor told of

  infants taken from the nurse’s breast and the brains dashed against the walls; the heart plucked out of the body in the view of the wife, who was forced to yield the use of her apron to wipe the blood off the murderer’s fingers.

  Castles fell to the Irish one after another. In Co. Cork alone it was reported that fifty-four villages had been burnt. Even Dublin was under threat from the O’Byrnes and their allies in the mountains overlooking the city. When the queen heard that her Irish Council had been trying to negotiate a truce with the leader of the rebellion, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, she was furious:

  We may not pass over this foul error to our dishonour, when you of our council framed such a letter to the traitor, after the defeat, as never was read the like for baseness ... if you shall peruse it again, when you are yourselves, that you will be ashamed of your own absurdities and grieved that any fear or rashness should ever make you authors of an action so much to your sovereign’s dishonour and to the increasing of the traitor’s insolency.

  Elizabeth had no longer any wish to talk. The Battle of the Yellow Ford convinced her that she must empty her coffers, if need be, to defeat this rebellion. Over the winter of 1598–9 troops were levied on an unprecedented scale across England. As these regiments raised in the shires landed at Kinsale, Cork and Waterford shortly before Christmas, 2,000 seasoned troops were transferred from the war in the Netherlands to Ireland. By early 1599 there were at least 17,000 English troops in Ireland. Rich contracts for food, munitions, camp equipment and medical supplies—including liquorice and aniseed—were made with London merchants. For the first time a regular postal service was set up between London, the port of Holyhead in Wales and Dublin—it cost £634 18s 4d a year.

  The Earl of Essex was chosen to command this army the like of which had never been seen in Ireland before. This was a mistake. The old queen allowed her heart to rule her head. She had owed a lot to his father, who had lost everything he had in Ireland more than twenty years before. Elizabeth had a misplaced affection for this dashing but unstable young man.

  As Essex was sailing towards Ireland in April 1599 a vessel put out from Dublin to greet him. It was swamped in a rough sea and took down with it the Earl of Kildare and eighteen other Leinster lords. That was an ill-omened start. ‘By God I will beat Tyrone in the field,’ Essex had declared. But instead of directly confronting the Gaelic lords of the north, he campaigned against their allies in the south to no great effect. In Queen’s County—now Co. Laois—the Irish made a successful ambush in a narrow defile, called the ‘Pass of the Plumes’ because so many decorated helmets were left behind. Much time was wasted in besieging Cahir Castle on the River Suir, and by the time Essex had reached Limerick he was losing an alarming number of men from sickness. Then news arrived that the governor of Connacht, Sir Conyers Clifford, had been piked to death in a disastrous engagement with the O’Rourkes in Roscommon.

  Back in London Elizabeth fretted that the Earl of Essex was costing her a thousand pounds a day. As reports of aimless expeditions were brought to her, one courtier observed: ‘She walks much in her privy chamber, and stamps with her feet at ill news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage.’

  Worse news was to follow. When Essex finally marched northwards, he made a truce with Hugh O’Neill. When she heard of it, Elizabeth was outraged. Describing the truce as ‘a quick end made of a slow proceeding’, she observed: ‘To trust this traitor upon oath is to trust a devil upon his religion.’

  In the following year she chose a new commander, capable of turning the tide of this great Irish rebellion—Lord Mountjoy.

  Episode 73

  MOUNTJOY AND DOCWRA

  Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, though only thirty-six years old when he was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in January 1600, believed himself to be in constant bad health. He took an afternoon nap in his tent when on campaign, and, his secretary Fynes Moryson informs us,

  He wore jerkins and round hose and cloaks lined with velvet, and white beaver hats, and besides his ordinary stockings of silk, he wore under boots another pair of woollen, with a pair of high linen boot-hose, yea three waistcoats in cold weather, and a thick ruff, besides a russet scarf about his neck thrice folded under it. I never observed any of his age and strength to keep his body so warm.... He took tobacco abundantly, which I think preserved him from sickness, especially in Ireland, where the foggy air of the bogs do most prejudice the health.

  He nevertheless inspired his men with greater success than any English commander before him, and he appeared to be fearless in battle—at different times his horse was shot under him, his greyhound running beside him was shot dead, and his chaplain, one of his secretaries and a gentleman of his chamber were killed close by him.

  Since 1594 the Gaelic lords of Ulster had won so many victories that Queen Elizabeth had come close to losing Ireland altogether. Now Mountjoy planned to break this rebellion by starving the people. He preferred to fight in winter when it was more difficult for the Irish to hide in the leafless woods, and when their stores of corn and butter could be burnt, and their cattle down from their summer pastures could be more easily slaughtered.

  Mountjoy began by sending an expedition to Lough Foyle to drive a wedge between the territories of the two principal rebel leaders, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Red Hugh O’Donnell, Lord of Tír Conaill. On 7 May 1600 an impressive fleet sailed out of Carrickfergus harbour with some 4,000 soldiers and 200 cavalry on board under the command of Sir Henry Docwra. After becoming grounded
on sandbanks in the lough for two days, the ships advanced up the Foyle, where, as he tells us, Docwra laid the foundations of the modern city of Derry:

  On the 22nd of May we put the army in order to march and went to the Derry, a place in manner of an island wherein were the ruins of an old abbey, of a bishop’s house, of two churches and at one end of it an old castle, the river called Lough Foyle encompassing it all on one side, and a bog most commonly wet dividing it from the main land.

  This piece of ground we possessed ourselves without resistance, and judging it a fit place to make our main plantation in, at that end where the castle stood, being closer to the waterside, I presently resolved to raise a fort to keep our store of munition and victuals in.

  Using rubble from old buildings bound by mortar made from cockle-shells collected from the mud, Docwra’s men completed the fortifications before the end of the summer. Red Hugh was close by, and any time the English ventured out the Irish fiercely attacked them. The O’Donnells seized two hundred of their horses, and in one skirmish Docwra was severely wounded in the head by a spear and had to spend three weeks recovering in his tent.

  Then his luck changed. Ships came in with fresh supplies and horses, and some Irish leaders, who knew the countryside well, came over to the English side. Docwra began to fight his way upstream. Meanwhile the Lord Deputy approached the Moyry Pass, the gateway to Ulster running between Dundalk and Newry. Red Hugh could only hope to evict Docwra with O’Neill’s help, and that he could not do until the Earl of Tyrone had driven back Mountjoy.

  On seeing Tyrone’s elaborate defences, Mountjoy observed: ‘These barbarous people had far exceeded our custom and our expectation.’ In a report to London he described the pass:

  Being naturally one of the most difficult passages in Ireland, fortified with good art, and with admirable industry, the enemy having raised from mountain to mountain, from wood to wood, and from bog to bog, long traverses, with huge and high flankers of great stones, mingled with turf and staked in both sides with pallisadoes wattled and possessed of one of the greatest armies that ever they were able to make. But that which was our main impediment, was the extremity of the weather, and the great rain, which made the rivers impassable.

  On the afternoon of Thursday 2 October 1600 the Irish advanced with pike and handgun in formidable array. Mountjoy threw five regiments against them, but after three hours of close fighting the English fell back in confusion.

  Nevertheless, the tide was beginning to turn against the Gaelic lords of Ulster.

  Episode 74

  ‘WE SPARE NONE OF WHAT QUALITY OR SEX SOEVER’

  In the autumn of 1600 English armies, having recovered control of most of the rest of the island, were closing in on Ulster. From his base at the head of Lough Foyle at Derry, Sir Henry Docwra was advancing up the River Mourne and driving a wedge between the two great lordships of Tyrone and Tír Conaill. North of Dundalk, Lord Deputy Mountjoy was battling hard to break through the elaborately constructed defences the Irish had built across the Moyry Pass.

  Then, quite suddenly, the leader of the rebellion, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, withdrew his forces from the Moyry Pass. No one knows why he did this. Was it to help his ally Red Hugh O’Donnell against Docwra? Did O’Neill hope to negotiate a truce? Mountjoy wanted no truce. When he reached Newry, his secretary informs us,

  His Lordship putting all the army in arms, with all the drums and trumpets, and a great volley of shot, proclaimed Tyrone’s head, with a promise of £2,000 to him that brought him alive, and £1,000 to him that brought him dead.

  Captain Edward Blayney and Captain Josias Bodley were sent into Tyrone to take O’Neill’s greatest stronghold, an island fortress on Lough Lurcan:

  They both went together to discover the island, which done Captain Bodley made ready thirty arrows of wildfire, and close to the water the shot playing incessantly on the island, while the other delivered their arrows, suddenly the houses fired, and burnt so vehemently, as the rebels lodging there, forsook the island and swam to the further shore.... Great store of butter, corn, meal, and powder, was spoiled in the island, which all the rebels of that country made their magazine.

  The English commanders set about starving and terrorising the population into submission. When the lord of the MacSweenys of Fanad refused to surrender, Docwra took swift and ruthless action:

  In revenge whereof I presently hung up his hostages, and I made another journey upon him, burnt and destroyed his houses and corn, whereupon winter approaching ensued the death of most of his people.

  Sir Arthur Chichester, using Carrickfergus as his base, crossed Lough Neagh to create havoc on the western shores. In May 1601 he reported to Mountjoy:

  We have killed, burnt, and spoiled all along the lough within four miles of Dungannon, from whence we returned hither yesterday; in which journeys we have killed above one hundred people of all sorts, besides such as were burnt, how many I know not. We spare none of what quality or sex soever, and it hath bred much terror in the people ... and Tyrone himself lay within a mile of this place, but kept himself safe.

  Mountjoy urged his commanders:

  Burn all the dwellings and destroy the corn in the ground, which might be done by encamping upon, and cutting it down with swords.

  He himself, his secretary records,

  destroyed the rebels’ corn about Armagh (whereof he found great abundance) and would destroy the rest, this course causing famine, being the only way to reduce or root out the rebels.

  Meanwhile Queen Elizabeth was given this assurance: ‘When the plough and breeding of cattle shall cease, then will the rebellion end.’

  Indeed, there was every reason to believe that starvation and rebellion was bringing the rebellion to a close when Mountjoy received an urgent despatch telling him that the Spaniards had arrived.

  When King Philip III of Spain was told by his advisers that he was all but bankrupt and that he could not afford to send help to Ireland, he replied: ‘The expedition must go this year; to that end the council will put all in order with the utmost speed. I myself will see that the money is provided.’ Philip appointed Don Diego de Brochero y Añaya as admiral and Don Juan del Águila as the military commander; the latter was a curious choice, since to take the post he had to be released from jail where he had been placed on a charge of mistreating his troops. After sailing out from Lisbon with half a million ducats and 4,500 men, the fleet halted thirty leagues from the Irish coast. A fierce argument followed on board the flagship San Andrés: Águila wanted to comply with O’Neill’s request that they disembark at Killybegs in Tír Conaill, but Brochero insisted on landing at Kinsale in Co. Cork.

  Brochero won the argument, and on 21 September 1601 the Spanish sailed up the estuary of the River Bandon and seized control of the walled town of Kinsale. Another argument followed: Brochero, declaring that his sailors were on the point of mutiny, refused to keep his ships in Ireland. After unloading supplies carelessly on mudbanks, spoiling much of the food with salt water, Brochero sailed away. Finding himself surrounded by the English, Águila dashed off a frantic appeal to O’Neill and O’Donnell, calling on them to march south to join him.

  Episode 75

  THE BATTLE OF CHRISTMAS EVE

  In September 1601, from Kinsale, a walled town on the Bandon river estuary in west Cork, Don Juan del Águila sent a messenger northwards with this message for the Gaelic lords of Ulster:

  I was confident your Excellencies would have come. I beseech you so to do, with as much speed, and as well furnished as you possibly may.... I will give the enemy their hands full from the town, and their first fury resisted, all is ended.

  Fewer than 4,000 in number, the Spaniards could do little more than sit tight and wait for Hugh O’Neill, Red Hugh O’Donnell and their allies to march south. Lord Deputy Mountjoy was soon in control: his army completely surrounded Kinsale, digging trenches as deep as a lance-length, and built platforms from which cannon pounded the town continuously. Quee
n Elizabeth’s vessels captured forts in the estuary downstream as reinforcements raised in the English shires came ashore nearby at Oysterhaven.

  O’Neill was reluctant to leave the fastness of Ulster, but O’Donnell insisted that they had no choice but to march south. The Annals of the Four Masters record:

  The resolution they came to, with one mind and one intention was that each lord should proceed without dallying or delaying, to aid and assist the Spaniards.... O’Donnell was the first prepared to go on this expedition.... As for O’Neill, he left a week after All Hallowtide.

  Sir George Carew, the Lord President of Munster, advanced north to block Red Hugh’s approach in Co. Tipperary. But O’Donnell gave him the slip by taking his men over a treacherous bog which had frozen hard overnight in the Slievephelim Mountains. O’Neill took an easterly route and ravaged the counties around Dublin to weaken the Lord Deputy’s supply lines.

  The Irish from the north and the west had covered over three hundred miles in the depths of a bitterly cold winter, wading river after river, often up to the chest, and drew up to Kinsale in good order, camping to the north of the English entrenchments. Another small Spanish force, led by Don Pedro de Zubiaur, had driven back a squadron of English naval vessels and landed further south at Castlehaven. These Spaniards joined the Ulstermen at Kinsale with O’Sullivans, O’Driscolls and MacCarthys.