The Irish Confederate Wars took place from 1641 to 1653. The conflict began with the Irish rising of 1641 and evolved into a prolonged struggle over Ireland's future, as Irish forces sought to defend their land, political rights and autonomy against foreign control, plantation policies and continued encroachment on Irish self-government. Although linked to the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the war in Ireland had its own distinct causes and objectives rooted in resistance to English rule, the recovery of confiscated lands and the defence of Irish interests. The conflict caused an estimated 200,000 deaths from fighting, as well as war-related famine and disease.
It began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when local Catholics tried to seize control of the Dublin Castle administration. They wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, to increase Irish self-governance, and to roll back the Plantations of Ireland. They also wanted to prevent an invasion by anti-Catholic English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters, who were defying the king. Rebel leader Felim O'Neill claimed to be doing the king's bidding, but Charles condemned the rebellion after it broke out. The rebellion developed into an ethnic conflict between Irish Catholics on one side, and English and Scottish Protestant colonists on the other. These first few months were marked by ethnic cleansing and massacres in Ulster.
Catholic leaders formed the Irish Catholic Confederation in May 1642, which controlled and governed most of Ireland, and comprised both Gaelic and old English Catholics. In the following months and years the Confederates fought against Royalists, Parliamentarians, and an army sent by Scottish Covenanters, with all sides using scorched earth tactics. Disagreements over how to deal with the rebellion helped spark the English Civil War in mid-1642. The king authorised secret negotiations with the Confederates, resulting in a Confederate–Royalist ceasefire in September 1643 and further negotiations. In 1644, a Confederate military expedition landed in Scotland to help Royalists there. The Confederates continued to fight the Parliamentarians in Ireland, and decisively defeated the Covenanter army in the Battle of Benburb. In 1647, the Confederates suffered a string of defeats by the Parliamentarians at Dungan's Hill, Cashel and Knockanuss. This prompted the Confederates to make an agreement with the Royalists. The agreement divided the Confederates, and this infighting hampered their preparations to resist a Parliamentarian invasion.
In August 1649, a large English Parliamentarian army, led by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland. It besieged and captured many towns from the Confederate–Royalist alliance. Cromwell's army massacred many soldiers and civilians after storming the towns of Drogheda and Wexford. The Confederate capital Kilkenny was captured in March 1650, and the Confederate–Royalist alliance was eventually defeated with the capture of Galway in May 1652. Confederates continued a guerrilla campaign until April 1653. This saw widespread killing of civilians and destruction of foodstuffs by the English army, who also brought an outbreak of bubonic plague.
After the war, Ireland was occupied and annexed by the English Commonwealth, a republic which lasted until 1660. Catholicism was repressed, most Catholic-owned land was confiscated, and tens of thousands of Irish rebels were sent to the Caribbean or Virginia as indentured servants or joined Catholic armies in Europe.
Overview
The war in Ireland began with the Rebellion of 1641 in Ulster in October, during which many Scots and English Protestant settlers were killed. The rebellion spread throughout the country and at Kilkenny in 1642 the Association of The Confederate Catholics of Ireland was formed to organise the Catholic war effort. The Confederation was essentially an independent state and was a coalition of all shades of Irish Catholic society, both Gaelic and Old English. The Irish Confederates professed to side with the English Cavaliers during the ensuing civil wars, but mostly fought their own war in defence of the Catholic landed class's interests.
The Confederates ruled much of Ireland as a de facto sovereign state until 1649, and proclaimed their loyalty to Charles I. From 1642 to 1649, the Confederates fought against Scottish Covenanter and English Parliamentarian armies in Ireland. The Confederates, in the context of the English Civil War, were loosely allied with the English Royalists, but were divided over whether to send military help to them in the war there. Ultimately, they never sent troops to England, but did send an expedition to help the Scottish Royalists, sparking the Scottish Civil War.
The wars produced an extremely fractured array of forces in Ireland. The Protestant forces were split into three main factions (English Royalist, English Parliamentarian and Scottish Covenanter) as a result of the civil wars in England and Scotland. The Catholic Confederates themselves split on more than one occasion over the issue of whether their first loyalty was to the Catholic religion or to King Charles I (see the principal factions in the war).
The wars ended in the defeat of the Confederates. They and their English Royalist allies were defeated during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland by the New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell in 1649–53. The wars following the 1641 revolt caused massive loss of life in Ireland, comparable in the country's history only with the Great Famine of the 1840s. The ultimate winner, the English parliament, arranged for the mass confiscation of land owned by Irish Catholics as punishment for the rebellion and to pay for the war. Although some of this land was returned after 1660 on the Restoration of the monarchy in England, the period marked the effective end of the old Catholic landed class.
The plot, October 1641
The rebellion was intended to be a swift and mainly bloodless seizure of power in Ireland by a small group of conspirators led by Phelim O'Neill. Small bands of the plotters' kin and dependents were mobilized in Dublin, Wicklow and Ulster, to take strategic buildings like Dublin Castle. Since there were only a small number of English soldiers stationed in Ireland, this had a reasonable chance of succeeding. Had it done so, the remaining English garrisons could well have surrendered, leaving Irish Catholics in a position of strength to negotiate their demands for civil reform, religious toleration and Irish self-government. However, the plot was betrayed at the last minute and as a result, the rebellion degenerated into chaotic violence. Following the outbreak of hostilities, the resentment of the native Irish Catholic population against the British Protestant settlers exploded into violence. Shortly after the outbreak of the rebellion, O'Neill issued the Proclamation of Dungannon which offered justification for the rising. He claimed that he was acting on the orders of Charles I.
The rebellion, 1641–1642
From 1641 to early 1642, the fighting in Ireland was characterised by small bands, raised by local lords or among local people, attacking civilians of opposing ethnic and religious groups. At first, Irish Catholic bands, particularly from Ulster, took the opportunity given them by the collapse of law and order to settle scores with Protestant settlers who had occupied Irish land in the plantations of Ireland. Initially, the Irish Catholic gentry raised militia forces to try to contain the violence but afterwards, when it was clear that the government in Dublin intended to punish all Catholics for the rebellion, participated in the attacks on Protestants and fought English troops sent to put down the rebellion. In areas where British settlers were concentrated, around Cork, Dublin, Carrickfergus and Derry, they raised their own militia in self-defence and managed to hold off the rebel forces. All sides displayed extreme cruelty in this phase of the war. Around 4,000 Protestants were massacred and a further 12,000 may have died of privation after being driven from their homes. In one notorious incident, the Protestant inhabitants of Portadown were taken captive and then massacred on the bridge in the town. The settlers responded in kind, as did the Government in Dublin, with attacks on the Irish civilian population. Massacres of Catholic civilians occurred at Rathlin Island and elsewhere. The rebels from Ulster defeated a government force at Julianstown, but failed to take nearby Drogheda and were scattered when they advanced on Dublin.
By early 1642, there were four main concentrations of rebel forces: in Ulster under Phelim O'Neill, in the Pale around Dublin led by Viscount Gormanstown, in the south-east, led by the Butler family, in particular Lord Mountgarret, and in the south-west, led by Donagh MacCarthy, Viscount Muskerry.
The Confederates' War, 1642–1648
Charles I wanted control of Ireland to mobilise its resources against his opponents in England and Scotland; the Scots and their English Parliamentary allies aimed to prevent this. Over the course of 1642, 10,000 Scots funded by Parliament landed in Coleraine and Carrickfergus, while English forces re-established control over Dublin.
One of the last pieces of legislation approved by both Charles and Parliament before the outbreak of the First English Civil War was the March 1642 Adventurers' Act; this funded the war in Ireland by loans that would be repaid by the sale of lands held by the Irish rebels. As a result, neither side would tolerate the autonomous Catholic state demanded by Irish leaders and both were committed to further land confiscations; enforcing the Adventurers' Act was the primary objective of the 1649 Cromwellian conquest.
This resulted in the formation of Irish Confederacy, based at Kilkenny; by the end of 1642, it controlled two-thirds of Ireland, including the ports of Waterford and Wexford, through which they could receive aid from Catholic powers in Europe. While supported by most Irish Catholics, especially the clergy, many co-religionists among the upper classes were Royalists by inclination, who feared losing their own lands if the plantation settlements were overturned. Some fought against the Confederation; others like Clanricarde, stayed neutral.
Forces initially available to the Confederacy were primarily militia and private levies, commanded by aristocratic amateurs like Lord Mountgarret. These suffered a series of defeats, including Liscarroll, Kilrush, New Ross and Glenmaquinn, but the outbreak of the English Civil War in mid-1642 led to the recall of many English troops. This allowed Garret Barry, a returned Irish mercenary soldier, to capture Limerick in 1642, while the English garrison in Galway was forced to surrender by the townspeople in 1643.
By mid-1643, the Confederacy controlled large parts of Ireland, the exceptions being Ulster, Dublin and Cork. They were assisted by divisions among their opponents, with some areas held by forces loyal to Parliament, others by the Royalist Duke of Ormonde and the Covenanters pursuing their own agenda around Carrickfergus. The reality was an extremely complex mix of shifting loyalties; for various reasons, many Ulster Protestants regarded the Scots with hostility, as did some of their nominal allies in Parliament, including Cromwell.
Stalemate
The Civil War gave the Confederates time to create regular, full-time armies and they were eventually able to support some 60,000 men in different areas. These were funded by an extensive system of taxation, equipped with supplies from France, Spain and the Papacy and led by Irish professionals like Thomas Preston and Owen Roe O'Neill, who had served in the Spanish army.
However, they arguably squandered an opportunity to conquer all of Ireland by signing a truce or "Cessation of Arms" with the Royalists on 15 September 1643, then spending the next three years in abortive negotiations. The period 1642 to 1646 was dominated by raids, with all sides attempting to starve their enemies by the destruction of crops and supplies, causing great loss of life, particularly among civilians. The bitterness it engendered is illustrated by a Parliamentary Ordinance of October 1644, which forbade 'giving of quarter to any Irishman or Papist born in Ireland who shall be taken in Hostility against the Parliament either upon the Sea or in England and Wales.'
An offensive against Ulster in 1644 failed to make significant progress, while defeat at Marston Moor in July made it increasingly clear the English Royalists were losing the war; two weeks later, the Earl of Inchiquin defected to Parliament, giving them control of the ports of Cork, Kinsale and Youghal. In late 1644, the Confederates took Bandon but Inchiquin retained control of Cork; Preston captured Duncannon in January 1645, then besieged Youghal but lack of supplies forced him to abandon the siege in March 1645.
Refugees
The opening years of the war saw widespread displacement of civilians – both sides practising what would now be called ethnic cleansing. In the initial phase of the rebellion in 1641, the vulnerable Protestant settler population fled to walled towns such as Dublin, Cork and Derry for protection. Others fled to England. When Ulster was occupied by Scottish Covenanter troops in 1642, they retaliated for the attacks on settlers by attacks on the Irish Catholic civilian population. As a result, it has been estimated that up to 30,000 people fled Ulster in 1642, to live in Confederate held territory. Many of them became camp followers of Owen Roe O'Neill's Ulster Army, living in clan-based groupings called "creaghts" and driving their herds of cattle around with the army. Outside of Ulster, the treatment of civilians was less harsh, although the "no-mans-land" in between Confederate and British held territory in Leinster and Munster was repeatedly raided and burned, with the result that it too became de-populated.
Victory and defeat for the Confederates
The stalemate, however, broke in 1646. During the summer after the end of the First English Civil War, the Confederate military tried to make as many gains in Ireland as they could before the expected invasion by the forces of the English Parliament. In that effort they were quite successful. On 5 June 1646, Owen O'Neill defeated a Parliamentary and Scottish army commanded by Robert Munro at Benburb. During July, Thomas Preston leading the Leinster Army of the Confederates captured the Parliamentary stronghold at Roscommon while Donough McCarthy Viscount Muskerry captured the castle of Bunratty.
On 30 July, however, it was proclaimed in Dublin by the Royalists that the Confederate Supreme Council had signed a peace treaty on 28 March 1646 with King Charles as represented by Ormonde. The treaty was signed unbeknownst to the Confederate military commanders and without the participation of the leader of the Catholic clergy, Rinuccini, who had arrived in Ireland with money and arms as the Papal Nuncio nine months earlier.