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After the savagery and ruthlessness used to suppress both the Desmond Rebellion in Munster in the 1580's and the later rebellion of 1598, local aid was weak. Even worse for the Irish, the Ulster power base of the main Gaelic leaders, Hugh (The Great) O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell , was hundreds of miles away at the far end of the country (Ironically, as a young man, O'Neill himself had fought for the English against Desmond in the early 1570's). Ulster had been surrounded by a ring of English forts in the previous two years, had been invaded at Derry by a 3,000 strong army under Henry Dowcra, and many of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's allies had deserted them. O'Neill calculated that the Spanish could withstand a siege for some time - they had food, shelter, ammunition, and the necessary expertise. Also he knew that conditions were probably worse for the besieging army, since they were more exposed to the elements, and winter was coming. He therefore felt that an immediate march to Kinsale, with a guerilla army untrained for either siege or open warfare, leaving Ulster at the mercy of the English and local Irish rivals, would be foolish.
So, he chose a nearer target. In the hope of drawing at least some of Mountjoy's forces away from the Spanish, he broke through the ring of forts with 4,000 men, and attacked and laid waste the Pale, the English-ruled part of Ireland centred on Dublin. But, in spite of the pleas of the Palesmen, Mountjoy refused to budge from Kinsale, and eventually O'Neill and O'Donnell had to march their armies from Ulster down almost the full length of Ireland, across hundreds of miles of mud and bog in the middle of November. The long march was celebrated by the poet Aubrey De Vere : -
O'er many a river bridged with ice,
O'er many a vale with snow-drifts dumb,
Past quaking fen and precipice
The princes of the North are come.
Lo! those are they who year by year
Roll'd back the tide of England's war;
Rejoice Kinsale, thy help is near,
That wondrous winter march is o'er.
They evaded the English army of George Carew, sent to block them, and their combined strength of 6,500 men arrived at the outskirts of Kinsale in the first week of December. They were joined by another force of 700 Spanish who had recently landed at nearby Castlehaven, and the besiegers became the besieged.
Although 3 years previously, using a mixture of ambush and more orthodox infantry and cavalry tactics, O'Neill and O'Donnell had inflicted a major battlefield defeat on the English at the Battle of the Yellow Ford (Another account , from the Annals of the Four Masters) , O'Neill usually preferred hit and run or Fabian tactics - they had served him well over the years - and he wanted to let hunger and disease further weaken Mountjoy's forces. By December, thousands of Mountjoy's men were unfit for action or had deserted. At the time of the battle they had only six days of food left, and with the Irish controlling the surrounding countryside, there was little hope of resupply. del Aguila, however, wanted the Irish to attack. Before they left Spain, the Spanish had been led to believe they would receive massive and effective local support in Ireland. Yet here they were, still besieged nearly three months after they had landed. Isolated in a strange country, they had withstood every bombardment the English could throw at them. They had fought and many had died in skirmishes as they sallied forth again and again to attack the English guns or supplies. They had had to wait almost two months for O'Neill and O'Donnell to decide to move south. And now, reduced to eating rusks soaked in water, their own food situation was becoming critical.
O'Donnell also wanted to attack. He and O'Neill had force-marched their men through three hundred miles of wet and freezing weather, carrying their weapons, ammunition and food on their backs. Now they were in strange territory, living on scraps of food, starving slowly and falling ill, with no shelter whatever, standing or sitting around all day in cold pouring rain, and sleeping night after night in sodden clothes in water-soaked ditches. O'Donnell emphasised the disastrous effect this was having on morale. Also, O'Donnell's natural inclination and that of his men was always to attack. For years, he and O'Neill had provided effective leadership for the Irish. The skills and personalities of the two men usually complemented each other well, with the dash and daring of the younger O'Donnell balanced by the more thoughtful, more cautious approach of the older O'Neill. After heated argument between O'Neill and O'Donnell, and after smuggled messages from del Aguila, it was agreed to attack at dawn on Christmas Eve.
What exactly happened at the battle is still debated. The following account of the battle, which is most detailed I've found so far, is from the 1942 book "The Great O'Neill" (link is to book's Amazon page) by Sean O'Faolain, one of Ireland's best known writers .
"It was almost dawn...... when O'Neill walked into the fatal page of his history three quarters of a mile from the English camp. He had no horse(men). His guerillas were creeping forward in a mass. What followed is as obscure as that half-darkness in which it occurred.
"O'Neill's first sight of the English was a Squadron Volant looming up a few hundred yards away as day broke. He saw them being joined by some infantry - that was Wingfield who had gone forward when the first scout had reported the presence of the Irish. Then two regiments more, over one thousand men, came up to support these horse and foot. O'Neill retired over a ford. There was not a stir from the town. Wingfield held off for a time - he had sent back a report that the Irish were not in good order and that he would like to attack. Presently Tyrone saw him attacking with a squadron of foot and some horse across the ford. He retired still further behind another stream and a bog to firm ground and waited in the breaking dawn. Still there was not a murmur from the direction of Kinsale. He now saw two more regiments of foot coming up behind those facing him, and presently all four, together with Wingfield and the Squadron Volant began to move up against him. His enemies there must have numbered about 3,000 men, or nearly half the English forces. The remainder were behind in the two camps ready to meet the Spanish assault. It never came. What happened next is inexplicable. It ended everything as suddenly as a thunderclap.
"Wingfield's first attack on the side of the bog was pressed back. He sent out more riflemen and these in turn pressed the Irish van(guard) back on its centre. He then found a way around to the firm ground beyond the bog and was able to offer a full attack with horse and foot. The Irish foot took this shock, held it, turned it, and defeated it. Mountjoy, who was watching from a distance, saw the retreat and in haste called up all the remaining horse he had, and with the horse already sent out, managed to somehow take the Irish centre in the rear. This cavalry assault won the hour. The Irish foot in the section that received the brunt of the impact turned and ran. Two other sections however held the assault until the van was now attacked from another angle and broke under pressure. The Castlehaven Spanish held firm, deployed, and were cut to pieces. The Irish centre, or what was left of it, also held its ground and all but a few score were destroyed. The rest were in utter rout. The English horse chased them for two miles until, from sheer exhaustion of man and beast and killing, they desisted. As they came back in the early morning they picked their way among the scattered hundreds and hundreds of dead......
"........ As to why Don Juan del Aquila did not sally out, there is no explanation. The most reasonable account is in O'Sullivan Beare's chronicle, and as his father took part in the battle he is fairly reliable. It smoothens out most of the contradictions. From him it appears that the battle was not intended at all; that O'Donnell wandered about all night at a loss, owing to the ignorance of his guides; and that when daybreak came he and Tyrone found themselves involved in something they had never anticipated. If this is so, then an earlier hour may have been fixed with del Aquila, and when it passed he may have decided that Tyrone had altered his plans. Yet that leaves us wondering why he did not sally when he heard the sound of the fighting. On that O'Sullivan can only suggest that his scouts reported wrongly that the battle was not a serious affair. Even the English were still, two days later, at a loss to explain what had happened.......
"The fleeing Irish did not halt until they reached Innishannon, eight miles to the north-west on the Bandon River, mystified and bewildered and shamed by their collapse. They could already foresee the judgement of history in the scowling looks of the people around them. 'They that did kiss them in their going forward did both strip them and shoot bullets at them on their return; and, for their arms, they did drown them and thread them down in every bog and soft place under their feet'.........".
O'Faolain sums up what the defeat meant for Tyrone.
"Six years of hard resistance went like a breath that winter morning. His reputation was ruined. His moral influence was gone. The myth of Spanish aid was finished forever. His people in the North would be hurrying in to Dowcra immediately they heard the news, even as at that moment the Munster gentlemen were hurrying with dissembled joy to congratulate Mountjoy. A few were, indeed, prepared to go back to Kinsale, collect their forces, blockade Mountjoy - alas, too late! - and retrieve their losses. So hard a realist as Tyrone could not blind himself to the facts as easily as all that. They would have gone back to Kinsale in the bare tackle in which they stood; without a base, without a reputation, without the support of the people, without spirit, without numbers.
"That long adventurous march down to Kinsale, through flood and snow and danger, was over. One brief hour had turned everything into a complete debacle. He had become a bush-kerne who had been one of the greatest men in Christendom."
And for Ireland......
"It was one of the most decisive moments in the history of Ireland, incomparably more important than the Battle of the Boyne, or any other battle in the whole course of her history.....Tyrone had the game in his hands, and he threw it away by deciding to attack. He should have hung on. He should have been faithful to Time who had never been unfaithful to him. He should have turned the screw on Mountjoy as Mountjoy had turned it on him for nearly two years. If he had held out for five years could he not have held out now for five weeks?...Tyrone was to live out his life in the vain hope of retrieving his position as it was on that 17th december and during the few days after it.....Kinsale was to mean to Ireland, for ever, a parting of the ways, a scission with everything that had gone before, an ending as absolute as death."
From Sean O'Faolain's book "The Great O'Neill" (link is to book's Amazon page).
Also partly based on "James Archer of Kilkenny" by Thomas Morrissey S.J. and "From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland 1534-1660" by Nicholas Canny.
Questions still remain about the defeat. Why did O'Neill give in to O'Donnell and del Aguila? Why did del Aguila not fight, at the moment of greatest opportunity, when for month after month he had withstood the siege so resolutely? Why had the Irish no cavalry at the battle? (Some sources say that O'Neill did have horse at the battle, but that these were light Connemara ponies, more suited to guerilla warfare. Their riders scorned the use of stirrups as being unmanly. They were therefore unable to withstand the full charge of heavy English horse in open battle, and were driven back into the ranks of Irish infantry, sowing chaos and confusion.)
Whatever may be the full reasons for the defeat, it is probable that the half-trained Irish - steeped in the old Celtic traditions of raids and ambush, of hit and run, of a wild, mad, all or nothing charge for death or glory, and uneasy with formal discipline in spite of all O'Neill's efforts - could not withstand repeated determined, organised assaults from a trained army. It happened to Celtic peoples over and over again 2,000 years ago on the continent in their battles with the Romans, it happened to the Irish in their battles against the Normans, and it happened against the English at Kinsale.
After Kinsale, Red Hugh O'Donnell went to Spain in the vain hope of persuading King Philip to send more aid. By 1602 he was dead, allegedly poisoned by an English agent.
"But (the priest)...
Never had heard
The aspirated name
of the centuries-dead
Bright-haired young man
Whose grave I sought.
Yet when...
They brought his blackening body
Here
To rest
Princes came
Walking
Behind it
And all Valladolid knew
And out to Simancas all knew
Where they buried Red Hugh."
From "Red Hugh" by Thomas McGreevy.
The burial place of Red Hugh is somewhere in the graveyard of the Church of San Francisco in Valladolid, Spain. This church and its tombs were destroyed in the 19th century.
From Kinsale, O'Neill returned to Ulster and fought on. Hunted and harried back and forth across mid-Ulster, he and his followers were driven into the great woods of Glenconkeyne and Killeightragh, where eventually, in March 1603, they agreed to surrender to Mountjoy. Mountjoy neglected to mention to O'Neill that Queen Elizabeth had died 6 days previously. Elizabeth was to be succeeded by James VI of Scotland (James I of England), who was likely to be sympathetic to O'Neill, and Mountjoy feared that if O'Neill knew of Elizabeth's death, he might try to hold out longer. The surrender terms therefore surprised O'Neill with their apparent generosity. He and Red Hugh's successor, Rory O'Donnell, were to have their ancestral lands almost entirely restored, on condition they accept English officials on their lands and assist in the administration of justice. O'Neill accepted these terms, and the long war was over.
See also Violence in Ireland .
Last updated March 2001.
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