Nine Years' War (Ireland)

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Nine Years' War
Part of the Tudor conquest of Ireland and the European wars of religion
Ireland in 1600 showing approximate Irish alliance control at its height (red), and English control (blue)
Date May 1593 – 30 March 1603 Location Ireland Result English victory Treaty of Mellifont (1603) Flight of the Earls (1607)
Belligerents
Irish alliance Spain	loyalists
Commanders and leaders
Irish lords: full list...	English leaders: full list...
Strength
~21,000, including: 8,000 in Ulster (1594) but thousands joined after 9,000 in Munster 3,500 Spanish (1601)	~5–6,000 (before 1598) ~18,000 (after 1598)
Casualties and losses
~100,000 soldiers and Irish civilians (the vast majority died due to famine)	~30,000 soldiers (though more died from disease than in battle) and hundreds of English colonists
Total dead: 130,000+

The Nine Years' War, sometimes called Tyrone's Rebellion,^[1][2] took place in Ireland from 1593 to 1603. It was fought between an Irish confederation—led mainly by Hugh O'Neill of Tyrone and Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell—against English rule in Ireland, and was a response to the ongoing Tudor conquest of Ireland. The war began in Ulster and northern Connacht, but eventually engulfed the entire island. The Irish alliance won numerous victories against the English forces in Ireland, such as the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598), but the English won a pivotal victory against the alliance and their Spanish allies in the siege of Kinsale (1601–02). The war ended with the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). Many of the defeated northern lords left Ireland to seek support for a new uprising in the Flight of the Earls (1607), never to return. This marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and led to the Plantation of Ulster.

The war against O'Neill and his allies was the largest conflict fought by England in the Elizabethan era. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland.^[3] By contrast, the English army assisting the Dutch during the Eighty Years' War was never more than 12,000 strong at any one time.^[3]

Causes

The Nine Years' War was caused by the clashes between the Gaelic Irish lord Hugh O'Neill and the

By the early 1590s, the north of Ireland was attracting the attention of Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, who had been charged with bringing the area under crown control. A provincial presidency was proposed; the candidate for office was Henry Bagenal, an English colonist settled in Newry, who would seek to impose the authority of the crown through sheriffs to be appointed by the Dublin government. O'Neill had eloped with Bagenal's sister, Mabel, and married her against her brother's wishes; the bitterness of this episode was made more intense after Mabel's early death a few years after the marriage, when she was reportedly in despair about her husband's neglect and his mistresses.^[7]

In 1591, Fitzwilliam broke up the MacMahon lordship in

The most significant difficulty for English forces in confronting O'Neill lay in the natural defences that

The English did have a foothold within Ulster, around Carrickfergus north of Belfast Lough, where a small colony had been planted in the 1570s; but here too the terrain was unfavorable for the English, since Lough Neagh and the river Bann, the lower stretch of which ran through the dense forest of Glenconkeyn, formed an effective barrier on the eastern edge of the O'Neill territory. A further difficulty lay in the want of a port on the northern sea coast where the English might launch an amphibious attack into O'Neill's rear. The English strategic situation was complicated by interference from Scots clans, which were supplying O'Neill with soldiers and materials and playing upon the English need for local assistance, while keeping an eye to their own territorial influence in the Route (modern County Antrim).

War breaks out

In 1592, Hugh Roe O'Donnell had driven an English sheriff, Captain Willis, out of his territory, Tyrconnell (now part of County Donegal). In 1593, Maguire supported by troops out of Tyrone led by Hugh O'Neill's brother, Cormac MacBaron, had combined to resist Willis' introduction as Sheriff into Maguire's Fermanagh. After Willis was expelled from Fermanagh, Maguire, with the aid of MacBaron, launched punishing raids into northern Connacht, burning villages around Ballymote Castle.^[8] Maguire launched a more ambitious raid into Connacht during June, when he clashed with forces led by the governor of Connacht, Sir Richard Bingham, but the English were beaten back and Maguire continued to spoil thorough Roscommon before returning north. In response, the crown forces were gathered under the command of

The English authorities in Dublin Castle had been slow to comprehend the scale of the rebellion. After failed negotiations in 1595, English armies tried to break into Ulster but were repulsed by a trained army including musketeers in prepared positions; after a stinging defeat at the Battle of Clontibret, successive English offensives were driven back in the following years. At the Battle of the Yellow Ford in 1598 up to 2,000 English troops were killed after being attacked on the march to Armagh. The rest were surrounded in Armagh itself but negotiated safe passage for themselves in return for evacuating the town. O'Neill's personal enemy, Sir Henry Bagenal, had been in command of the army and was killed during the early engagements. It was the heaviest defeat ever suffered by the English army in Ireland up to that point.

The victory prompted uprisings all over the country, with the assistance of mercenaries in O'Neill's pay and contingents from Ulster, and it is at this point that the war developed in its full force. Hugh O'Neill appointed his supporters as chieftains and earls around the country, notably James Fitzthomas Fitzgerald as the

In 1599,

George Carew, the English Lord President of Munster, managed more or less to quash the rebellion in Munster by mid-1601, using a mixture of conciliation and force. By the summer of 1601 he had retaken most of the principal castles in Munster and scattered the Irish forces. He did this by negotiating a pact with Florence MacCarthy, the principal Gaelic Irish leader in the province, which allowed MacCarthy to be neutral, while Carew concentrated on attacking the force of James Fitzthomas Fitzgerald, who commanded the main rebel force. As a result, while MacCarthy resisted English raiding parties into his territory, he did not come to Fitzthomas's aid, despite urgings from O'Neill and O'Donnell to do this.^[19]

In the summer of 1600, Carew launched an offensive against Fitzthomas's forces. The English routed Fitzthomas' forces at Aherlow and in November, Carew reported to London that he had, over the summer, killed 1,200 'rebels' and taken the surrenders of over 10,000. Carew also weakened Florence MacCarthy's position by recruiting a rival MacCarthy chieftain, Donal, to English service.^[19]

In June 1601, James Fitzthomas was captured by the English forces. Shortly afterwards, Carew had Florence MacCarthy arrested after summoning him for negotiations. Both Fitzthomas and MacCarthy were held captive in the Tower of London, where Fitzthomas eventually died. Most of the rest of the local lords submitted, once the principal native leaders had been arrested. O'Neill's mercenaries had been expelled from the province.^[19]

Battle of Kinsale and the collapse of the rebellion

Mountjoy managed to penetrate the interior of Ulster by seaborne landings at Derry (then belonging to County Coleraine) under Henry Docwra and Carrickfergus under Arthur Chichester. Dowcra and Chichester, helped by Niall Garve O'Donnell, a rival of Hugh Roe, devastated the countryside in an effort to provoke a famine and killed the civilian population at random.

Their military assumption was that without crops and people or cattle, the rebels could neither feed themselves nor raise new fighters.^[20][21] This attrition quickly began to bite, and it also meant that the Ulster chiefs were tied down in Ulster to defend their own territories.

Although O'Neill managed to repulse another land offensive by Mountjoy at the Battle of Moyry Pass near Newry in 1600, his position was becoming desperate.

In 1601, the long promised Spanish finally arrived in the form of 3,500 soldiers at Kinsale, Cork, virtually the southern tip of Ireland. Mountjoy immediately besieged them with 7,000 men. O'Neill, O'Donnell, and their allies marched their armies south to sandwich Mountjoy, whose men were starving and wracked by disease, between them and the Spaniards. During the march south, O'Neill devastated the lands of those who would not support him.

The English force might have been destroyed by hunger and sickness but the issue was decided in their favour at the

Hugh Roe O'Donnell left for Spain pleading in vain for another Spanish landing. He died in 1602 probably poisoned by an English agent^[citation needed]. His brother assumed leadership of the O'Donnell clan. Both he and Hugh O'Neill were reduced to guerrilla tactics, fighting in small bands, as Mountjoy, Dowcra, Chichester, and Niall Garbh O'Donnell swept the countryside. The English scorched earth tactics were especially harsh on the civilian population, who died in great numbers both from direct targeting and from famine.^[23]

End of the War

In 1602 O'Neill

Although the war had effectively ended with the signing of the Treaty of Mellifont, its final battles were fought during the English invasion of West Breifne in April 1603, which remained the sole holdout Irish kingdom following O'Neill's capitulation. The kingdom was ruled by Brian Óg O'Rourke, one of the alliance's chief lieutenants and leader of the Irish forces during the Battle of Curlew Pass. He failed to secure any concessions from the treaty as his half-brother Tadhg O'Rourke had fought with the English during the war and was granted lordship of West Breifne in return. Following a twelve-day siege, a force of 3,000 men led by Tadhg, Henry Folliott, and Rory O'Donnell eventually brought the area, and thus all of Ireland, under English control on 25 April 1603.

Aftermath

The leaders of the rebellion received good terms from the new King of England,

Irish sources claimed that as many as 60,000 people had died in the Ulster famine of 1602–3 alone. An Irish death toll of over 100,000 is possible. At least 30,000 English soldiers died in Ireland in the Nine Years' War, mainly from disease. So the total death toll for the war was certainly at least 100,000 people, and probably more.

Although O'Neill and his allies received good terms at the end of the war, they were never trusted by the English authorities and the distrust was mutual. O'Neill, O'Donnell, and the other Gaelic lords from Ulster allied to them left Ireland in 1607 in what is known as the "Flight of the Earls" after news they planned another rebellion reached the authorities. They intended to organise an expedition from a Catholic power in Europe, preferably Spain, to restart the war but were unable to find any military backers.

Spain had signed the

In 1608 the absent earls' lands were confiscated for trying to start another war, and were soon colonised in the Plantation of Ulster. The Nine Years' War was therefore an important step in the English and Scottish colonisation of Ulster.

See also

• Grace O'Malley
• List of Irish uprisings
• Tudor conquest of Ireland
• Nine Years' War
• Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604)
• Tudor period, perspective from English history

References