CHAPTER XII

THE WAR OF O'NEILL AND O'DONNELL

PART II. THE IRISH SUCCESSES.

Hugh O'Neill comes into the Field: The Battle of Yellow Ford.In May (1595) Hugh O'Neill himself came into the field, his brother Art having previously captured Portmore. He laid siege to Monaghan, but Bagenal marched to its relief, and he was forced to withdraw. The Deputy Russell, with Sir John Norris, invaded North Ulster, and pressed on to Armagh, O'Neill retreating before them. The army then turned south, and the Deputy went back to Dublin, leaving Norris in command. O'Neill defeated him at Clontibret, on the river Erne, near Monaghan. The English were forced to retreat, and Monaghan soon after surrendered. The Irish victory was followed by a great extension of the revolt. Almost the whole of the Connacht chiefs now threw in their lot with the National party.

In the winter hostilities grew less active. The English authorities proposed negotiations, and the Irish agreed. Probably there was little sincerity on either side. In January 1596, O'Neill and O'Donnell, with some of their allies, met the English Commissioners in a field near Dundalk. They demanded complete religious liberty; that no sheriff or other English official should come into Tír Owen or Tírconnell, or into the lands of any of the chiefs who had joined them; and that no garrisons should be planted in Ulster, except at Carrickfergus and Newry. These terms were refused; the demand for religious freedom being specially objected to as most insolent.

The negotiations dragged on month after month, each side meanwhile continuing its preparations. The Deputy was increasing his army, and seeing to its equipment and drill; the chiefs were extending their alliances and trying to hasten the coming of the foreign aid.

In 1597 a new Deputy, Lord Borough, was appointed. In Connacht the cruel and treacherous Bingham was succeeded as President by Sir Conyers Clifford, whose mild and conciliatory rule won over many who had previously sided with the Irish chiefs.

In August 1597, Borough prepared for a great campaign against the Ulster rebels. They were to be assailed from three directions.

Clifford, having marched up from Connacht, should cross the river Erne and encounter O'Donnell at Ballyshannon. Young Barnewell, Lord Trimleston's son, should lead another army northward through the midland counties into Tír Owen, while the Deputy himself should proceed with a third force, by a more easterly route, to Armagh.

The failure of this elaborate scheme was complete. All three armies met with disaster. O'Donnell defended Ballyshannon successfully, and the English were forced to retreat with heavy loss across the Erne. Young Barnewell was assailed south of Mullingar by Captain Richard Tyrrel, an Irish commander of English race, and his army almost annihilated. The Deputy encountered O'Neill at Drumfliuch on the Blackwater and suffered a complete defeat.

Renewed negotiations, as might have been expected, led to nothing. In 1598 hostilities were resumed.

The fort of Portmore on the Blackwater was considered by the English authorities a military post of the greatest importance, and the command of the garrison had been given to Captain Williams, a tried and gallant soldier. O'Neill's attempt to take it by assault having failed, he tried a blockade and reduced the garrison to the utmost straits, but Williams would not surrender.

Marshal Bagenal prepared to march to the relief of Portmore, leaving Ormond, who was now Deputy, to defend Leinster. Of the Marshal's force of 5,000 men a good many were Irish mercenaries.

In early August, Bagenal started on his march northward, and he reached Armagh without encountering any opposition. The Irish decided to fall back on the Blackwater and to hold the line of the river. Under O'Neill were his own clansmen and the levies of his tributary chiefs, each led by its own lord. O'Donnell brought 2,000 of his Tírconnell men, and Mac William Burke of Sligo some 2,000 Connacht mercenaries. Besides these, a Macdonnell of the Isles had come with a troop of Scots to help his Irish kinsman. The Irish army was probably rather larger than that of its opponents, but, as regards arms, it was much inferior. The English soldiers were protected by armour, and provided with firearms. A relatively small number of the Irish were similarly equipped. Most of them fought in their linen tunics, using spears, javelins and axes. Moreover, they had no artillery, while the English had brought with them several cannon.

On the morning of August 14th, the two armies met at a place on the Blackwater called Béal an Áta Burde (the mouth of the Yellow Ford), a couple of miles distant from Armagh.

O'Neill had strengthened his position by every means in his power. He had caused a deep trench to be dug in front of his lines, and had posted,

in advance, bodies of light-armed troops to assail the enemy on the flanks. When the English charged, many, of the cavalry especially, fell into the trench, which was concealed with brambles, so that the legs of the horses were broken. Besides this, the fire of the skirmishers confused them, and the line was to a great extent broken before they reached the Irish. The second regiment was commanded by Bagenal himself, and he led his men gallantly. They pressed the Irish so hard that they drove them across the trench, their long-range muskets doing great execution. The Irish then changed their tactics, and, closing on the English on each

flank, forced their wings in on the centre, so that they were too crowded together to use their firearms. Just then Bagenal fell dead, his brain pierced by a bullet. The fall of their leader spread a panic amongst his men, and Colonel Cosby, coming up with his regiment, found them retreating across the trench.

Cosby opened fire on the Irish with his cannon, but the bursting of one of these caused some loss of life and still more disarrangement of the English ranks, and Cosby's men also retreated in confusion, hotly pursued by the Irish. In the rear a smart battle had been meanwhile in progress. O'Donnell, Maguire and the Scots had come round and assailed the fifth and sixth English regiments, which began to give way. In this division there fought Maelmuire O'Reilly, called "the Handsome," who now styled himself "the Queen's O'Reilly." He made desperate attempts to retrieve the fortunes of the day, but, when at last he was slain, all resistance ceased and the English, abandoning the field, fled towards Armagh, having sustained the greatest defeat that had befallen them since first the Normans set foot on Ireland. Portmore at once

surrendered. The Irish suffered the garrison to depart in safety, with only the loss of their arms and ammunition. When the news of Yellow Ford reached Elizabeth, her wrath was unbounded, and she vented it by pouring a flood of blame and reproach on the Irish officials, collectively and individually, ascribing this and all previous disasters to their mismanagement.

It had always been the case in Ireland that any considerable success gained by either party in any internal war or revolt was immediately followed by a great accession to the number of adherents to the side of the victors. This happened in the present instance. In Munster there was an almost general revolt, not only of the Celtic chiefs and landowners, but also of the Anglo-Irish. The Geraldines, younger branches of the Desmond family; the Burkes, the Roches and some of the Butlers, joined O'Neill. The Planters found scant mercy. Their lands were raided; their houses burnt; they themselves were fortunate if they escaped with their lives. In Connacht, O'Donnell returned from his raiding of Clanrickard's country with a great spoil of cattle.

Now, in the three provinces of Ulster, Munster and Connacht, there remained to the English only the larger cities, and a few garrisons here and there. The rest of the country was under the overlordship of one or other of the two Irish leaders, while the internal administration of each district remained, as before, in the hands of its local chief. Timid and disheartened, the English scarcely ventured beyond the walls of their fortified towns and castles.

Essex sent to Ireland: His Failure There.-Elizabeth, however, was not a ruler likely to allow a country the possession of which she knew, in the then condition of Continental affairs, to be of almost vital importance to the very existence of England, to slip thus easily from her grasp. She resolved to send across the Channel such a force as would not only, she felt sure, speedily crush the rebels, but would extend her authority over the whole island, and make her in reality "Queen of Ireland." In her selection of a leader for the expedition she allowed herself to be swayed rather by feeling than by reason. Her choice fell on Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, a handsome man of thirty-two, having many superficial advantages, but whose success in military affairs had not, so far, been remarkable. He was the son of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose attempt at a Plantation in Ulster had ended so unfortunately, and since Leicester's death in 1588 he had been the Queen's chief favourite. The title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, more honourable than that of Deputy, was now conferred on him. The army placed under Essex's command was, with the exception of that which followed Richard II in 1394, the

largest that had ever crossed from England to Ireland. It numbered 16,000 infantry and 1,300 cavalry, all well armed and equipped. If the troops already in the country be added, we may estimate that the Lord Lieutenant had at his command a force of at least 21,000 or 22,000

men.

Towards the middle of April 1599, Essex landed in Dublin and at once proceeded to ignore the instructions which he had received before leaving England. Rightly judging that if the leader of the rebellion were once crushed, the whole coalition against her would fall to pieces almost of itself, Elizabeth had ordered Essex to at once attack "the Arch-traitor Tyrone." In Dublin, however, the Lord Lieutenant met many persons, some of them high officials, who had either themselves been dispossessed by the rebels of great estates in Munster, or were related to those who had so lost them. These men, "aiming rather at their private interests than the public good," persuaded Essex to turn south.

He marched through the midland counties to Limerick and Waterford, then back through Wexford and Wicklow. A series of disasters marked his way. Near Maryborough his rearguard was shattered by Owney O'More at the head of 400 men. The pass where the encounter took place was afterwards known, from the many English helmet plumes that strewed the ground, as "the Pass of the Plumes " (Bearna na Cleitide).

In Co. Limerick the Burkes and the O'Connors inflicted defeats on the forces of the Lord Lieutenant and his allies.

Still more disastrous on the morale of the army than these reverses was the almost continual skirmishing; a species of warfare to which the English soldiers were unaccustomed, and for which their heavy armour and equipments rendered them unfit. It was with a force "weary, sick and incredibly diminished in numbers" that the Lord Lieutenant returned to Dublin in June.

Elizabeth was both disappointed and enraged at the poor results achieved by the splendid army from which she had hoped so much. She brushed aside Essex's attempts at explanation, and reproached him for his disobedience in a tone to which the haughty favourite had been little accustomed from his hitherto indulgent Sovereign. She so far relented, however, as to send him, at his request, a reinforcement of 2,000 men. Yet, even after the arrival of these additional troops, Essex lingered in Dublin, allowing his forces to waste away by illness and desertion.

For two months there was virtually a pause in the military operations; then, early in August (1599), Essex ordered Sir Conyers Clifford, who,