Mid-17th century portrait of Eoghan Rua Ó Néill.
Eoghan Rua Ó Néill, anglicised as Owen Roe O'Neill (c. 1590–1649) ("Red Owen"), was a seventeenth century soldier and one of the most famous
of the O'Neill family of Ulster.
In Spanish service
O'Neill was the son of Art O'Neill, a younger brother of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd
Earl of Tyrone (the Great O'Neill). As a young man, left Ireland in the Flight of
the Earls to escape the English conquest of his native Ulster. He grew up in the
Spanish Netherlands and spent 40 years serving in the Irish regiment of the
Spanish army. He saw most of his combat in the Eighty Years'
War against the Dutch Republic in Flanders,
notably at the siege of Arras, where he commanded the Spanish garrison. O'Neill was, like many
Gaelic Irish officers in the Spanish service, very hostile to the English Protestant presence in Ireland. In 1627, he was
involved in petitioning the Spanish monarchy to invade Ireland using the Irish Spanish regiments. O'Neill proposed that Ireland
be made a republic under Spanish protection to avoid in-fighting between Irish Catholic landed
families over which of them would provide a prince or king of Ireland. This plot came to nothing. However in 1642, O'Neill
returned to Ireland with 300 veterans to aid the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
Return to Ireland
The subsequent war, known as the Irish Confederate Wars, was part of the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms -civil wars throughout Britain and Ireland.
Because of his military experience, O'Neill was recognised on his return to Ireland, at Doe
Castle in Donegal (end of July 1642), as the leading representative of the
O'Neills and head of the Ulster Irish. Sir Phelim
O'Neill resigned the northern command of the Irish rebellion in Owen Roe's favour, and escorted him from Lough Swilly to Charlemont.
But jealousy between the kinsmen was complicated by differences between Owen Roe and the Catholic Confederation which met at Kilkenny in October 1642. Owen Roe professed to be acting in the interest of
Charles I; but his real aim was the complete Independence of Ireland as a Roman Catholic country, while
the Old English Catholics represented by the
council desired to secure religious liberty and an Irish constitution under the
crown of England. More conceretely, O'Neill wanted the Plantation of Ulster
overturned and the recovery of the O'Neill clan's ancestral lands. Moreover, he was unhappy that the majority of Confederate
military resources were directed to Thomas Preston's Leinster Army.
Preston was also a Spanish veteran but he and O'Neill had an intense personal dislike of each other.
Although Owen Roe O'Neill was a competent general, he was outnumbered by the Scottish Covenanter army that had landed in Ulster in 1642. Following a reverse at Clones, O'Neill had to abandon central Ulster and was followed by thousands of refugees, fleeing the retribution
of the Scottish soldiers for the Irish massacre of Protestant in the rebellion of 1641. O'Neill complained that the devastation
of Ulster made it look, "not only like a desert, but like hell, if hell could exist on earth". O'Neill did his best to stop the
killings of Protestant civilians, for which he received the gratitude of many Protestant settlers. From 1642-46 a stalemate
existed in Ulster, which O'Neill used to train and discipline his Ulster Army. This poorly supplied force nevertheless gained a
very bad reputation for plundering and robbing friendly civilians around its quarters in northern Leinster and southern
Ulster.
In 1646 O'Neill, furnished with supplies by the Papal Nuncio,
Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, attacked the Scottish Covenanter army under Major-General Robert Monro, who had landed in Ireland in April 1642. On 5 June 1646 O'Neill utterly routed Monro at the Battle of Benburb, on
the Blackwater killing or capturing up to 3000 Scots. However after being summoned to the
south by Rinuccini, he failed to take advantage of the victory, and allowed Monro to remain unmolested at Carrickfergus.
Factionalism and disillusionment
In March 1646 a treaty was signed between Ormonde and the
Catholics, which would have committed the Catholics to sending troops to aid the Royalist cause
in the English Civil War. The peace terms however, were rejected by a majority of the
Irish Catholic military and the Catholic clergy including the Nuncio, Rinuccini. O'Neill led his Ulster army, along with
Thomas Preston's Leinster army, in a
failed attempt to take Dublin from Ormonde. However, the Irish Confederates suffered heavy
military defeats the following year at the hands of Parliamentarian forces in Ireland at
Dungans Hill and Knocknanauss,
leading to a moderation of their demands and a new peace deal with the Royalists. This time O'Neill was alone among the Irish
generals in rejecting the peace deal and found himself isolated by the departure of the papal
nuncio from Ireland in February 1649.
So alientated was O'Neill by the terms of the peace the Confederates had made with Ormonde that he refused to join the
Catholic/Royalist coalition and in 1648 his Ulster army fought with other Irish Catholic armies. He made overtures for alliance
to Monck, who was in command of the parliamentarians in the north, to obtain supplies for his forces, and at one stage even tried to make a
separate treaty with the English Parliament against the Royalists in Ireland. Failing to obtain any better terms from them, he
turned once more to Ormonde and the Catholic confederates, with whom he prepared to co-operate more earnestly when
Cromwell's arrival in Ireland in August 1649 brought the Catholic party face to face
with serious danger.
Death and legacy
Before, however, anything was accomplished by this combination, Owen Roe died on 6
November 1649. The traditional Irish belief was that he was poisoned by the English, but now
some believe it is more likely that he died of disease.
The Catholic nobles and gentry met in Ulster in March to appoint a commander to succeed Owen Roe O'Neill, and their choice was
Heber MacMahon, Roman Catholic
Bishop of Clogher, the chief organizer of the recent Clonmacnoise meeting. O'Neill's Ulster army was unable to prevent the
Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, despite a successful defence of Clonmel by Owen Roe's nephew Hugh Dubh
O'Neill and was destroyed at the Battle of Scarrifholis in
Donegal in 1650. Its remnants continued guerrilla warfare until 1653, when they
surrendered at Cloughoughter in county Cavan. Most of the survivors were transported to serve in the Spanish Army.
In the nineteenth century, O'Neill was celebrated by the Irish nationalist
revolutionaries, the Young Irelanders, who saw O'Neill as an Irish patriot.
Thomas Davis wrote a famous song about O'Neill, titled "The
Lament for Owen Roe". which was popularised in their newspaper, The
Nation.
Sources
- Padraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War
- Deana Rankin, Between Spenser and Swift - English Writing in seventeenth century Ireland
- James Scott Wheeler, Cromwell in Ireland
- Tadhg Ó Hanrachain, the catholic reformation in Ireland.
External link
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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