Recapturing Ireland
| date | August 1649 to April 1653 |
|---|---|
| place | Ireland |
| output | Conquest of Ireland by parliamentary troops |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Alliance between the Irish Confederation and English Royalists |
English Parliamentary New Model Army and Protestant allies in Ireland |
| Commander | |
|
James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde , Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde |
|
| Troop strength | |
| in total approx. 60,000 (troop strength max. 20,000) | approx. 30,000 (New Model Army) + approx. 10,000 soldiers in Ireland |
| losses | |
|
approx. 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers, over 200,000 civilians |
8,000 (New Model Army) |
The recapture of Ireland began in 1649 when Oliver Cromwell reached Ireland with his New Model Army on behalf of the Long Parliament . Since the rebellion of 1641 , Ireland was largely under the control of the Irish Confederation , which in 1649 had formed an alliance with the Anglo-Royalist party that was defeated in the English Civil War . Cromwell defeated the coalition of confederation and royalists in Ireland, occupied the island and thus ended the Irish Confederate Wars .
This re-conquest of Ireland was extremely brutal - many of Cromwell's acts at the time would be considered war crimes today, but were mostly within the normal rules of war at the time. This episode of Irish history is referred to in the Irish language as An Mallacht Cromail ("The Curse of Cromwell").
background
The English Parliament , victorious in the English Civil War, had several reasons for sending an army to Ireland. The first - and most important - reason was the closed alliance between the Confederation of Ireland and the English royalists around Charles II , the son of the executed Charles I. The aim of the alliance was the invasion of England in order to restore the monarchy there . Even if the Confederation had not made an alliance with the royalists, it is likely that the English parliament would have tried to retake Ireland anyway. Ireland was considered an integral part of the former Kingdom of England , which was now a republic. In addition, many English parliamentarians wanted redress for the massacres that had been committed against English settlers as part of the 1641 rebellion. Another important reason for the conquest was the fact that the English Civil War had been partially financed with loans , whose lenders were to be paid off with expropriated lands on the island of Ireland.
Cromwell in Ireland
After the end of the Confederation of Ireland in 1649, the only area controlled by supporters of Parliament was the city of Dublin under the command of Michael Jones . In order to conquer this area and to take an important port from the parliamentarians, the troops of the confederation and the royalists gathered under the command of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde south of Dublin in the city of Rathmines .
But Jones launched a surprise attack on the Alliance on August 2nd, which eventually ended in the Battle of Rathmines . Around 3,000 royalists and Confederate soldiers were killed in the course of this conflict. Cromwell called this battle an astonishing blessing as it kept a port (Dublin) where he could land with his troops. While Admiral Robert Blake blocked the royalist fleet under Prince Ruprecht von der Pfalz near Kinsale , Cromwell reached Ireland on August 15 with 35 ships - fully loaded with soldiers, weapons, artillery and ammunition. Two days later, Henry Ireton reached the Irish island with another 77 ships.
James Butler's forces withdrew from the Dublin area, demoralized by the unexpected defeat at Rathmines. Butler hoped to defend the fortified cities on the east coast of Ireland against Cromwell by winter, and continued to hope that Colonel Hunger and Major Sickness would then thin the ranks of the enemy.
The Siege of Drogheda
After landing, Cromwell went straight to conquering the other port cities on Ireland's east coast in order to secure an effective supply of his troops from England. The first town on his foray was Drogheda , about 50 km north of Dublin , in September . At Drogheda there was a regiment of 3,000 English royalists under the command of Arthur Aston . After a brief siege, Cromwell's troops stormed the city and massacred much of the garrison, Catholic priests and some civilians. Arthur Aston was beaten to death with his own wooden leg. The Drogheda massacre sparked a wave of consternation in Ireland and is still considered an example of Cromwell's extreme cruelty today - even if this was not uncommon in the 17th century. After the fall of Drogheda, Cromwell sent 5,000 soldiers under Robert Venables north to smash the remnants of a Scottish Covenanter army that had arrived in Ulster in 1642. This parliamentary army was supported by a force of English settlers from Derry, led by Charles Coote.
Wexford, Waterford and Duncannon
The rest of the New Model Army marched south to capture the ports of Wexford , Waterford and Duncannon at Passage East . After a brief siege in October, Cromwell's troops were also able to take Wexford, where the troops committed another massacre when his army invaded the city, although negotiations were in progress to surrender.
Regardless of whether Cromwell had tolerated the destruction of the city or could not stop it, this act was nonsensical because it meant that Cromwell could no longer use the destroyed port for supplies.
While these atrocities caused some cities such as New Ross , Carlow or Kilkenny to surrender quickly, other cities such as Waterford or Duncannon (later also Clonmel , Limerick and Galway ) put up even stronger resistance. With the approaching winter, Cromwell failed to conquer Waterford and Duncannon in 1649. His troops had to retreat to winter quarters, where many of them died of diseases and epidemics - especially typhus and dysentery . Only after the sieges resumed in the summer of the following year did these cities capitulate.
Clonmel and the conquest of Munster
At the beginning of spring, Cromwell turned back to the rest of the towns in southeast Ireland. While Kilkenny - until recently still the capital of the Confederation of Ireland - quickly surrendered, Cromwell's troops suffered the only serious setback in Clonmel in April 1650 when he suffered losses of around 1,500 to 2,500 men.
But while Cromwell has been extremely brutal in his previous sieges, he changed his approach in Kilkenny and even accepted conditions of the capitulated cities - including the guarantee that no civilians would be killed, no private property destroyed and the defending troops evacuated. This new approach may have arisen from the fact that further atrocities would only fuel the Irish resistance.
Butler's royalists still occupied much of Munster at the time , but were caught by a mutiny in their own garrison in Cork . The troops there had fought for the parliamentarians until 1648, but then switched to the alliance of the confederation. As a result of the mutiny, they changed sides again and thus surrendered a large part of Munster to Cromwell without a fight. The last Irish garrisons in the area were defeated at the Battle of Macroom , prompting the Alliance to retreat across the Shannon to Connaught .
In May 1650, Charles II revoked the alliance created by his father ( Charles I ) with the (former) Irish Confederation in order to merge with the Scottish Covenanters through the Treaty of Breda . This totally undermined Butler's position as leader of the royalists in Ireland, whereupon Cromwell published generous concessions for all Protestant royalists who surrendered or also switched sides. This led to the fact that finally almost only Irish (Catholic) units remained as opponents for Cromwell. It was discussed among them, especially by the clergy, why Butler's leadership should still be recognized after his king had lifted the alliance.
Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650 to fight the new Scottish-royalist alliance in the 3rd English Civil War. He passed the command to Henry Ireton.
The destruction of the army in Ulster
The largest Irish force at the time was the 6,000 strong army of Ulster, which, until his death in 1649, was commanded by Owen Roe O'Neill , who was succeeded by the inexperienced Catholic Bishop of Clogher Heber MacMahon . 4,000 of these soldiers were killed in the Battle of Scarrifholis and most of the officers were killed in it or were captured and subsequently executed. This loss secured access to the province of Ulster for parliamentary troops. The Protestant army under Charles Coote then went to the southwest to bring the west coast of the Irish island under control.
The Sieges of Limerick and Galway
James Butler, completely demoralized by the ongoing defeats, fled to France in December 1650 and was replaced by the noble Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde . The rest of the Irish and Royalist units had largely withdrawn west of the River Shannon, and their last hope was in the defense of the extremely fortified cities of Limerick and Galway . While Ireton and his army began besieging Limerick in June 1651, Coote and his men did the same in Galway from August onwards. Because of the excellent defenses, it was not possible for either of them to take or storm the cities as before. Instead, both blocked all access routes to the cities, so that ultimately hunger and disease led to the surrender of Limerick (October 1651) and Galway (May 1652). An Irish attempt to lift the siege of the city of Limerick from the south failed in July 1651 at the Battle of Knocknaclashy . In addition to the Irish losses in the city from disease and epidemics, thousands of soldiers - including Ireton - also died among the besieging English troops.
Guerrillas, famine and epidemics
The fall of Galway marked the end of organized resistance against the British conquerors, but many remaining small groups withdrew into impassable terrain in order to attack parliamentary troops with guerrilla tactics .
In fact, these attacks began as early as late 1650. By late 1651, despite the defeat of Irish and royalist troops, an estimated 30,000 armed men were still fighting the occupiers. These fighters were called " tories ", which came from the Irish word toraidhe ("persecuted"). They operated from difficult to access terrain such as B. moor areas, the Wicklow Mountains and the Drumlin areas in the Irish Midlands and after a few months these areas were extremely dangerous for smaller parliamentary troops. At the end of 1650 Ireton tried to drive out the Tories in the Wicklow Mountains - but unsuccessfully. At the beginning of 1651 hardly any English convoy dared to venture more than 3–4 kilometers away from their own base without strong escorts. In return, the English troops also destroyed entire crops and punished all civilians who were suspected of helping the rebels. The result of this almost nationwide destruction of fields and crops was famine and the widespread outbreak of bubonic plague .
As the guerrilla struggle progressed, dangerous areas were treated as today's Free Fire Zones in April 1651 , i. H. Areas where any unidentified person will be seen as an enemy and shot or captured (without consulting officers). Furthermore, one began to sell prisoners of war as slaves to the West Indies , especially to Barbados , where their descendants were called " Redlegs " (red legs) .
This phase of the war was the one that killed the most civilians. The combination of war, famine and epidemics led to the death of between 400,000 and 620,000 people in Ireland from 1641 to 1653 , according to William Petty , an Englishman who carried out the first scientific land survey and census ( Down Sorvey ) . Nowadays the number is assumed to be lower, but current estimates also speak of at least 200,000 deaths in a country with just 1.5 million inhabitants.
Ultimately, the guerrilla war ended in 1652 with the publication of terms of surrender, which allowed the Irish rebels to leave the country with impunity to join other armies that were not at war with England. The largest guerrilla troops under John Fitzpatrick (in Leinster), Edmund O'Dwyer (in Munster) and Edmund Daly (in Connaught) surrendered in 1652. It is assumed that around 11,000 rebels were still spread across the island . The last organized rebel force surrendered on April 27, 1653 at Cloughoughter, County Cavan .
The conquest of Ireland consolidated the English plantations in Ireland, especially Ulster, and wiped out the Irish landowner class. After the conquest, Irish Catholics were not allowed to become citizens of the British state. The Cromwell campaign and the Plantations also led to a consolidation of Irish nationalism.
See also
literature
- Nicholas Canny: Making Ireland British. 1580-1650. Oxford University Press, Oxford u. a. 2001, ISBN 0-19-820091-9 .
- Antonia Fraser : Cromwell, Our Chief of Men. Panther, St Albans 1975, ISBN 0-586-04206-7 .
- Ian Gentles: The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653. Reprinted edition. Blackwell, Oxford et al. a. 1994, ISBN 0-631-19347-2 .
- John Kenyon, Jane Ohlmeyer, (Eds.): The Civil Wars. A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638-1660. Oxford University Press, Oxford u. a. 1998, ISBN 0-19-866222-X .
- Pádraig Lenihan: Confederate Catholics at War, 1641–49. Cork University Press, Cork et al. a. 2001, ISBN 1-85918-244-5 .
- Tom Reilly: Cromwell, to Honorable Enemy. The untold Story of the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland Brandon, Dingle 1999, ISBN 0-86322-250-1 .
- Michéal Ó Siochrú: Confederate Ireland 1642–1649. Four Courts Press, Dublin 1999, ISBN 1-85182-400-6 .
- RA Stradling: The Spanish Monarchy and Irish Mercenaries. The Wild Geese in Spain, 1618-68. Irish Academic Press, Dublin et al. a. 1994, ISBN 0-7165-2509-7 .
- James Scott Wheeler: Cromwell in Ireland. St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-22550-4 .