Battle of Curlew Pass
“Gaelic Chief”, monument on the N4
| date | August 15, 1599 |
|---|---|
| place | Curlew Mountains, near the town of Boyle 
|
| output | Irish victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Irish rebels |
English troops |
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 1,700 | 2,000 |
| losses | |
|
unknown (low) |
500 |
Clontibret - Carrickfergus - Yellow Ford - Curlew Pass - Cahir Castle - Moyry Pass - Kinsale - Dunboy
The battle of Curlew Pass took place on August 15, 1599 during the Nine Years War between English troops under Sir Conyers Clifford and an Irish rebel army under Hugh Roe O'Donnell near the town of Boyle in County Roscommon , Ireland . The English troops were ambushed while marching through a pass in the Curlew Mountains ( An Corrshliabh in Irish ) and suffered heavy losses. Clifford was also killed here.
prehistory
In April 1599 reached Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex , with a 17,000-strong army Ireland to the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone knock down, and Hugh Roe O'Donnell, of Ulster whole of the Island had captured. So Essex supported an Irish enemy of the O'Donnells, Sir Donogh O'Connor of Sligo , and encouraged him to retake his O'Donnell-occupied territories in Sligo .
Sligo was an excellent starting point for a blow against Ulster, as in the village of Ballyshannon (about 35 km northeast of Sligo) an important ford led into County Donegal ; the area of the O'Donnells. British military strategists in Dublin and London had been calling for this strategically important point to be conquered for some time.
O'Connor's brother-in-law , Tibbot na Long Burke (son of Grace O'Malley ), was co-commander of an English naval force that set out from Galway for Sligo, where O'Connor was waiting for them. But O'Donnell came before that by besieging O'Connor in Collooney Castle with over 2,000 men. Devereux had no choice: he had to help the beleaguered O'Connor, since O'Connor was one of the few Gaelic chiefs the English crown could rely on. He then ordered Sir Conyers Clifford - stationed in Athlone - along with 1,500 soldiers and 200 horsemen to Sligo to help O'Connor.
O'Donnell, however, left 300 men at Collooney Castle under the leadership of his cousin Niall Garve O'Donnell and dispatched 600 men to the city of Sligo to prevent the English landing of the ships from Tibbot na Long Burke. O'Donnell himself went to Dunavaragh with almost 1,500 men, where he met the resident chieftains Conor MacDermott and Brian Oge O'Rourke (son of Brian O'Rourke ) with their men. The Irish rebels then carefully prepared an ambush in the Curlew Mountains, through which the English troops had to march from Athlone. O'Donnell had trees felled, blocking the way to stop the English troops. When he received news that the English troops had reached Boyle, he positioned his men. Musketeers , archers, and javelin throwers waited in the forest along the way. The bulk of the Irish infantry , armed with axes and pikes , were positioned around a bend.
The battle
In hot August weather, Clifford's force reached the Curlew Mountains at 4pm on August 15 , which had to be crossed to get to Sligo. The army was poorly equipped, overtired and hungry, and actually unable to march any further. But Clifford received false information that the pass was not defended and so he decided to take the opportunity to cross the pass.
The English troops came under fire as soon as they reached the first of O'Donnell's barricades, between Boyle and Ballinafad. But the Irish rebels quickly withdrew so that the English troops could advance further. The path (about 2.50 m wide) they took consisted of stones lined up with one another, with swampy spaces in between. The further the English advanced, the more violent the enemy fire from the adjacent forest became, and the more English soldiers lost their nerve and fled. Ultimately, a 90-minute firefight ensued, at the end of which the English vanguard ran out of gunpowder.
The commander of the vanguard, Alexander Radcliffe, could no longer control his panicked troops, which fled, colliding with the main unit, which in turn broke up and partially fled. Radcliffe made one final assault with his remaining pikemen , in which he was killed. At that English disorder now the Irish infantry attacked in the fight against Man one. Clifford, who tried in vain to regain control of his men, was eventually killed by a pikeman. The English soldiers were persecuted, and it was only thanks to their cavalry that the situation did not get worse. The riders under Sir Griffin Markham rode up the hill, " between stones and swamp where no horse has been seen. " For a short time the Irish rebels were pushed back.
Clifford's men were followed to the town of Boyle, where they found shelter in an abbey. About 500 English soldiers were killed in the battle. Irish losses are not recorded, but are likely to have been minor.
Aftermath
Clifford's head was severed and brought to O'Donnell, who was nearby but had not intervened in the fight. While the head was also taken to Collooney Castle to further demoralize its defenders, Clifford's body was taken to Lough Key Monastery by MacDermott , where it was eventually buried.
Shortly thereafter, O'Connor surrendered at Collooney Castle and allied with the rebels. After this victory there was an increased rate of deserters of Irish soldiers in the ranks of the English army.
The battle was a classic example of Irish ambushes, similar to the Battle of Glenmalure (1580) or the Battle of Yellow Ford (1598). The Irish victory meant that O'Neill and O'Donnell did not have to fear an attack from Connacht and that an attack by Armagh was very unlikely. This eventually led to the Devereux truce with O'Neill later that year.
In August 1602 the Curlew Pass was the scene of the last Irish victory in that war, when an English army, defeated in a similar way, suffered painful losses.
Today is about 2.3 km north-east of the battlefield on the road N4 an impressionistic sculpture of Maurice Harron in 1999, called "The Gaelic Chieftain" ( The Gaelic chieftain) ( 54 ° 0 '48.4 " N , 8 ° 17 ′ 19.9 ″ W ).
literature
- John McCavitt: The Flight of the Earls . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 2002, ISBN 978-0-7171-3936-1 .
- Cyril Falls: Elizabeth's Irish Wars . Constable, London 1997, ISBN 0-09-477220-7 (current paperback edition).