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A History of Ireland.by Eleanor Hull 1931 |
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XX.—THE BATTLE OF KINSALE |
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| ; | Sir George Carew (b. 1564), later Earl of Totnes, who had been selected to 'pacify' Munster, was one of the most capable officers ever sent into Ireland. We may dislike his methods and condemn his principles, but of his competency there is no doubt. A Devonshire man, like so many of the leading figures of the Elizabethan period, he had come over to Ireland fresh from Oxford, to take service under his cousin, Sir Peter Carew the Elder. A younger Sir Peter, Sir George Carew's brother, had been killed in the unfortunate advance of Lord Grey's forces into Glenmalure, and George never forgave this loss. The first act that brought him into public notice was a sudden attack made by him on a passer-by in the streets of Dublin whom he believed to have been concerned in the death of this young man, for which act he was sent to England in disgrace. He made a voyage abroad with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, rose to be captain in the navy, and became later Master of the Ordnance in Ireland, Privy Councillor, and Treasurer at War. By the time he was appointed President of Munster in 1600 he had passed many years in Ireland and knew the country well.[1] [1] For Carew's literary services to future historians of Ireland see
Appendix VIII. [2] Pac. Hib., 11, 131. Throughout the whole of the Desmond wars the Irish gentlemen were divided into two great and powerful factions—one siding with the English, the other with the Irish party. Mixed motives, in some cases fear, in others interest or avarice, or personal hatreds, or desire for reward, influenced many powerful Irish Catholic lords to fight on the side of the Queen's armies. In Munster not only several of the lords of Anglo-Norman descent (such as Ormonde, Barrymore, Viscount Buttevant, Dunboyne, and Castleconnell) stood, at least outwardly, on the Queen's side, but several of pure Irish blood. The Baron of Upper Ossory, the Earl of Thomond, chief of the O'Briens, MacCarthy Reagh, Lord of Carbery, Sir Cormac MacCarthy, Lord of Muskerry, and Morrogh O'Brien, Lord of Inchiquin, were open supporters of the Crown. In the North there was a 'Queen's' Maguire and an independent Maguire; a 'Queen's' O'Rorke opposed Brien and his son; Hugh O'Neill was confronted by Turlogh O'Neill and the sons of Shane; and O'Donnell had to fight Neill Garbh O'Donnell, who was lying in wait for his territories. In the South Owen O'Sullevan was out against his cousin O'Sullevan Beare, and Fineen MacCarthy spent a large part of his career struggling with his cousins for the title of Earl of Clancar. The theory of a solid Irish party fighting against a solid English party was never true at any time in Ireland. It was least of all true during the Ulster and Munster rebellions, even in what was professedly a war of religion. The contrary view ignores one of the main elements in the problem of Elizabethan Ireland. Had such a state of things existed, the wars would have been quickly decided one way or the other; but the fact that Catholic Ireland was at war not only with England, but with a large section of Catholic Ireland, many of whose leaders had their own interests to serve, made it a long and painful and difficult contest. The country was honeycombed with men halfhearted in the Irish cause or false to it, and from this condition of things English Governments reaped the full benefit. They avowedly and industriously fomented these family dissensions and jealousies, scattering promises lavishly to the ambitious and offering rewards to those who would turn the arms of their followers against those members of their house who were in rebellion, or who would by force or guile bring in their heads. Never were the vices and weaknesses of human nature more skilfully and persistently played upon, or with greater effect. Desmond and Tyrone, in all their efforts, were hampered by the knowledge that they were surrounded by spies and by allies who would not hesitate to betray them if it were to their own advantage. During the progress of the war there were many changes of side. All did not confederate at the same time; and men who lost their estates deserted the English, while others, who had come out with Desmond, fell oft as the hope of success grew weaker and the expectation of French or Spanish assistance grew faint. The Pope offered indulgences equal to those bestowed for the crusade in defence of the Holy Sepulchre to those who joined the armies of O'Neill, but even this did not suffice to weld the Catholics into a solid body fighting for the faith.[4] During the fifteen years' war between 1588 and 1603 the towns of Ireland stood solid for the Crown. Though a large part of the inhabitants continued Catholic in religion, they were largely of English descent, and retained their old traditional loyalty unimpaired. From the shelter of their walls they looked in disapproval at the disturbed state of the outlying districts, and to them, quite as much as to the English, the armies of Desmond or the O'Byrnes were hosts of rebels. All they desired was to be left in quiet to carry on their now flourishing trade with France and Spain, or to attend to their municipal duties. [4] O'Sullevan Beare, Hist. Cath. Iber. Comp., vol. iii, Bk. I, ch. iv-vi. [5] O'Sullevan Beare, op. cit., vol. iii, Bk. I, ch. iii. [6] The question was discussed by several leading Catholic writers of
the day ; cf. Cardinal Allen, Defence of Sir William Stanley's Surrender
of Daventer, for an opinion contrary to that of the Council of Salamanca. [10] The memorial is printed in C. P. Meehan, Fate and Fortunes of Tyrone
and Tyrconnel (1868), Appendix, p. 491. Instead of the overwhelming force that Tyrone had warned the King of Spain would be necessary to effect anything in the South of Ireland, Don Juan's army consisted of 3400 men, many of whom began to fall sick as soon as they landed. But the most depressing tidings that reached Don Juan were that James FitzThomas, Earl of Desmond, and Fineen MacCarthy, the two chief supporters on whom he relied for the success of his expedition, were both of them prisoners in the hands of the English, having been taken over on the first sure tidings of the coming of the Spanish fleet and placed in the Tower. This loss of his expected allies deranged all the plans of the Spanish command. Instead of a strong combination waiting ready for their support, the forces of the South were dispersed and leaderless, and those of the North far away. They were left to meet the English alone, in terribly foul weather, and with their munitions soaked in getting them out of the vessels, and a great part of them rendered useless. On the English side Carew's longsightedness had got everything ready. In a hasty meeting with Mountjoy at Kilkenny it was decided that the Lord Deputy should accompany the army into Munster, Carew assuring him that if he came with only his page with him it would have a better effect in gathering together the troops than any service he could do in Dublin. With his usual vigour Carew set out, marched straight to Rincorran Castle, near Kinsale, which was occupied by the Spaniards, and captured it after some weeks' fighting. On November 2 the ordnance was withdrawn to the camp, and on the fifth certain news arrived that O'Donnell was approaching with a great part of the Northern army and that Tyrone would follow a few days later. He had sent into Scotland for fresh forces. The President believed that he had O'Donnell in his grasp. He heard that he had arrived safe at Holy Cross in Co. Tipperary, and he immediately organized a large expedition, under his personal command, assisted by Sir Charles Wilmott and Sir Christopher St Lawrence, to intercept him. By a forced march he brought his army to within four miles of O'Donnell's camp, right across his way. O'Donnell was perplexed and knew not what move to make. Beside him lay the mountain of Slieve Felim, now impassable by reason of the heavy rains, no carriage or horse being able to cross the boggy ground. But on that night, while the English army was resting in camp, "there happened a great frost the like of which hath been seldom seen in Ireland," which so hardened the ground that during the night O'Donnell with all his forces, having first lighted camp-fires to deceive the enemy, slipped silently away and across the mountain. When morning came Carew found the camp deserted. Hastily he pursued them to the abbey of Owney, eight miles east of Limerick, expecting to find the army encamped there to rest; but O'Donnell was already gone on twelve miles farther to Croom, a march of thirty-two Irish miles without any rest, "the greatest march with carriage that hath been heard of," admitted the baffled but admiring Carew. For two days more the two armies kept near each other, and then Carew thought it prudent to return to Kinsale lest the enemy, who was taking a circuitous path, should nevertheless arrive there before him. As they came toward the camp they met the Earl of Clanricarde bringing in his regiment to the assistance of the English, while the Earl of Thomond was endeavouring to bring up supplies and men by sea, but in the furious storms these had been driven westward to Castlehaven. Shortly after he succeeded in making Kinsale Harbour Don Juan also received the supplies of ammunition and food for which he had been waiting; they arrived in seven transports, which had been long detained in the harbour of Corunna by the wild weather. They found the English on the point of landing, but a hurried message to O'Sullevan, chief of Beare, for the first time brought this hitherto neutral chief to their assistance with five hundred foot and a small body of picked horsemen; and the English, shut in between the town and the transports, were heavily bombarded and suffered severely in losses both of men and ships. The English main army also was not well placed. Their great camp lay north of Kinsale Town, which they were investing, and they captured and held Castle ny Parke, a strong fort on an island in the harbour; but as the forces of O'Donnell began to arrive they found themselves hemmed in between his army and the town, unable to get out to forage for food, or to obtain the supplies which the country-people were trying to get through to them. They only ventured out at night and later not at all, so that they began to suffer badly from want of provisions. Pestilence broke out, and O'Sullevan Beare, whose father was acting with the Spaniards, heard that, out of fifteen thousand men with the English at the beginning of the siege, eight thousand perished of want, cold, and hunger, or by the sword. Carew was seriously contemplating raising the siege and retreating to Cork.[12] There were other causes of anxiety. O'Donnell and O'Neill, who was now approaching, were both accompanied by a large number of the Northern chiefs and their followers, and Carew had reason to know that a considerable proportion of the pardoned and protected Munster lords, lately come in, were intending to join their forces and make one last cast for the deliverance of their country from the English. Nor was he sure of his Irish troops; it was unlikely that they would stand steady if all their own chiefs were fighting on the other side. Even a man like Sir Fineen O'Driscoll, "who never in his whole life had been tainted with the least spot of disloyalty," was 'out' on this occasion and gave up his castle of Baltimore to the Spaniards, who thus now commanded the three harbours of Kinsale, Baltimore, and Bearehaven, Donal O'Sullevan Beare having surrendered his castle of Dunboy into their hands. At the moment when O'Neill's great army was reported in sight there seemed to be nothing to prevent the complete annihilation of the whole of the English forces. Don Juan declared in a letter to O'Neill that there were not sufficient of them left to man a third part of their trenches; and when O'Neill sat down between them and Cork their only possible way of retreat seemed closed. [12] O'Sullevan Beare may be thought a partisan writer, but he was in
a position to know. He is usually fair, and on this occasion, considering
the result of the battle of Kinsale, it would have been more likely that
he would tend to exaggerate the numbers of the English troops. Meanwhile, the main bodies of the two armies became engaged, and for a short time O'Sullevan, Tyrrell, and the Spaniards stood firm on the crest of a little hill, with a bog on their right. But a general panic had seized the troops of O'Neill and O'Donnell; they scattered right and left, and no persuasions would recall them, though even some of the Irish gentlemen in the English army, ashamed of their countrymen's conduct, tried to hearten them, promising that they would not attack them. For an hour and a half the Queen's soldiers followed the flying army, cutting them down till they were tired with killing. On the battlefield the Earl of Clanricarde was dubbed a knight for valour, he having been shot through his garments, for "no man did bloody his sword more than his lordship did that day." The Spaniards, hearing the volleys of shot discharged for joy, thought it was the Irish troops approaching, and made a sally out of the town; but seeing the Spanish colours being carried by an Englishman they made a speedy retreat. The great religious and national crusade had come to an end. O'Neill's disheartened clansmen refused to fight any longer; O'Rorke slipped away home to fight his own brother, who had proclaimed himself chief in his absence, and the Scots departed to their homes. O'Donnell, Redmond Burke, and Hugh Mostian, with their followers, took ship in the Spanish transports in the bay and sailed away to Spain. They were followed by a large number of chiefs' sons and men who had taken part in the fighting. Moryson says that the peace enabled them to fly their devastated land and seek refuge in England and France, where multitudes of them lived for some years after the peace was made.[13] [13] History of Ireland, 11, 284. Dunboy was a harder problem. Its remote situation, great strength, and the wild seas which swept the entrance to Bantry Bay, on the north side of which it lay on a point of the mainland close to Beare Island, made it a difficult place to capture, and on Harvey's first attempt to make the entrance of the bay he was driven back by storms with a loss of fifty of his men and nearly all his crew. Meanwhile, Donal O'Sullevan, chief of Beare, the owner of the castle, determined to make an attempt to get it back into his own hands. He knew that having been in arms against the Queen he had little hope of pardon. He had heard that Hugh Roe had been well received in Spain, and that King Philip had promised further substantial succours in men and money. One ship had already been seen hovering outside Kinsale, but on hearing that Don Juan had surrendered, it had sailed hurriedly away again, taking back the bad news of the defeat of Kinsale to Spain, and effectually putting an end to the preparations which the Spanish King was pushing forward. At dead of night O'Sullevan surprised the castle and effected an entrance through a breach in the wall, so that when the Spanish captain awoke in the morning he found himself prisoner and the fort in the possession of its original owners. O'Sullevan disarmed them all and sent the larger number of the Spaniards to Baltimore to be embarked for Spain, holding the captain and a few of the best men as prisoners, with all the stores and guns. This was in February 1602, and in April the President, turning a deaf ear to all who tried to persuade him of the uselessness of such an enterprise, determined on a land attempt to reduce the castle. "Neither bogs nor rocks," he said, "should forbid the passage of his cannon," when he was warned that there were places in the mountains at the head of Bantry Bay impassable for horse and carriages, and passes where men could only walk in single file. He was himself ill, both he and the Viceroy having been seized with sudden illness on the day after they had separated, Mountjoy to go to Dublin and Carew to Cork. The Viceroy had to be carried on a horse-litter, and Carew was at the point of death. It looked suspiciously like a renewal of the attempt made before the battle of Kinsale to poison the President. But neither illness nor difficulties would turn him from his purpose. On April 23 he drew out of Cork, having been able to get together only fifteen hundred men out of the three thousand on the lists, sickness during the long winter's siege of Kinsale having taken its usual heavy toll. They marched along the sea-coast as far as Baltimore, and then struck northward, effecting a junction with Captain Flower's garrison at Carew Castle, the home of the President's ancestors, near Bantry Abbey. Here, while the President awaited the arrival of his provisions by sea, Sir Charles Wilmott was scouring North Kerry, capturing the castles, receiving submission from a number of the chiefs, and clearing all the district, so that the President should have no enemy at his back when marching on Bantry. On the same day that the transport vessels sailed into Bantry Bay he joined his forces to those of Carew, and it was decided that the way round the head of the Bay having proved impassable, as had been predicted, the attempt should be made by sea, and the Earl of Thomond was sent across to tow up the vessel under Beare Island (called the Great Island) opposite Dunboy, from which it was intended to make the attack. Meanwhile, O'Sullevan had been fully employed in strengthening the defences of the castle, and building a new bastion on the side of attack; he also fortified the small island of the Durses near the mouth of the harbour, to which, in case of the castle falling, he proposed to retire. The bastion, however, turned out to be a disadvantage to the besieged, for, being battered by the enemy's cannon, the rubbish fell between it and the main wall, and the English were able to get access across it into the upper part of the fortifications. O'Sullevan had placed the defence in the hands of Richard MacGeoghegan, the Constable, and Thomas Taylor, an Englishman, who believed they had made not only the castle itself but also the approaches impregnable. All around, at every possible landing as was thought, the shore had been trenched and gabioned, so that anyone putting his foot on the island would meet a certain death. But Carew was out betimes in the morning, and his experienced eye, as he passed in his pinnace close to the shore, discerned a small island close to the mainland where a strip of ground, hidden from the castle by a cleft rock or gully, afforded space for two small pieces of brass. By a ruse he succeeded in distracting the attention of the defenders until he got his cannon landed and fixed, while his regiments, creeping up on the farther side of the small island, succeeded in landing on the mainland under cover of the guns. On the same day a Spanish ship entered the bay, with £1200 and large promises, bringing also the energetic Owen MacEggan, Papal Bishop of Rosse, who was a constant intermediary between the Irish and the Spanish Court. The Jesuit, James Archer, another active supporter of the insurgents, was at Dunboy. Now began the famous siege of Dunboy, in which the small garrison of less than a hundred and fifty men challenged the host of the besiegers battering on the walls with their guns from the opposite shore. On one occasion the President, the Earl of Thomond, and Sir Charles Wilmott, riding together on the shore, were nearly carried off by a cannon-shot from the walls. The fall of the new turret, which buried in its ruins many of the besieged, brought down part of the tower, and a message was sent to the President offering to yield the castle. Carew hanged the messenger and ordered an assault. Led by Lieutenant Kirton, the breach was entered and the turret gained; the President's colours flew out from its top, and a captured piece of cannon was turned on the defenders. The Spaniards were forced back into a narrow passage, where they stood pouring stones on their pursuers, who were slowly but surely fighting their way to the top of the vault. At length Captain Slingsby succeeded in reaching the top, and on clearing away the rubbish he found a spike or window commanding the part of the barbican where the inhabitants were still defending themselves. Pushed on both sides and in desperate case, some forty of the defenders made a sally out of the castle on the sea side, where, being met by a waiting party under Captain Blundell, "we had the execution of them all," as Carew reports. Eight desperate men leapt into the sea to save themselves by swimming, but they were cut down by men in boats. One man, who leaped from the top of the vault, proved to be that follower of Owny O'More who in 1600 had dragged Ormonde from his horse and taken him captive. The English flag now flew from the top of the castle, but the rest of the ward, over seventy men, took refuge in the cellars, where, the sun being set, they remained all night under a strong guard placed at the top of the narrow stone steps which led below. The next morning twenty-three of them gave themselves up. The Constable was mortally wounded, and the command of the dark chamber was given to Taylor, whose father was "the dearest and inwardest man" with Tyrrell, one of the most intractable of the Munster rebels. He took a desperate resolve. In the cellar were nine barrels of gunpowder, and beside an opened case Taylor sat down, with a lighted match in his hand, swearing to set the powder alight and blow up all that was left of the castle and all that were within it, unless the President gave them promise of their lives. This was refused, and a new battery was begun with the intention of burying them in the ruins. Some of the bullets entered the cellar, and his companions besought Taylor to submit; by ten in the morning he was forced by them to give way, and they prepared themselves to come forth. Sir George Thornton and Captains Harvey and Power entered the vault to receive their submission, when MacGeoghegan, who was stretched dying on the floor, seeing Taylor and the rest about to yield, suddenly raised himself from the ground, snatched a lighted candle, and staggering toward the open barrel of powder was on the point of flinging it into the cask when Captain Power caught him in his arms, and he fell to earth under the swords of the soldiers, dead. The rest were taken and executed. Taylor, having been proved to have had a chief hand in the murder of Sir George Bingham at Sligo, was hanged in chains at Cork. The same fate befell a friar named Collins at Youghal. The garrison is said by Carew to have consisted of "the best choice of their forces," and "so obstinate and resolved a defence had not been seen within this kingdom." Dunboy was emptied of its still large stores of provision, and then the old castle was blown up with the nine barrels of powder, as it was found impracticable to defend the ruins in so isolated a situation.[14] [14] This account is taken from that of the eyewitnesses in Pacata Hibernia
(ii, 190-205), but the report given in O'Sullevan's history (vol. iii,
Bk, VII, ch. iii) differs very little, save that it adds some painful
details of the cruelties practised by the soldiers at Dursey Island. Collins
had served in his youth as an officer under Henry IV of France. O'Sullevan
says, too, that a treaty had been entered into with the besieged before
they capitulated, which was kept with "English faithfulness,"
the men and women being hanged. Submissions began to come in from all parts of the country. In the North the lesser chiefs of the Ferney, the Fews, and the Brenny submitted, while some of the chiefs of O'Doherty's country and of the O'Hanlons gave in their submissions to Sir Henry Docwra on Lough Foyle, and pardons were granted to the chiefs of the O'Byrnes and O'Tooles of Wicklow and to the heads of the septs of the MacMahons and Magenneses. On April 23 the Deputy kept St George's Feast at Dublin with solemn pomp, the captains bringing up his meat and the colonels attending on his person at table. The newly received protected Lords were all present—Turlogh MacHenry, Ever MacCooley, Phelim MacFeagh, chief of the O'Byrnes, and Donal Spaniagh, chief of the Kavanaghs. These were entertained "with plenty of wine and all kindness," the Deputy assuring them that as he had been a scourge to them in rebellion, so he would now be mediator for them to her Majesty in their state of subjects, if they would stand firm and constant to their obedience.[15] [15] Fynes Moryson, History of Ireland, i, 227-228. [16] Ibid., i, 228-229, 250. [19] O'Sullevan Beare, Hist, Cath. Iber. Comp., vol. iii, Bk. VII, ch.
viii-xii. [20] Spenser, View of the State of Ireland (Morley's ed., 1890), pp.
140, 143. |
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