Niall Garbh, after allying himself with the English, occupied the beautiful Franciscan monastery of Donegal, in which the Annals of the Four Masters, Ireland’s chronological history, were compiled. Red Hugh, fiercely indignant, marched against the sacrilegious traitor and laid siege to him in the holy place. After three months’ investment, it was taken by storm, and utterly destroyed by fire, except for a few walls which still remain. The traitor’s brother, Conn O’Donnell, and several of the misguided clansmen were killed in the conflict, but, unfortunately, Niall Garbh himself escaped, to still further disgrace the heroic name of O’Donnell and injure the hapless country that gave birth to such a monster.
Mountjoy, after frequent indecisive skirmishes with O’Neill, amused himself by offering a reward of £2,000 for that chieftain’s head, and smaller amounts for those of his most important lieutenants. But no man was found among the faithful clansmen of Tyrone to murder his chief for the base bribe of the Lord Deputy. Yet Mountjoy continued to gain ground in Ulster, little by little, and he built more forts, commanding important passes, and garrisoned them in great force. He also caused most of the woods to be cut away, and thus laid the O’Neill territory wide open for a successful invasion. O’Neill was an admirable officer, and still, assisted by Hugh O’Donnell, presented a gallant front to Mountjoy, but he could do little that was effective against an enemy who had five times the number of soldiers that he had, and could thus man important posts, filled with all the munitions of war, without sensibly weakening his force in the field. Destitute of foundries and powder factories, he could make no progress in the matter of artillery, and such cannon as he had were destitute of proper ammunition. All this the Spaniards could have supplied, but their characteristic dilatoriness, in the end, ruined everything. Another circumstance also militated against the success of the brave O’Neill—the English and their allies were solidly unified for the destruction of the Irish, while the latter, as we have seen, were fatally divided by corruption, ambition, jealousy—fostered by their enemies—and endless English intrigue. No wonder that his broad brow grew gloomy and that his sword no longer struck the blows it dealt so fiercely at Clontibret and the Yellow Ford.
At last, however, out of the dark clouds that surrounded his fortunes, there flashed one sun-ray of hope and joy. News suddenly reached the north, as well as the Lord Deputy, that a Spanish fleet had landed in Kinsale Harbor, on the coast of Cork. It carried a small force—less than 6,000 men, mostly of poor quality—under the command of the arrogant and incompetent Don Juan de Aguila. He occupied Kinsale and the surrounding forts at once, but was disappointed when the Munster Irish—already all but crushed by Mountjoy—did not flock at once, and in great numbers, to his standard. Of all the Munster chiefs there responded only O’Sullivan Beare, O’Connor Kerry, and the brave O’Driscoll. They alone redeemed, in as far as they could, the apathy of South Munster, and were justified in resenting the Spanish taunt, bitterly uttered by Don Juan himself, that “Christ had never died for such people.” The Spaniard did not, of course, take into consideration, because he did not know, the exhaustion of South Munster after the Geraldine war and the wars which succeeded it. Constant defeat is a poor tonic on which to build up a boldly aggressive patriotism.
The news of the landing at Kinsale reached Red Hugh O’Donnell while he was in the act of besieging his own castle of Donegal, surreptitiously seized by Niall Garbh, “the Queen’s O’Donnell,” while he was absent “at the front,” with O’Neill. He instantly raised the siege, and, summoning all of his forces, marched southward without an hour’s delay, as became his ardent and gallant nature. Neither did O’Neill hesitate to abandon “the line of the Blackwater,” which guarded his own castle of Dungannon, to its fate, and at once marched his forces toward Kinsale. The Clan-Conal marched at “the route step,” through Breffni and Hy-Many, crossing the Shannon near where it narrows at the east end of Lough Dearg. On through the Ormonds, where “the heath-brown Slieve Bloom” mountains rise in their beauty, they pressed, burning, at every footstep, to reach Kinsale, join the Spaniards, and “have it out” with Mountjoy and the English. O’Donnell, marching in lighter order and by a different route, outstripped his older confederate, but narrowly escaped being intercepted in Tipperary by a superior English force, under General Carew, detached by the Lord Deputy for that purpose. As Red Hugh had no intention of giving battle until reinforced by O’Neill, or he had joined the Spaniards, he made a clever flank movement, by forced march, over the Slieve Felim Hills, which interposed between him and Limerick. But the rains had been heavy of late, the mountain passes were boggy, and neither horses nor carriages (wagons) could pass. Fortunately, it was the beginning of winter, and, one night, there came a sharp frost, which sufficiently hardened the ground, and the Irish army, taking advantage of the kindness of Providence, marched ahead throughout the dark hours, and, by morning, had left Carew and his army hopelessly in rear. O’Donnell made thirty-two miles (Irish), about forty-two English miles, in that movement and halted at Croom, having accomplished the greatest march, with baggage, recorded in those hard campaigns. (Pacata Hibernia, cited by Mitchel.)
His coming among them, as well as the news of the arrival of the Spaniards, put fresh life into the Irish of West Munster, and, indeed, Red Hugh stood on scant ceremony with such degenerate Irish as refused to fight for their country, so that wherever he marched, fresh patriots, eager to “save their bacon,” in many cases, sprang up like crops of mushrooms. At Castlehaven he formed a junction with 700 newly arrived Spanish troops, and, together, they marched toward Kinsale, which Mountjoy and Carew were preparing to invest. O’Neill and his brave lieutenant, Richard Tyrrell, did not pursue the route taken by O’Donnell, but had to fight their way through Leinster and North Munster with considerable loss. At Bandon, in South Munster, they fell in with O’Donnell and the Spaniards, and all marched to form an immediate junction with De Aguila. Mitchel, quoting from O’Sullivan’s narrative, gives the total strength of the force under O’Neill and O’Donnell at 6,000 foot and 500 horse. The Irish leader was opposed to risking a general engagement with so small a command, although O’Donnell, when he beheld Mountjoy’s troops beleaguering the town, wanted to attack, which, judging by after events, might have been the better plan. O’Neill argued, however, that the inclement season would soon destroy a good part of the English soldiers and counseled delay. O’Donnell yielded reluctantly, and then the Irish, very badly provided, intrenched themselves and began “besieging the besiegers.” Prudence, on this occasion, ruined the cause of Ireland—so often ruined by rashness, before and since; for, three days after O’Neill’s policy had been acceded to, that is on Christmas eve, 1601, accident brought on an engagement, in the dark, which neither party seems to have anticipated. The tragedy is best related by Mitchel in his life of O’Neill, thus: “Before dawn, on the morning of the 24th (December), Sir Richard Graham, who commanded the night guard of horse, sent word to the deputy that the scouts had discovered the matches (matchlock muskets were used at this period) flashing in great numbers in the darkness, and that O’Neill must be approaching the camp in force. Instantly the troops were called to arms; messengers were despatched to the Earl of Thomond’s quarter, with orders to draw out his men. The deputy (Mountjoy) now advanced to meet the Irish, whom he supposed to be stealing on his camp, and seems to have effectually surprised them, while endeavoring to prevent a surprise upon himself. The infantry of O’Neill’s army retired slowly about a mile further from the town, and made a stand on the bank of a ford, where their position was strengthened by a bog in flank. Wingfield, the marshal, thought he saw some confusion in their ranks, and entreated the deputy that he might be allowed to charge. The Earl of Clanricarde joined the marshal and the battle became general. O’Neill’s cavalry repeatedly drove back both Wingfield and Clanricarde, until Sir Henry Danvers, with Captains Taaffe and Fleming, came up to their assistance, when, at length, the Irish infantry fell into confusion and fled. Another body of them, under Tyrrell, was still unbroken, and long maintained their ground on a hill, but at length, seeing their comrades routed, they also gave way and retreated in good order after their main body. The northern cavalry covered the retreat, and O’Neill and O’Donnell, by amazing personal exertions, succeeded in preserving order and preventing it from becoming a total rout.”
Such was the unfortunate battle of Kinsale—the most disastrous, perhaps, in Irish annals. It was not even well fought, because the Irish troops, surprised in their sleep, owing to lack of vigilance on the part of the sentinels, had lost most of their effective arms, their baggage, and colors at the outset. Their camp, also, came into immediate possession of the enemy. Thus, they were discouraged—the Irish character being mercurial, like the French—if not badly demoralized, and they did not, in this ill-fated action, fight with a resolution worthy of the fame they had rightfully earned as soldiers of the first class, nor did they faithfully respond, as heretofore, to the military genius of their justly renowned leaders. They were mostly the troops of Ulster, far from home, and lacking the inspiration that comes to all men when conscious that they are fighting to defend their own hearths against the spoiler. Ulster, in that day, was almost alien to the southern province, although the soldiers of both were fighting in a common cause. Kinsale was, certainly, not a battle to which Ireland can look back with feelings of pride, but she may be thankful that there are few such gloomy failures recorded in her military annals. Yet the bitter fact remains that Kinsale clouded forever the glory achieved by the troops of O’Neill and O’Donnell on so many fields of victory. The Spaniards, who had joined O’Donnell on the march, refused to fly and were almost all destroyed. Their commander, Del Campo, two officers, and forty soldiers were all that survived out of seven hundred men, and they were made prisoners of war. (Mitchel.) In a note, this author, quoting Pacata Hibernia, says: “The most merciless of all Mountjoy’s army that day was the Anglo-Irish and Catholic Earl of Clanricarde. He slew twenty of the Irish with his own hand, and cried aloud to ‘spare no rebels.’ Carew (the English general and writer) says that ‘no man did bloody his sword more than his lordship that day.’” This episode shows how well Mountjoy’s policy of “Divide and Conquer” and temporary toleration of the Catholics worked for the English cause. Had the penal laws not been mitigated this Anglo-Irish and Catholic Earl of Clanricarde would have fought on the side of Ireland.
De Aguila, seeing that the Irish army was defeated, and that another effort on the part of O’Neill was rendered impossible by the loss of his munitions and the lateness of the season, proposed to capitulate. The Earl of Mountjoy offered him honorable terms, and De Aguila agreed to surrender to the English all the Irish castles on the coast to which Spanish garrisons had been admitted, “and shortly after,” says Mitchel, “set sail for Spain, carrying with him all his artillery, treasure, and military stores.” Some of the Irish chiefs, notably the O’Sullivan Beare, refused to ratify that part of De Aguila’s capitulation which agreed to surrender their castles, occupied by Spanish troops, to the English. The fortresses had been thrown open to the Spaniards in good faith, and General de Aguila had no moral right to give them up. The most he could agree to do was to withdraw his men from the Irish castles and take them back with him to Spain. And this was the view taken by the Irish chiefs, with bloody, but glorious, result, as we shall see.
CHAPTER XII
Sad Death of O’Donnell in Spain—Heroic Defence of Dunboy