The war proceeded in a rather desultory manner, chiefly because of lack of skill in the Irish generals—only a few of whom had seen service—and the promised Irish military leaders had not yet sailed from the Continent. Sir Phelim O’Neill made an unsuccessful attack on Drogheda, and was also repulsed at other fortified places, owing to the lack of a suitable battering train. English reinforcements kept pouring into Dublin by the shipload, until a fine army of not less than 25,000 men, with a numerous and well-served artillery, was in the field. The Irish army amounted, nominally, to 30,000 men, but only a third of it was armed and properly trained.
The excesses of the English army in the peaceful Anglo-Catholic districts of Leinster aroused the resentment of the hitherto apathetic nobility and “gentry” of that fine province. They appointed Sir John Read to bear a protest to the king, but, while en route, he was arrested, confined in Dublin Castle and put to the rack by the Parliamentary Government. Even this outrage did not drive the aristocrats of Leinster into immediate warfare. Other outrages followed in quick succession. Finally, Lord Gormanstown called a meeting of the Catholic peers and gentlemen to assemble at the hill of Crofty, in the County Meath. They met there accordingly, headed by the caller of the gathering. Other distinguished Palesmen present were the Earl of Fingal, Lords Dunsany, Louth, Slane, Trimleston, and Netterville; Sir Christopher Bellew, Sir Patrick Barnewall, Nicholas Darcy, Gerald Aylmer, and many others. While these personages were still deliberating, they observed a group of horsemen, bearing arms, approaching at a rapid pace. They were attended by a guard of musketeers, and proved to be the insurgent chiefs of Roger O’More, Philip O’Reilly, Costello MacMahon, Captains Byrne and Fox, and other leaders of the people. The party on the hill immediately galloped on horseback to meet them, and Lord Gormanstown, in loud and stern tones, asked: “Who are you, and why come you armed into the Pale?” To this question O’More replied: “We represent the persecuted people of the Catholic faith, and we come here for the assertion of the liberty of conscience, the maintenance of the royal prerogative, which we understand to be abridged, and the making of the subjects in this Kingdom of Ireland as free as those of England.” “Then,” replied Gormanstown, “seeing that these be your true end and object, we will likewise join with you!” The leaders on both sides then joined hands, amid the applause of their followers. A more formal meeting was arranged for at the hill of Tara, and at that gathering, held the next month, the alliance was formally concluded.
The faulty training of the Irish army was painfully illustrated soon afterward, when the forces of the newly made allies encountered those of Lord Ormond at a place called Kilrush, near the town of Athy, in Kildare, April 13, 1642. The numbers were about equal—perhaps 7,000 men each. The Irish were commanded by a brave but inexperienced officer, Lord Mountgarret, and with him were Lords Dunboyne and Ikerrin, Rory O’More, Colonel Hugh O’Byrne, and Sir Morgan Kavanagh. Mountgarret failed to occupy in time a difficult pass through which Ormond must march on his way to Dublin, and this failure compelled him to rearrange his plan of battle. Confusion—as is always the case when this experiment is tried with raw soldiers—resulted. The Irish fought bravely for a time, but were soon outmanœuvred and outflanked. The Anglo-Irish cavalry took them in reverse. Colonel Kavanagh, fighting desperately at the head of his regiment, met a hero’s death. His fall discouraged his troops, who broke and fled to a neighboring bog, whither the hostile cavalry could not safely pursue them. The other Irish troops, surrounded on all sides, made a rush for the morass also, broke through the enemy’s ranks and joined their vanquished comrades. On the Irish side, 700 officers and men fell in this untoward affair. The loss of the Anglo-Irish was much smaller, and Ormond was enabled to proceed in a species of triumph to Dublin, where the news of his victory preceded his arrival.
It is passing strange that, after the battle of Kilrush, the great organizer of the insurrection, Roger O’More, is heard of never more in his country’s troubled annals. All accounts agree that, during the combat, he acted his part like a true soldier, but he failed to reappear in the Irish ranks during subsequent conflicts. His was certainly a mysterious and unaccountable disappearance.
The late Rev. C. P. Meehan, author of “The Confederation of Kilkenny,” who gave more attention to that period of his country’s story than any other writer, says, on page 26 of his interesting work: “After the battle of Kilrush, one bright name disappears [he mentions O’More in a foot-note]; the last time the inspiriting war-shout of his followers fell on his ear was on that hillside. What reasons there may have been for the retirement of the gallant chief, whose name was linked with that of God and Our Lady, are not apparent; but it is said, upon authority, that he proceeded to Ferns, and devoted the rest of his days to peaceful pursuits in the bosom of his family.” The historian Coote says that he died at Kilkenny. This was, surely, a “lame and impotent conclusion” to such a career. The defeat of his countrymen may have destroyed his hopes, or he may have had reason to doubt the loyalty of his allies of the Pale. We are inclined to believe an old Leinster tradition, which says that he died of a broken heart immediately after the lost battle, on which he had built such high hopes. Such a spirit as his could not have remained inactive during the nine long years of the struggle, inaugurated by himself, which followed the disaster at Kilrush.
We can not dismiss this extraordinary man from our pages without quoting the following introduction to a ballad dealing with his career in Edward Hayes’s remarkable collection of poetry, called “The Ballads of Ireland,” vol. I, page 173:
“Roger, or Rory, O’More, is one of the most honored and stainless names in Irish annals. Writers who concur in nothing else agree in representing him as a man of the loftiest motives and the most passionate patriotism. In 1640, when Ireland was weakened by defeat and confiscation, and guarded with a jealous care, constantly increasing in strictness and severity, O’More, then a private gentleman with no resources beyond his intellect and courage, conceived the vast design of rescuing her from England, and accomplished it. In three years England did not retain a city in the island but Dublin and Drogheda. For eight years her power was merely nominal, the land was possessed and the supreme authority exercised by the Confederation created by O’More. History contains no stricter instance of the influence of an individual mind. Before the insurrection broke out the people had learned to know and expect their Deliverer, and it became a popular proverb, and the burden of national songs, that the hope of Ireland was in ‘God, the Virgin, and Rory O’More.’ It is remarkable that O’More, in whose courage and resources the great insurrection had its birth, was a descendant of the chieftains of Leix, massacred by English troops at Mullaghmast a century before. But if he took a great revenge, it was a magnanimous one. None of the excesses which stained the first rising in Ulster is charged upon him. On the contrary, when he joined the northern army, the excesses ceased, and strict discipline was established, as far as it was possible, among men unaccustomed to control, and wild with wrongs and sufferings.” Says De Vere, in his sadly beautiful dirge, which assumes that the great leader died in 1642, as the people of Leinster have been taught to believe—
“’Twas no dream, Mother Land! ’Twas no dream, Innisfail!
Hope dreams but grief dreams not—the grief of the Gael!
From Leix and Ikerrin to Donegal’s shore,