‘Your word is Sancta Maria!’: Civil War

Few periods of Irish history are as confusing as the 1640s. During most of this time the English Civil war raged. In Ireland, these were years of massacres, innumerable sieges, dozens of battles, hundreds of skirmishes; this was a time of religious hatred, burned crops, smoking ruins, when the defeated and innocent were cut down without mercy again and again.

Generals and their men changed sides sometimes with bewildering frequency. In command in Cork, the Protestant Lord Inchiquin, known as ‘Murrough of the Burnings’, fought for Charles I, then for Parliament, then again for Charles I, and finally became a Catholic. Major-General Robert Monro and his Scots troops in Ulster were royalists, then parliamentarians and then royalists again.

After a string of successes, the Gaelic Irish and the Old English Catholics had united to form the Confederation of Kilkenny in October 1642. The Confederates could have taken control of the whole island, but they failed to seize the moment. Instead of driving their opponents into the sea, they opened negotiations with Charles I. Their view was that King Charles was more likely to give them religious freedom than Parliament’s Puritans and Roundheads.

The Confederates’ faith in King Charles – like almost everyone else’s – was completely misplaced. Pointless negotiations dragged on for years. On behalf of the King, the Earl of Ormond negotiated a ‘cessation’ – that is, a truce – with the Confederates on 15th September 1643. This did not mean an end to the fighting, however. Many Protestants on both sides of the Irish Sea, were horrified that the King had done a deal with Catholic heretics and more of them came over to the side of Parliament. The Confederation of Kilkenny, indeed, promised the King £300,000 to support the royalist war effort. One Englishman wrote:

'Most of all the Irish cessation made the minds of the people embrace [Parliament]; for when…the agreement was proclaimed, accepting the sum of £300,000 from these idolatrous butchers, and giving them, over the name of Roman Catholic subjects now in arms, a sure peace…and to exterminate all who should not agree to that proclamation; we thought the Popish party was so far countenanced, as it was necessary for all Protestants to join more strictly for their own safety…'

Munro, saying he would take orders only from the Scottish government, fought on. Then, as the Roundheads began to turn the tide against the Cavaliers in England, parliamentary armies began to make inroads into Confederate territory. One was led by Murrough O’Brien, the Earl of Inchiquin, who after an unsuccessful meeting with King Charles, returned to Ireland, declared for Parliament and ruthlessly drove all the Catholics out of Cork, Youghal and Kinsale.

Meanwhile, divisions began to weaken the Confederate cause. The Old English Catholics, despite everything, remained loyal to Charles I. Eoghan Roe O’Neill, the veteran Confederate commander in Ulster, along with many other Gaelic Irish, sought complete Irish independence. The arrival in Kerry of the Pope’s representative, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, swung the pendulum in O’Neill’s favour. Rinuccini brought arms, 20,000 pounds of gunpowder, 200,000 silver dollars, and a determination to stop the Confederation of Kilkenny making a deal with Charles I.

For the past four years Eoghan Roe O’Neill had been training the local Irish in modern fighting methods. He was ready when Monro moved out of Antrim to march south in June 1646. With fresh Scottish reinforcements, Monro advanced with 6,000 men and six field pieces drawn by oxen. On the river Blackwater, at Benburb, O’Neill attacked from the rear. As his men were pounded by Monro’s cannon, Eoghan Roe harangued his men:

'Let your manhood be seen by your push of pike! Your word is Sancta Maria, and so in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost advance! – and give not fire till you are within pike-length!'

With no guns but an equal number of men, the Irish steadily pressed the Scots back to the river, slaughtering them. Monro escaped only after he had cast away his coat, hat and wig. And between one third and one half of all the Scots were killed, the Irish sustaining only trifling losses.

When the news reached Rome, Pope Innocent X himself attended a Te Deum in Santa Maria Maggiore to thank God for the triumph. The Battle of Benburb was the greatest and most annihilating victory in arms the Irish ever won over the British. Monro ruefully observed:

'For ought I can understand, the Lord of Hosts had a controversie with us to rub shame in our faces.'

Yet this great victory at Benburb was thrown away. Though all the north was now at his mercy, Eoghan Roe instead turned south to help Rinuccini take control of the Catholic Confederacy in Kilkenny. Fatally divided, the Confederates would soon be in no condition to face the victors in the English Civil War – the Roundheads and their leader, Oliver Cromwell.