BBC2: Flight of the Earls documentary on now.

who the fug wrote: »

yes but he has to add the the so and so was gay/repressed an english spy twist

who the fug wrote: »

I was referring to the latest books on Collins, Dev & Paddy Pearse.

Hugh O'Neill-within three weeks of hearing of the Kinsale landfall he decided reluctantly to march south. (Lord Dunsany)
Clearly O’Neill would have preferred to have stayed on the defensive in the north, pressurising border lords who had submitted and attacking the northern Pale to tempt Mountjoy away from Kinsale. Despite O’Neill’s attentions, and the screams from Dublin and Pale gentry to get him to protect them, Mountjoy was not to be distracted from his main objective of ridding Ireland of the Spaniards.

The march south

By summoning his levies from Tyrconnell and Connaught to rendezvous at Ballymote, County Sligo, Hugh O’Donnell forced the issue and put his ally O’Neill in a dilemma; his newly won border allies feared to leave their own lands open to attack from English garrisons which, though weakened to supplement Mountjoy’s forces at Kinsale, were about to be augmented from England and Wales; indeed it was thought that in her extremity Elizabeth would take up the offer of an army of Scots from King James VI to descend on Ulster. These factors and the risks of a winter march through hostile territory account for O’Neill’s cautious hesitation. Surely in a walled town the Spaniards could hold out against superior numbers, especially as the severe winter weather would go harder on the beseigers than on del Águila’s men. Yet, within three weeks of first hearing of the Kinsale landfall, O’Neill decided to march south. O’Donnell began his celebrated and swift march 23 October 1601; O’Neill set out a week later. On 7 November Carew attempted to intercept O’Donnell but by a forced march of about forty English miles, O’Donnell eluded him through a conveniently frozen defile in the Slievephelim mountains in Tipperary. He refreshed and regrouped in Connelloe, County Limerick, before proceeding to Bandonbridge where he rendezvoused with O’Neill on 15 December. Fortuitously, Spanish reinforcements under Zubiaur had already arrived at Castlehaven on 1 December.
(G.A. Hayes-McCoy, Irish Battles [Dublin 1970])
The Irish encampment was to the west of Inishannon along the north bank of the Bandon River in the barony of Kinalmeaky. Their muster was formidable: O’Neill with over 4,000 horse and foot and O’Donnell with 4,000 foot and 3,000 cavalry and the celebrated Captain Richard Tyrrell of Brenockton, County Westmeath, with his muster of about 600 veterans. Their presence cut Mountjoy’s land approach to Cork and forced him, temporarily, to abandon his bombardment of Kinsale. Mountjoy’s best shot was to oust and defeat del Áquila before O’Neill could give support. He had been launching assaults since late October and his original force of c. 7,000 was being wasted by cold, sickness, and desertion. Both horses and men were ill-fed in what turned out to be a ten-week siege. Although they had been strengthened by English and Welsh levies, the two camps commanded by Mountjoy and the Earl of Thomond were virtually cut off between the Spaniards and the Irish. O’Neill now abandoned his customary caution and agreed with O’Donnell to a co-ordinated attack on both English camps to allow the Spaniards to sally forth, thus committing to a formal battle. He also gambled on wholesale desertion of Irishmen fighting under Mountjoy. Mountjoy for his part calculated that in any set piece battle his cavalry would hold the field and draw the enemy on to the open ground, even though he could detach no more than 2,000 infantry from the siege to oppose the Irish.

The battle

Fighting began at dawn on Christmas Eve 1601, according to the old Julian calendar, or 3 January 1602 according to the new Gregorian one. Tyrrell’s vanguard was to position itself near the Earl of Thomond’s camp and on a pre-determined signal (a musket shot) del Áquila’s men were to sally forth to meet them in the attack.
(Thomas Stafford, Pacta Hibernia, 1633)
Simultaneously the main Irish force and the rearguard were to fall upon Mountjoy’s men in the second English camp. Although the three ‘battle’ or tercio formation was complex, O’Neill’s men were not without training in formal warfare in musket, pike and cavalry formations. That the Irish plan of attack had been betrayed to Sir George Carew for a bottle of whiskey by Brian McHugh Oge MacMahon is now proven to have been a classical lie of drink and treachery by that most assiduous and authoritative scholar of the Spanish intervention in Ireland, J.J. Silke. Like many a good story, it is not true. What is true was the lack of unity on tactics between O’Neill and O’Donnell; the latter favoured immediate attack while O’Neill wanted to harry Mountjoy’s men and to subject them to famine and exposure.
Sir George Carew-the allegation that the Irish plan of attack was betrayed to him for a bottle of whiskey has proven to be false. Lord Deputy Mountjoy-his response to the Spanish landing was rapid and decisive. (British Museum)
In sixteenth-century military formations an army moved into battle with the cavalry in the lead, then the infantry in order: van, battle and rear. According to the Four Masters the rivalry between the leaders meant they went into battle jostling shoulder to shoulder instead of in order.
At dawn O’Neill came into full view of the English scouts but Tyrrell was not in a position for del Áquila to sally out of the town, hence he stayed put. Mountjoy, alerted to the enemy’s proximity, ordered his men to arm and stand-to and Carew’s to stay in camp to guard against an attack from del Áquila. He sent the horse forward with Wingfield supported by two regiments of foot under Sir Henry Folliott and Sir Oliver St John and to join up with those of Sir Henry Power. A total force of c. 2,000 foot and c. 500 horse were commanded onto open ground where they could take advantage of flanking fire from the Earl of Thomond’s camp. O’Neill would have to give battle on ground of Mountjoy’s choosing. Since the Spaniards in Kinsale did not sally out, O’Neill ordered his men across a ford in a tactical withdrawal over marshy ground. The English cavalry under Danvers followed him up as far as Millwater. Mountjoy also decided to pursue spotting that both the cavalry and his own forces would avoid an Irish ambush in the ‘fair champion’ ground ahead. O’Neill then embattled his army with Tyrrell in the centre, his own regiments on the right and O’Donnell’s coming up with the rear to form the left wing. Wingfield and Clanrickard commanding the horse saw the chance of creating confusion in the Irish ranks and with a signal from Mountjoy attempted a charge.
Sharp musketry engagements followed which were heard in Kinsale but del Áquila, imagining an English ruse to draw him out, refused all pleadings to lead out his men. Then the English infantry suffered a set-back and their cavalry captains—Clanrickard, Danvers, Graeme, Taffe and Fleming—found themselves directly confronting O’Neill’s own division in stout opposition to their charge, so they wheeled off to their flank to the exultation of the Irish; then Mountjoy’s and Carew’s horse joined them with two remaining regiments of infantry. In a further English charge the Irish cavalry ranks broke and fell in upon their own infantry. Wingfield’s cavalry took the Irish foot in the rear while his infantry made a frontal attack. The Irish horse fled and being led by their chiefs this greatly discouraged the footmen who after a sharp fight on the open ground also broke up in disorder and fled the field followed by the English cavalry who butchered them without mercy for a mile and a half as they raced from the battlefield.
Tyrrell’s men in the centre tried to get support to O’Neill’s but after a brief resistance had to retreat to a hill-top. The Spaniards under Alonzo de Ocampo stood up to Mountjoy’s troop of horse. Many were killed but forty-nine eventually surrendered and about sixty escaped to Castlehaven. O’Donnell’s men were too far off to give support; and, in any case the sight of the other two battalions in a rout demoralised them and they too fled ignoring Red Hugh’s commands to turn and fight. O’Donnell’s men had been lightly engaged but O’Neill’s troops had suffered most in the actual combat. Fynes Moryson, Mountjoy’s secretary, reckoned that ‘the Irish rebels left 1,200 bodies dead in the field apart from those killed in the two mile chase’; in addition about 140 drowned crossing the Blackwater, another 200 were lost in the river Moy and at Owen Abbey and many of the wounded were dispatched. The Spanish truly described the battle of Kinsale as una derrota, a rout. It was all over within two hours—less time than it takes to read the twenty-seven contemporary accounts of the battle. Kinsale was an English victory, albeit an inglorious one, and Mountjoy was master of the field in Ireland, winning where so many had failed during the Tudor conquest.