Irish Confederate Wars - Appendix: Shifting Allegiances

Appendix: Shifting Allegiances

The Irish Confederate wars was a complex conflict in which no less than four major armies fought in Ireland. These were: the Royalists loyal to King Charles, the Scottish Covenanters (sent into Ulster in 1642 to protect Protestant planters after the massacres that marked the Irish rebellion of 1641 in that region), the Parliamentarian army and the Irish Confederate army, to whom most of the inhabitants of Ireland gave their allegiance. During the wars, all of these forces came into conflict at one stage or another. To add to the turmoil, a brief civil war was fought between Irish Confederate factions in 1648.

The Royalists under Ormonde were in conflict with Irish Catholic forces from late 1641 to 1643. Their main enclave was in Dublin. A ceasefire lasted from 1643 until 1646, when the Confederates again came into conflict with them. After 1648 most of the Confederates and the Scots joined an alliance with the Royalists, this force was to face Cromwell's army in 1649. Ormonde's handling of the defence of Ireland was however rather inept so that by mid 1650 the defence of Ireland was conducted by Irish Confederate leaders.

The Irish Confederates: Formed in October 1642, the Confederation of Kilkenny was initially a rebel Irish Catholic movement, fighting against the English troops sent to put down the rebellion, though they insisted they were at war with the king's advisers and not with Charles himself. They also had to fight the Scottish army in Ulster. From 1642 to 1649, the Confederates controlled most of Ireland except for east and west Ulster, Cork and Dublin. A cessation was arranged with the Royalists in 1643 after the outbreak of civil war in England and negotiations began to bring the confederates into the English conflict on the Royalist side. After a strongly Catholic faction emerged in 1646, which opposed signing a peace treaty that did not recognise the position of the Catholic Church or return confiscated catholic land, the Confederates once again clashed with the Royalists, who abandoned most of their positions in Ireland to the Parliamentarians during 1646. However, after fresh negotiations, an alliance was arranged between the Royalists and Confederates in 1648. Some Confederates (notably the Ulster army) were however opposed to this treaty initiating a brief Irish Catholic civil war in which the Ulster army was supported by the English Parliament.

The Scottish Covenanters arrived in Ireland in early 1642 to put down the uprising and thereby protect the lives and property of the Protestant settlers in Ulster. They held most of eastern Ulster for the duration of the war, but were badly weakened by their defeat by the Confederates at the battle of Benburb in 1646. They fought the Confederates (with the support of the English Parliament) from their arrival in Ulster in 1642 until 1648. After the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters' alliance broke down, the Scottish forces in Ulster joined the Confederates and Royalists in an alliance against their former allies in 1649.

The Parliamentarian Army gained a major foothold in Ireland for the first time in 1644, when Inchiquin's Cork-based Protestant-led force fell out with the Royalists over the ceasefire with the Confederates. The Protestant settler forces in the north west of Ireland, known as the Lagan Army (or Lagan Force), also came over to the Parliamentarians after 1644, deeming them to be the most reliably anti-catholic of the English forces. Dublin also fell into Parliamentarian hands in 1646, when the Royalists surrendered it to an English Parliamentarian expeditionary force after the city was threatened by Confederate armies. In 1648 the Parliamentarians briefly gave support to Owen Roe O'Neill's Ulstermen after his fall out with the Confederates: Thus the extreme Catholic and Puritan forces were allied for mutual expediency. The Ulster Catholic army however joined the Confederate-Royalist alliance after the shock of Cromwell's invasion in August 1649. The most potent Parliamentarian force was the New Model Army, which proceeded to conquer Ireland over the next four years and to enforce the Adventurers Act by conquering and selling Irish land to pay off its financial backers.