Owen Roe O'Neill (Irish: Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill; – 6 November 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster. O'Neill left Ireland at a young age and spent most of his life as a mercenary in the Spanish Army serving against the Dutch in Flanders during the Eighty Years' War. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, O'Neill returned and took command of the Irish Confederate Ulster Army. He is known for his victory at the Battle of Benburb in 1646.
O'Neill's later years were marked by infighting amongst the Confederates, and in 1647 he led his army to seize power in the capital of Kilkenny. His troops clashed with rival forces of the Confederacy, leading to O'Neill forming a temporary alliance with Charles Coote's English Parliamentary forces in Ulster. He initially rejected a treaty of alliance between the Confederates and the Irish Royalists, but faced with the Cromwellian invasion he changed his mind. O'Neill died shortly after agreeing to an alliance with the 1st Marquess of Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The agreement included the promise of an Earldom, but O'Neill died on Tuesday, 6 November 1649.
Early life O'Neill was the illegitimate son of Art MacBaron O'Neill, a son of Matthew O'Neill, 1st Baron Dungannon and younger half-brother of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who held lands in County Armagh. His alleged great-grandfather was Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, the most powerful figure in Ulster and the first O'Neill to take a title from the Crown as part of the surrender and regrant policy of the Tudor era. Through Conn, he was descended from Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Kildare, the leading Anglo-Irish noble of the era, member of the Earls of Kildare, who more or less ruled Ireland in the 15th and early 16th centuries.
His year of birth is unknown but was likely to have been around 1585. It is also not known exactly where he was born, but it was probably near Loughgall in County Armagh where his father's estates were and where O'Neill spent much of his youth. His mother was the daughter of Hugh Connolly O'Reilly, lord of Breifne O'Reilly in County Cavan.
O'Neill was educated by Franciscan monks who not only taught him Latin but also the art of war. He later fought against the English in the Nine Years' War, with the Irish war effort led by his great-uncle Hugh O'Neill. He would have been only a teen at the time and it is unknown what his role would have been, but it may have fueled his deep hatred for the English later in his life.
Several of his elder brothers also took part in the rebellion, some of whom died fighting. Another, Brian MacArt O'Neill, was hanged for manslaughter in 1607. One of his nephews was Daniel O'Neill, a Protestant who became a noted cavalier in England during the 1640s. Another of his nephews, Hugh Dubh O'Neill fought in the Confederate Wars and famously inflicted heavy casualties on Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army during the Siege of Clonmel in 1650.
In Spanish Service As a young man, O'Neill left Ireland (likely in 1607 during the Flight of the Earls). He grew up in the Spanish Netherlands and served for 40 years in the Irish regiment of the Spanish army. Most of his combat was in the Eighty Years' War against the Dutch Republic in Flanders and against the French in the Franco-Spanish War. He distinguished himself notably at the Siege of Arras in 1640, where he commanded the Spanish garrison and held out for 48 days with 2,000 men (many of whom were fellow Irishmen), against a French army of 35,000. Throughout his career O'Neill was known to be an expert in defensive warfare.
Like many Irish officers in Spanish service, O'Neill was deeply opposed to English rule in Ireland. In 1627, he was involved in petitioning the Spanish monarchy to invade Ireland using the Irish Spanish regiments. O'Neill proposed that Ireland be made a republic under Spanish protection to avoid in-fighting between Irish Catholic landed families over which of them would provide a prince or king of Ireland. This plan came to nothing.
However, in 1642, O'Neill planned to return to Ireland with 300 veterans to aid the Irish Rebellion of 1641, apparently at the invitation of one of the organizers of the rebellion Rory O'Moore. He was given money by the Pope, with which he bought a frigate, the St. Francis, and also purchased weapons and cannons to arm the ships. The ship, often described as the flagship of the Confederate naval forces during the war, was the first to fly the Confederate flag. He was joined by several of his countrymen and his sons. They managed to evade several Royal Navy vessels, which were specially deployed to intercept O'Neill. Upon landing in Ulster he was met by Sir Felim O'Neill who escorted him to the Irish-held fort of Charlemont.
Twelve more ships from continental Europe carrying experienced Irish officers along with weapons and supplies for the Irish war effort would land in Ireland later, reviving the rebellion, and adding considerable knowledge and experience to the Catholic ranks, which would prove extremely valuable.
Return to Ireland The rebellion had broken out in autumn 1641, with the rebel leaders issuing the Proclamation of Dungannon declaring their aim of enhancing Catholic rights while declaring their continued loyalty to King Charles I. Despite a failed attempt to seize Dublin Castle, the rebels enjoyed success across Ulster, and the uprising spread to other parts of the country. However, the rebels then suffered several defeats to the Royal Irish Army and the Scottish Covenanter Army in Ireland and by the time Eoghan Rua arrived, the rising was increasingly in trouble.
The subsequent war, known as the Irish Confederate Wars, was part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms—civil wars throughout Britain and Ireland. Because of his military experience, O'Neill was recognised on his return to Ireland, at Doe Castle in County Donegal on 8 July 1642, as the leading representative of the O'Neills and head of the Ulster Irish. Sir Phelim O'Neill resigned the northern command of the Irish rebellion in Eoghan Rua's favour and escorted him from Lough Swilly to Charlemont.
Upon arrival in Ireland, he received a letter from an English parliamentarian general by the name of Leslie, telling O'Neill that he was sad O'Neill, as an experienced officer, was committing himself to such a cause and that he should return to Spain. O'Neill responded that his cause in Ireland was far more honourable than an English general fighting against his own King.
But distrust between the kinsmen was complicated by differences between Owen Roe O'Neill and the Catholic Confederation which met at Kilkenny in October 1642. Phelim professed to be acting in the interest of Charles I; O'Neill's aim was complete independence of Ireland as a Catholic country, while the Old English Catholics represented by the council desired to secure religious liberty and an Irish constitution under English rule. O'Neill wanted the Plantation of Ulster overturned and the recovery of the O'Neill dynasty's lands. The majority of Confederate military resources were directed to Thomas Preston's Leinster Army. Preston, an Old English Catholic, was also a Spanish veteran but he and O'Neill had an intense personal dislike of each other.
Mainly because Preston had been given the available military resources, O'Neill was outnumbered by the Scottish Covenanter army that had landed in Ulster in 1642. He did, however, have a large number of experienced officers who had travelled with him from Flanders. The Irish Ulster Army, including regiments under Rory Maguire, was poorly trained and undisciplined, so O'Neill set out to transform the army into a respectable force. Following a defeat at the Battle of Clones, O'Neill had to abandon central Ulster and was followed by thousands of refugees, fleeing the revenge of the Scottish soldiers who inflicted terrible attacks on Irish civilians, persuaded by Protestant propaganda alleging atrocities against Anglo-Scottish settlers in the rebellion of 1641. To O'Neill, the devastation of Ulster made it look, "not only like a desert, but like hell, if hell could exist on earth". O'Neill stopped the killings of Protestant civilians, for which he received the gratitude of many Protestant settlers. From 1642 to 1646, a stalemate existed in Ulster, which O'Neill used to train and discipline his Ulster Army. This poorly supplied force nevertheless gained a bad reputation for plundering and robbing friendly civilians around its quarters in northern Leinster and southern Ulster.
Campaigns of 1643-45 With a stalemate in Ulster following the Battle of Clones, the Confederate Supreme Council ordered O'Neill and the Ulster Army to join Thomas Preston's Leinster Army in campaigns against Royalist strongholds in the Midlands. Despite the animosity between O'Neill and Preston (which often led to difficulties when they campaigned together), the campaign was successful, with several royalist strongholds in the Midlands, especially in the counties of Meath and Westmeath being captured or destroyed. They also raided much of the area for supplies.
In one famous battle, O'Neill's army was confronted by a British force under the command of Lord Moore. According to legend, O'Neill simply went over to a cannon, took aim, and blew off Lord Moore's head. After losing their commander, the British force retreated without a fight.
After the Midlands campaign, O'Neill was ordered to return to Ulster with Lord Castlehaven to conduct offensive operations against the territory held by the Covenanters. These attacks descended into a series of skirmishes but, despite being relatively unsuccessful, provided an important experience to the troops of the Ulster Army. O'Neill was deeply irritated that Castlehaven had been put in charge of the army instead of him, especially when the campaign failed. O'Neill later accused Castlehaven of cowardice, a dispute that was brought before the Supreme Council. At one point, O'Neill even considered leaving and returning to Spanish service, but was ultimately compelled not to with the arrival of weapons and reinforcements sent by the Papacy.
O'Neill returned to Ulster, where the Ulster Army set up winter headquarters at the town of Belturbet in County Cavan. The army, now better trained and experienced than ever before, emerged as a transformed force in the spring of 1646 and prepared to destroy the Covenanters.
Battle of Benburb
In 1646, O'Neill, with substantial Gallowglass numbers and additionally furnished with supplies by the Papal Nuncio, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, attacked the combined Protestant Laggan Army militia and Scottish Covenanter army under Major-General Robert Monro, who had landed in Ireland in April 1642. On 5 June 1646, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, O'Neill utterly routed Monro at the Battle of Benburb, on the Blackwater killing or capturing 3,000 Scots. However, he was summoned to the south by Rinuccini, and so was unable to take advantage of the victory, and allowed Monro to remain unmolested at Carrickfergus.
Upon receiving the news of the Confederate victory, the Pope, delighted at the news of a Catholic triumph over the Protestants, sent O'Neill the sword belonging to his great uncle, the Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had led the rebellion against the English in the Nine Years' War. After the defeat in the conflict, he had fled Ireland during the Flight of the Earls in an attempt to gain support from Catholic powers in Continental Europe, where he died in Rome in 1616.
Coup d'état and siege of Dublin