Irish Confederate Wars

The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland refers to the conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell during the... Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell landed in Ireland with his New Model Army on behalf of England's Rump Parliament in 1649. The conflict is sometimes referred to as the Cromwellian Wars. Since the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Ireland had been mainly under the control of the Irish Confederate Catholics, who in 1649, signed an alliance with the English Royalist party, which had been defeated in the English Civil War. Cromwell's forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country - bringing to an end the Irish Confederate Wars. He passed a series of Penal laws against Roman Catholics and confiscated large amounts of their land. The Parliamentarian reconquest of Ireland was brutal, and Cromwell is still a hated figure in Ireland. The extent to which Cromwell, who was in direct command for the first year of the campaign, is responsible for the atrocities is debated fiercely to this day.
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The Battle of Benburb took place on 5 June 1646 during the Irish Confederate Wars, the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It was fought... between the forces of Confederate Ireland under Owen Roe O'Neill and a Scottish Covenanter and Anglo-Irish army under Robert Monro. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the Irish Confederates and ended the Scottish hopes of conquering Ireland and imposing their own religious settlement there. The Scots had landed an army in Ulster in 1642, in order to protect the Scottish settlers there from the massacres that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1641. They also hoped to conquer the country, to destroy Catholicism there and impose Presbyterianism as the state religion. They landed at Carrickfergus and linked up with an army of British settlers based around Derry who were led by Robert Stewart. They cleared Ulster of Irish rebels by 1643, but were unable to advance south of mid-Ulster, which was held by Owen Roe O'Neill, the general of the Irish Confederate Ulster army. Both sides robbed and killed civilians in territory controlled by their enemy, so that by 1646, a sort of no man's land of scorched earth separated the opposing sides.
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The siege of Drogheda at the outset of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The town of Drogheda in eastern Ireland was held by a combined English... Royalist and Irish Catholic garrison when it was besieged and stormed by English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell. In the aftermath of the assault much of the garrison and an undetermined but "significant number" of civilians were killed by the Parliamentary troops. Historians debate the legality of Cromwell's killing of the garrison of Drogheda and the extent to which civilians were targeted during the massacre after the taking of the town. Drogheda was also besieged in 1641–42, during the Irish rebellion of 1641 when an insurgent Catholic force under Phelim O'Neill tried but failed to take the town. See Siege of Drogheda 1641 Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland in August 1649 to re-conquer the country on behalf of the English Parliament. The Parliamentarians were opposed in their aims by an alliance between Royalists defeated in the English Civil War, and an Irish Catholic movement the Confederate Catholic Association. The alliance was made in 1648 to oppose the Parliamentarians.
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The Battle of Julianstown was fought during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, at Julianstown near Drogheda in eastern Ireland, on 29 November 1641. The... prelude to the planned Siege of Drogheda 1641, Ulster insurgents led by Sir Phelim O'Neill and supporters from Cavan and Monaghan were en route to lay siege to the strategic garrison, grain store and seaport. In their plan to replace English rule in Ireland, the insurgents had already attacked several towns and villages within the Pale, including the palace of the Protestant Bishop of Meath and the burning of Navan and Athboy. Either by chance or otherwise the insurgents came upon an untrained and hastily raised force of Government soldiers, largely composed of planter refugees from the northern counties sent against them. The two sides met at the bridge at Julianstown. The British commander gave the order to counter march, which the half trained recruits misinterpreted as a march to the rear. The British army began slowly edging backwards. However, the rebel force believed that the British had shouted contúirt bháis! .
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