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Catholicism, Protestantism and the Nine Years' War in Tudor Ireland
Here's an essay I wrote about the role of religion in the Nine Years' War/Tyrone's Rebellion in Ireland, from 1595-1603. See the Wiki article for background. Basically a few Irish nationalist historians have characterized Hugh O'Neill, the man who lead the revolt, as a great proto-nationalist leader, and O'Neill himself claimed he fought for the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in Ireland. The aim of my essay is to investigate the latter claim.
Introduction
On first look it may seem improbable that the rebellion from 1594 to 1603 against the Tudor monarchy in Ireland could have attracted so much internal and external support, as most contemporary history focuses on the personality of its leader, Aodh Mór Ó Néill, more commonly known by his English name, Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone. With the support of other Gaelic nobles in his home territory of Ulster, O’Neill waged a war on the English crown for nine years, and came close to driving the English out of Ireland altogether before the final defeat of his armies at the battle of Kinsale. O’Neill himself did little to help the historian piece together the origins of his revolt. At various times he claimed he took up arms against English Protestantism in Ireland, on behalf of the Catholic faith, saying to Pope Clement VIII that he was fighting “pro Romana et libertate patriae” (1). On the other hand, his English opponents claimed that O’Neill in rebellion was merely “Aspiring to live like a tyrant over a great number of good subjects then in Ulster” (2). This brings up the question of whether the Nine Years’ War was truly motivated by religious concerns.
A close reading of the primary sources, including O’Neill’s own war aims and private letters, combined with a careful evaluation of the political and religious situation of sixteenth-century reveals that the Nine Years’ War had more complex political origins than a crusade to sweep away heresy from the island. The conflict had its beginnings in the process of Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, which presented a direct threat to the power of the Gaelic nobility, of which O’Neill was the main representative. Despite his claims to be fighting for his faith, O’Neill took up arms to put an end to English incursion on the powers of himself and his fellow lords in Ulster, and afterwards took up the banner of Catholicism to garner support inside and outside Ireland for his cause. In the course of the struggle, his reactionary rebellion to preserve the privileges of the Gaelic Ulster nobility became a revolutionary struggle for religious and national liberty.
Political and Religious Background
Ireland was perhaps the most backward country of Western Europe, politically and economically, during the Renaissance. Far from advanced countries like the Netherlands that had begun to transition to capitalism during the same period, much of sixteenth-century Ireland remained under the clan system that had dominated the island for hundreds of years with little change. Interrelated Gaelic lordships of this system dominated the area from Ulster in the east to the Midlands and Connacht in the west (3), while Old English lords (descendants of Norman settlers in Ireland of the 12th century) who received their land grants from the English crown predominated in the south of the island. Only the English Pale of settlement around Dublin was under the direct control of the English crown.
The Gaelic lordships in Ireland struggled among themselves over territory and rights to tribute from the uirríthe, literally “under kings”. The crown did not officially sanction the Gaelic lordships, although the lords recognized the English monarch as their lord when obliged to do so. However the Gaelic lords were a thorn in the crown’s side when it came to attempts to modernize the island, as the Tudor monarchs began to do in the sixteenth century. The most important step in this process was the shiring of Gaelic lands, which would impose boundaries on the territory of Gaelic lords, establish garrisons of English troops to uphold the rights of freeholders, and introduce sheriffs loyal to the crown to govern the territory. All this had the purpose of establishing an English county-style system of landholding and inheritance (4), which would in its course break the power of the Gaelic nobility. Ulster was the strongest part of the Gaelic region, as attested by Nicholas Dawtrey, an English captain, in the early 1590s:
Therefore, Ulster was where most of the crown’s attempts to reform and modernize Ireland under its own control took place. During the sixteenth century, the crown attempted to colonize the territory of Ulster with English settlers, including the beleaguered settlement at Carrickfergus (6), and also to impose English law. This did of course concern the lords of Ulster, including Hugh O’Neill, the lord of Tyrone, which was in the geographic center of Ulster and the strongest lordship of the region. Although before his rebellion there had been no plans to shire Tyrone, by 1586 there had been plans announced to shire Monaghan, Tyrconnel, and Fermanagh, all territories bordering Tyrone (7). Thus it is easy to see why O’Neill and the lords who rose into rebellion with him would have felt threatened by the crown’s aims in Ulster. O’Neill himself was right to fear the encroachment of crown control onto his ancestral lands in Ulster. As his rebellion broke out, the English crown demanded the following as part of its proposed settlement:
Aside from the political situation that faced O’Neill and his fellow lords, it is important to look at the religious situation in Ireland as well. Due to a lack of funds and the rapid changes in its aims as the crown passed from Henry VIII to Edward VI to Mary to Elizabeth, the Reformation had a severely limited impact on Ireland. Furthermore, political unrest in Gaelic lands distracted the crown from enforcing the Elizabethan reform settlement in those areas (9). Outside the English Pale, Catholic practices carried on interrupted among Gaels and Old English. From the 1560s through the 1590s, when O’Neill made his rebellion, the relationship between the crown and its Irish Catholic subjects was one of “suspended hostility”, according to S.J. Connolly: the court in London and its local representatives tolerated Catholicism among leading Irish officials, and no systematic attempts to suppress it were made (10). Taking this background into account, O’Neill’s claims to be fighting on behalf of the Church ring somewhat hollow. Old English lords who O’Neill directed his religion-inspired appeals to found it so. One Lord Barrie told O’Neill in response to his attempt to recruit him to rebellion that “by the Law of God and his true religion I am bound to hold with her Majesty: her Highness hath never restrained me for matters of religion, and as I felt her Majesty’s indifference and clemency therein, I have not spared to relieve poor Catholics with dutiful succour…” (11).
The Rebellion
In January of 1595, O’Neill made his first demands from the crown for the settlement of the conflict:
O’Neill at this point aimed almost entirely at pardon for himself and his compatriots, and the guarantee of their ancestral land rights. As for religion, he confined himself to demanding “free liberty of conscience”, that is, toleration of the Catholic faith in Ireland rather than its re-establishment. This added to the considerably more attention he paid to his and other lords’ pardon and rights suggests that at least initially, the rebellion was far more concerned with preserving the positions of its leaders than with their religious conscience.
Most of the primary support for the claim that O’Neill took up arms for his religion comes from O’Neill himself. His war aims are listed in a remarkable document published in January 1599, that bears some discussion. As is fitting for a war taken up on behalf of the Catholic Church, the first seven of the 22 demands deal with the re-establishment of Catholicism in Ireland:
As may be seen from this, by 1599 O’Neill’s aim was for nothing less than a complete dismantling of the crown-imposed Reformation in Ireland. However, he had not been nearly so ambitious at the start of the war, when he only aimed for toleration of the Catholic faith (14), and it is significant to note that he only demanded re-establishment as his military position improved. Furthermore, one must consider when examining the war aims O’Neill’s purpose in composing them. Hiram Morgan writes that he was primarily aiming his proposals, including those of religion, at the Old English nobility (15). The Old English, in contrast to more recent English settlers, had remained Catholic as the Reformation progressed. O’Neill clarified the benefits of his religious proposals to this group in his aforementioned letter to Lord Barrie:
O’Neill used his Catholic religion, which the Old English nobility shared, as an expedient to enlist their crucial support to his cause. This appeal to the Old English went far beyond a simple religious appeal. His war aims numbered 12 through 22 were concerned with the individual liberties of Irishmen:
The Old English nobility, having the most economic power in Ireland outside the Pale, would have been the best prepared to take advantage of these clauses had they been enacted. His war aims, if implemented, meant to establish Ireland as a full kingdom. However, at that point, as in all his negotiations with the crown, he did not demand independence for Ireland. Furthermore, it is important to note that despite their revolutionary character, the war aims were still intended to preserve the position of the Gaelic nobility: the seventeenth demand is “That O’Neill, O’Donnell, the Earl of Desmond, with all their partakers may peaceable enjoy all lands and privileges that did appertain to their predecessors 200 years past” (18).
Other claims O’Neill made about the religious character of his rebellion can be similarly disposed of by considering the international situation of the time. While O’Neill attempted to keep channels open to the English crown in hope of a possible settlement throughout the early war, until about 1600 (19), eventually he committed himself to a policy that favored a Spanish intervention in Ireland to aid his rebellion. In his campaign for Spanish military aid, one again finds strong religious rhetoric. In a letter to Philip III of Spain in October of 1595, he wrote, “Our only hope of re-establishing the Catholic religion rests on your assistance. Now or never the Church must be succored” (20). He also appealed to Pope Clement VIII for indulgences for his troops and a bull of excommunication against Catholics who stayed loyal to Elizabeth through the archbishop of Armagh, Peter Lombard. This appeal likewise centered on the Catholic faith of the island (21).
Conclusion
As Tyrone’s Rebellion waned in 1601, Sir George Carew, the crown’s appointed president of Munster, wrote that
Carew’s assertion that the Irish lords, including O’Neill, had entered into rebellion to recover the independence of Ireland and the greatness of their ancestors was quite perceptive, however it only captured the aims of O’Neill as his rebellion was at its apex. The Nine Years’ War, which came close to driving English control from Ireland, was originally a reaction by the Gaelic nobility of Ulster to crown encroachment on their ancestral privileges. O’Neill then took up the cause of restoring the Catholic Church to Ireland completely in order to win the support of the Old English nobility within Ireland, and the support of Spain and the papacy outside of Ireland. Therefore, the nature of his struggle was transformed from a reactionary war to preserve his and other lords’ privileges into a crusade for religious freedom and national liberation.
Notes
1. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland,” The Historical Journal 36, no. 1 (1993), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639514, 23.
2. “Royal Proclamation Against the Earl of Tyrone”, reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1923), 175.
3. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1993), 17.
4. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: the Incomplete Conquest (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 285.
5. Quoted in Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 18.
6. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland, 266.
7. Ibid, 285
8. “Conditions to be demanded of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone (September 1595)”. Reproduced in Maxwell, ed., Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181
9. Steven G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603 (Harlow, UK: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., 1998), 232.
10. S.J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460-1630 (Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2007), 199.
11. “The Lord Barrie’s Answer to Tyrone”. Reproduced in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia; or, a History of the Wars in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Taken from the Original Chronicles, vol. 1 (Dublin: Hibernia-Press Company, 1810), 38.
12. “Demands made by Tyrone (January 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 181.
13. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Edmund Curtis and R.B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922 (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1968), 119-120.
14. Hiram Morgan, “Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years’ War in Tudor Ireland”, 29.
15. Ibid, 25-26.
16. “Tyrone’s Letter to the Lord Barrie”, in Thomas Stafford, Pacata Hibernia, vol. 1, 36-37.
17. “Hugh O’Neill’s War Aims, 1599”. Reproduced in Curtis and McDowell, Irish Historical Documents, 1172-1922, 120.
18. Ibid, 120.
19. Colm Lennon, Sixteenth Century Ireland, 264.
20. “The Earl of Tyrone and O’Donnell to the King of Spain (5 October, 1595)”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 187.
21. Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion, 4.
22. “A Discourse of Ireland, letter to Sir Robert Cecil, 1601”. Reproduced in Constantia Maxwell, ed. Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1610, 186-187.
Last edited by Random Precision; 12th May 2009 at 03:55.
well done!
the nine years war is a subject I have a lot of interest in. O'Neil's transformation from Earl of Tyrone to clan chief has always fascinated me.
'...the proletariat, not wishing to be treated as a canaille, needs its courage, its self-esteem, its pride, and its sense of independence more than its bread.' Marx...★
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'From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers' - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Stop Killer Coke
Thats a fantastic piece RP. I really enjoyed the way it was written. My one problem with it though (this is not a criticism btw) is the use of the word "modernize". Is this word to be applied in the English context of de-clanising the Island or meant in an industrial context for example?
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. " - Buenaventura Durutti
"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
"Its Called the American dream, because you gotta be asleep to believe it". - George Carlin
Tone ~ Emmet ~ Larkin ~ Connolly ~ O Donnell
www.union.ie
Most of the books I read on the subject referred to the abolition of the clan system and shiring of Gaelic land that started under the Tudors as "modernization", i.e., bringing Ireland to where England was at the time. So I used that word in the former sense.
Ah yes. Tudorist terms indeed comrade! Good piece again my man. On that note I would like to say that the English never tried to do any sort of real Modernisation. Rather they assumed control of a country simply to exploit its plant generic resorces whilst ignoring the plight of its people. On the industrial side of things, the North, especially around Belfast was the only real Industrial Area in Ireland at that time. This is in no small part owed to the plantations which signified that the UK now wanted to start up settlements and Industry rather than sitting back and simply continuing quarrying away at Irelands resorces for home deliveries sake.
One cannot blame the Celtic chiefs and clan leaders for the lack of real Industrialisation, this was an oppurtunity never available to them in a major way. Take for example the Desmond clan in West Cork/kerry. They succeeded in setting up small-scale Industries but often struggled for materials which were at many times denied to them by english Aristocrats. Too expensive was it to import from Spain and France was Embargoed during war times.
I just felt that was worth touching on there.
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. " - Buenaventura Durutti
"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
"Its Called the American dream, because you gotta be asleep to believe it". - George Carlin
Tone ~ Emmet ~ Larkin ~ Connolly ~ O Donnell
www.union.ie
Random Precision is correct, though. the English did bring some modernisation by superseding the clan system with feudalism, as evidenced by the fact that the increase in food production raised Ireland's population dramatically. for Marxists at least, progress means increasing productive forces. the problem with English rule was that it raised the level of population without any corresponding development in infrastructure, virtually ensuring that eventually some sort of famine would occur. the rising population due to increased food production without other forms of development was also a major catalyst for the anti-imperialist political revolutions in Asia
Hugh O'Neil's grandson Owen is interesting too; he was sort of a proto-republican
'...the proletariat, not wishing to be treated as a canaille, needs its courage, its self-esteem, its pride, and its sense of independence more than its bread.' Marx...★
★...★
........★....★
..........★..★ Starry Plough Magazine
'From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers' - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Stop Killer Coke
Interesting as it is, I think there is an element of anachronism in the argument. Its not really possible to ascribe progressive roles to nobles seeking the reestablishment of catholicism and feudal (or even pre-feudal) property relations.
The struggle for independence was a struggle between fractions of the feudal nobility. In truth, in the 16th century the character of the English presence in Ireland was not yet determined. It was only in the 18th century as the UK became an oppresive state structure that Irish nationalism became a progressive force. Ony then - as Irish industrial development was suppressed - did this become clearly so. The attempt to push those relations back into earlier periods is an attempt to assimilate the marxist view of history to the nationalist view of history. As well written as your version is, its hard to agee.
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam" - quoted by Marx
"Things rarely work out well if one aims at 'moderation'..." - Engels
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"The most to be hoped for by groups who claim to belong to the Marxist succession (...) is for them to serve as a hyphen between past and future....nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action." - Van Heijenoort
This is something I actually went back and forth on more than once while writing it. I guess what it comes down to is what O'Neill really meant to accomplish. The evidence I've seen suggests that he was sort of an anachronistic (as you say) figure in that regard. His war aims meant to advance the economic relations in Ireland, as I noted, while at the same time preserving his own power in Ulster.
Though it might be argued that these were demands he never seriously intended to see put in place, and was just putting on a front- the English diplomat who first received his war aims referred to them as "Ewtopia", for instance. Given his willingness to adopt any stance that would have gotten him more support, as I also noted, this very much might have been the case.
Yeah this is a good point. Though I would like to say on the whole Marxist-nationalist issue that Marx appeared during the middle of Fenianism and during the middle of Republican struggle and during the many, many uprisings endemic to the island so I feel that this point is a means to absolutely smash the argument of some leftists who feel that the Irish resistance fighters were just plain old nationalists who disliked Marx. Marx himself understood that people in Ireland had no real means of obtaining his material and he more-so saved his dislike for the Irish nationalist leaders as opposed to the movement as a whole. Marx also felt that by destroying UK imperialism brick by brick as was happening in Ireland it was a sure sign of a genuine peoples movement in its political infancy. Also, Marx was never happy about leaders such as daniel O connell whom he felt sold-out the wishes of the irish fighters and his supporters as a whole.
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. " - Buenaventura Durutti
"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
"Its Called the American dream, because you gotta be asleep to believe it". - George Carlin
Tone ~ Emmet ~ Larkin ~ Connolly ~ O Donnell
www.union.ie
Interesting stuff. hugh O'Neills connections with Spain seem to me to be the most interesting diplomatic aspect of him. People seem to forget that O'Neill followed Shane's policy of arming the people, rather than rely mostly upon mercenary soldiers, such as redshanks and bonnaught.This policy is somnething that did in fact make him extremely popular and also This policy allowed him to field an impressive force, with cavilers and gunpowder supplied from Spain and Scotland, and in 1595 he gave the crown authorities a shock by ambushing and routing a small English army at the Battle of clontibret. He and other clan chiefs then offered the crown of Ireland to Philipp II of Spain who refused it.
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. " - Buenaventura Durutti
"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
"Its Called the American dream, because you gotta be asleep to believe it". - George Carlin
Tone ~ Emmet ~ Larkin ~ Connolly ~ O Donnell
www.union.ie
O'Neill certainly felt it desirable to portray a utopia, which is itself a feudal form of dissent. One will find similar visions, notably in Joan of Arc, but also among saxons after the norman invasion in England, the scottish around Robert Bruce and various other medieval circumstances. Certainly there are additional features to the O'Neill Rebellion - I am unaware of any sociological work on the level of development of feudalism in 16th century Ulster, but this - it seems to me - is the key point to try and understand the particularity of this rebellion.
- Francesca Loverci, 'Dall'isola d'Irlanda a quella di Utopia. Propaganda politica sui due fronti negli anni della rivolta di Hugh O'Neill (1595–1603)'. Clio: rivista trimestrale di studi storici 34 (1998) 377–386.
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam" - quoted by Marx
"Things rarely work out well if one aims at 'moderation'..." - Engels
"By and by we heare newes of shipwrack in the same place, then we are too blame if we accept it not for a Rock." Sir Philip Sydney
"The most to be hoped for by groups who claim to belong to the Marxist succession (...) is for them to serve as a hyphen between past and future....nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action." - Van Heijenoort
Yes. This also cost him support from the Old English, who didn't want a Spanish king any more than a native Irish king, and with a few exceptions preferred the Tudors despite the religious divide.Originally Posted by pastradamus
Indeed. This is something I found incredibly interesting about his rebellion. After the opening battles of 1595, the English officers complained to the crown that O'Neill had successfully fielded a large army with modern tactics and weapons (including cannon and muskets), and did not rely on the tribal guerrilla warfare that had long been the norm for native Irish resistance.
If I recall correctly they intended to give the crown to the Archduke Albert, who was the viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands. It was very important to the chiefs that they should proclaim a king with some legitimacy- a Hapsburg would fit the bill better than O'Neill himself, for instance, although there is some ambiguity as to whether he had royal ambitions.
This was part of the larger problem of legitimizing an independence struggle against an established prince, which the rebels in the Netherlands faced as well during the same time. O'Neill and his confederates also appealed to religion in this regard, appealing to Pius V's bull Regnas in Excelsis which declared Elizabeth deposed and forbade Catholics from obeying her. They had difficulty getting a bull of excommunication against Catholics who didn't support the revolt from Clement VIII however, who was afraid of lining up the Papacy with Spanish aims and was hoping for reconciliation with the English monarchy when James succeeded Elizabeth.
Last edited by Random Precision; 7th May 2009 at 00:46.
This is very interesting. It's too bad I don't know Italian, cause I'm sure that article would have helped me when I was writing my essay!
I don't know if I would agree with that. It depends on what exactly you mean by progressive. If you mean it strictly in an economic sense, than you have to include the slave ships plying the Atlantic African slave trade as progressive, which was important in merchant capital accumulation in England for example, not to mention the devastation of the new world. I don't know if this primitive acummulation should be labeled as progressive, I would think the example of Japan would be the model for a 'progressive' transformation of the mode of production.
And as for the character of the English presence in the 16th century, estimates are up to a third of the population being killed in the Tudor wars of reconquest, and the program to ethnically and culturally cleanse Ireland was firmly established and initiated though it had earlier precedents. As well as that, the policies of England had not so much the aim or the result of abolishing tribalism and then feudalism in Ireland and increasing Ireland's productive forces as it had of first simple land-grabbing and then suppressing Irish competition in manufacturing and other exports, in other words of suppressing and decreasing the productive forces, and making Ireland an agricultural district to provide England with cheap food, as Marx put it. And the suppression of Irish manufacturing does not begin in the 18th century but in the later 17th century. If you look at the history of economic and class development in most of the rest of Europe it's hard to see how there was anything progressive about the English handling of Ireland, because, first, the results did not require such terrible destruction and slaughter and second, the ultimate result was that the productive forces in Ireland were actually held back in most of the country, keeping the size and development of the proletariat down, and all of this paid for with the destruction of the native culture and language.
"We stand with great emotion before the millions who gave their lives for the world communist movement, the invincible revolutionaries of the heroic proletarian history, before the uprisings of working men and women and poor farmers – the mass creators of history.
Their example vindicates human existence."
- from 'Statement of the Central Committee of the KKE (On the 90th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia 1917)'
Finally got round to reading this RP and it found it very good. The writing was concise and you made excellent use of your sources. Very informative
There's not too much to disagree with there (although I'm not sure that I'd characterise Irish society as significantly more backwards than the Kingdom of Sicily or newly Tsarist Russia?) but the one thing that jumped out at me was the slightly monocausal nature of your investigation. Were O'Neill's religious and political/national ambitions mutually exclusive? He may have trumpeted different reasons at different times but I'm always a bit suspicious of anyone to have discovered a 'true cause'. In my experience history is almost always multicausal
I just note this because Engel's analysis of role played by religion in the peasant wars in Germany (in which religion and more material motives tend to reinforce each other) has always stuck with me. Purely from a casual reading the situation you describe above happens to remind me of that
Wasn't this largely because the traditional mainstays of Irish armies (such as the gallowglass) were thoroughly obsolete by the turn of the 17th C? Similarly the absence of Redshanks can be largely attributed to the fact that O'Neill was effectively feuding with a number of their leading families at the time (plus James VI was actively limiting the flow of mercenaries to Ulster). IIRC his conspirator Red Hugh made significant use of the Scottish mercs
Which is not to say that Tyrone was wrong/misguided but he was more interested in forging a modern army as opposed to "arming the people" per se. Of course while he was relatively successful, at least insofar as the average Irish soldier was the equal of his English counterpart, he was not entirely so; in particular his efforts to integrate significant numbers of pikes into his armies failed and, as Kinsale proved, the Irish were ill suited to open field battles
(I've actually remembered that I did have one work on the Nine Year War. Its an Osprey PDF I downloaded somewhere; not something I'd consider 'real history' but pretty good for purely operational/military discussions)
March at the head of the ideas of your century and those ideas will follow and sustain you. March behind them and they will drag you along. March against them and they will overthrow you.
Napoleon III
Thanks.
I believe I said "western Europe", although I suppose Sicily could be included in that, fair enough.
I suppose his religious ambitions might have had something to do with his political ambitions. Religion is something that became more important to him later on in the revolt, as I demonstrated. Also I think that the soldiers fighting for him and the other lords might have found the story of a religious war more convincing than the Old English nobility, for instance. One of the main problems I had while conducting my research is that there was not much in the way of primary sources from the people who fought in the rebellion, save for a few accounts of the battles by English soldiers.
This has to be true.
True, although such estimates are probably exaggerated and substanntial slaughter was not unusual - compare this to the kind of depredations which occured during the 30 Years War in large parts of Germany.
What is somewhat unusual was the Munster plantation - certainly Romans a thousand plus years earlier had used such tactics, but they had been rare since then.
I think this raises a lot of issues, so I will ramble a bit.
Absolutism characteristically priviedges narrow strate of merchant capital (through monopolies) and this damages many sectors of society, including emerging industrial capital and some of the landed aristocracy. Secondly feudalism tend to homegenise, with more advanced forms (as in Ireland and Sicilly) replacing less advanced forms via the imposition of layers of landed aristocracy.
In Ireland's case those two trends do conflate up to a point - but in the 16th century there was little damage in Ireland done by the privledging of merchant capital strata in London. What certainly matters is the reliance by the English absolutist state on a new layer of landowners - newly enriched by the dissolution of the monasteries (as Marx argued). What needs to be understood better is the tensions between different elements of the landed aristocracy in late 16th century England to see if Marx's argument about Ireland being a refuge for the most reactionary elements of the English landed aristocracy (in later centuries) is in any way prefigured in the 16th century. In Ireland the plantations are an attempt to replicate the effect of the dissolution of the monasteries in an environment where such dissolution either was not possible or did not have the effect it had in England
Im not hapy in my own mind that I understand the class basis of O'Neill's rebellion. The offering of the crown to the king of Spain was probably never serious, but in so far as it was it was a very feudal offer. There is a possiblity that as the war progressed, O'Neill's relative isolation made his formulation of his demands more and more erratic.
What strikes me in his demands was the reference to his rights and those of the old English aristocracy in one sentence as being 200 years old. This is actually the oddest part of his demands - which are not hallowed by time immemorial but rather by a defined period of two centuries. I suspect you will not find anyone elsewhere in Irish, English or Renaissance culture claiming legitimacy from the exercise of rights of a mere 200 years. I read this as O'neill appealing to the idea that the English conquest - or rather the spread of the Old English aristocracy and the elimination of older clan relations is what had brought order and civilisation to Ireland..In other words it is Ireland as a region of the Kingdom which retains the values and social relations of 15th century fuedalism that O'neill was appealing to..I might be wrong about that, but its a very odd phrase which needs to be explained.
"Dixi et salvavi animam meam" - quoted by Marx
"Things rarely work out well if one aims at 'moderation'..." - Engels
"By and by we heare newes of shipwrack in the same place, then we are too blame if we accept it not for a Rock." Sir Philip Sydney
"The most to be hoped for by groups who claim to belong to the Marxist succession (...) is for them to serve as a hyphen between past and future....nothing can be held sacred – everything is called into question. Only after having been put through such a crucible could socialism conceivably re-emerge as a viable doctrine and plan of action." - Van Heijenoort
I"ve got that book myself and it's actually fairly useful, with some decent maps and seemed pretty sound overall
'...the proletariat, not wishing to be treated as a canaille, needs its courage, its self-esteem, its pride, and its sense of independence more than its bread.' Marx...★
★...★
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..........★..★ Starry Plough Magazine
'From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers' - Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Stop Killer Coke
Absolutely! Your totally correct here. Though you must remember that the Gallowglasses for example constantly updated themselves and were not as some historians like to call them "traditional fighters" in any sense of the imagination. The actively interwove with Ireland for example in modern times anyone with the name "McSweeny" has Gallowglass ancestors. A vast,vast bulk of them were actually BORN into O Neills army.
"It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. " - Buenaventura Durutti
"The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth." - Ernesto Che Guevara.
"Its Called the American dream, because you gotta be asleep to believe it". - George Carlin
Tone ~ Emmet ~ Larkin ~ Connolly ~ O Donnell
www.union.ie
