Yet More Irish Confederate Command

Realising that my finished* Irish Confederate Catholics were lacking in the command stakes, I decided to utilise the Peter Pig characters that were sat in my spares box.

The character packs are heroically sized in comparison to the rest of the PP ECW range, I had thought long and hard as to whether I would actually use these figures, the ensigns quickly made their way onto fleabay, the personalities have sat in my spares box for a very long time awaiting their fate. 

Each figure has a much thicker base than the normal PP figures, which accentuates the size difference. Figures also have their name in raised detail on the bases. Thinner bases would help blend the personalities into the rest of my armies.

The base trimmings from just three figures

Next I had to decide who they were going to become...

So here are my latest Irish Catholic command figures.

Sir Ruaidhrí Ó Mórdha (This is the Essex figure from the character range.)

Sir Ruaidhrí Ó Mórdha, sometimes Sir Rory O'Moore, or even Sir Roger Moore, is most notably known for being one of the four principal organisers of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

Born around 1600, Ruaidhrí had a complex family history, made much worse during the reign of Mary; which resulted in 180 members of the family being murdered, and the family estates in Laois being given to English.

Seizing upon Charles's obvious weakness during the Bishops' Wars, Ó Mórdha planned a bloodless coup to overthrow the English government in Ireland. With Connor Maguire, 2nd Baron of Enniskillen he planned to seize Dublin Castle, which was held by a small garrison, on 23rd October 1641. Allies in Ulster would seize forts and towns there. The leaders would assume the governing of their own country and with this provision offer allegiance to King Charles. 

Alas the plan was betrayed, a and the rising failed in its first objective. But plotters succeeded in creating an alliance between the Ulster Gaelic clans and the Old English gentry in Leinster.

In November 1641 the Irish forces besieged Drogheda and a royalist force came north from Dublin to oppose them. Ó Mórdha was on of the rebel leaders that intercepted and defeated the relief force at the Battle of Julianstown on 29th November.

In the ensuing Irish Confederate Wars, a major achievement by Ó Mórdha  was to recruit Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill from the Spanish service in 1642.

After the defeat at the Battle of Kilrush in April 1642, Ruaidhrí's history is somewhat confusing. He certainly stepped back from military service but appears to have kept his hand in politicking. Bishop Michael Comerford claimed he retired and died in Kilkenny city in the winter of 1642–43. However this ignores his contacts with Inchiquin and Ormonde in 1647–48. Others say that he fled to the island of Inishbofin, County Galway after Galway city fell in 1652. It is believed he did a few years after.

Richard Butler, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret (In case you are wondering, this pose is the Waller figure.)

Richard, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret, was born in 1578. He was married to Margaret, daughter of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, the 'principal rebel' in Ireland. Richard was a devout Catholic.

At the outbreak of the Ulster rebellion in October 1641, Richard still considered himself a loyalist. He hoped that his influence, would earn him a position of responsibility from the Dublin government as the rebels advanced south. However, he was soon disappointed. Although theoretically second-in-command of the Kilkenny forces behind his Protestant great-nephew James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, he was granted no authority and had to write to Ormond, who was in Dublin for instructions on how to respond to the crisis. By the time the government granted him the power to act, it was too late. In Tipperary, Sir William St Leger, had begun massacring Catholics; as a result Mountgarret joined the rebel cause on 30th November. 

At the Kilkenny conference, he urged restraint and largely succeeded in preventing widespread slaughter of Protestants. However, following his defeat at the Battle of Kilrush April 2nd, he temporarily lost control of the situation, leading to two massacres in East Co. Kilkenny, at Graiguenamanagh and Gowran, for which he would be wrongly blamed posthumously. He ordered an investigation into the killings and personally ordered the execution of those responsible for these sectarian attacks but a third outrage, perpetrated at Ballyragget by his son Edward, seems to have gone unpunished

In late 1642, Richard was elected president of the Catholic Confederation. The role was as much ceremonial as it was executive. As an old man, he helped to formulate Confederate policy but left the day-to-day task of its implementation to others. Politically, he aimed to negotiate a peace settlement in  Ireland as quickly possible so that a Confederate Army might intervene in the English Civil War and defend the King from what he called 'the puritan faction'. However, he found peace very hard to achieve with the head of the King's Irish forces, his great-nephew, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, whom he greatly distrusted for good reason.

Archbishop GianBattista Rinuccini's arrival in Ireland in 1645, succeeded in large part in undermining Mountgarret, splitting the Confederation in the process. By 1647 the Viscount, now an old man, was a spent force. Although he remained tied to the royalist cause, writing secretly to Prince Charles (Charles II) c.1649, he took little part in the Irish war against Cromwell. He would die in 1652.

General Gerat Barry (This is the Hopton figure.)

Gerat entered Spanish military service about 1601.It is believed he left Kinsale with the Spanish army in March 1601 with his father David Fitz Garrot Barry of Rincorran, his mother and three brothers. 

He served four years with the ‘Army of the ocean sea’ followed by twenty-nine years’ service ‘in the warres’ in the low countries and Germany. He rose through the ranks to that of captain in one of Spain's Irish regiments and in December 1632 was awarded a pension as a wounded veteran and appointed to the Flanders council of war. By 1635 he was involved in recruitment of Irishmen for Spanish service. 

He is recorded as serving with the Irish forces at Fuenterrabia in Spain in 1638, and that he was named a ‘Cavalier of the noble order of St. Iago’. He, along with so many of his peer, was at Breda.

Returning to Ireland in 1639 he was tasked to  serve in the Bishops’ Wars. In the summer of 1641 he was one of the colonels authorised to transport into foreign service soldiers formerly in the army raised by Lord Deputy Wentworth, and by November 1641 he had raised some 1,000 men at Kinsale. The outbreak of insurrection saw him ordered to disperse these men, though it was reported that he failed to do so, and they may have joined the insurgent forces. 

By March 1642 he had been chosen as general of the insurgents in Munster, a position subsequently confirmed by the confederate supreme council. His early successes – such as the capture of Limerick castle – were overshadowed by his defeat at Liscarroll in September 1642. In 1643 the Munster leadership appealed to the Earl of Castlehaven to bolster their military position, and he took effective command in the province, though Barry seems to have retained his titular command until his death in March 1646.

Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara (This is the Ireton figure.)

Thomas received a commission as captain in the Irish regiment of Henry O'Neill in 1605, recruiting a company of infantry at his own expense. He arrived in Flanders at the end of the year, and served alongside Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill . 

A lifelong antagonism developed between the two men, partly as a result of the traditional animosity between the Old English of the Pale and the Ulster Irish, but mostly this was a personal animosity. According to the Earl of Clarendon, the two young ambitious officers were in ‘perpetual jealousy of each other’.

Preston frequently returned to Ireland on recruiting missions for his regiment. The Dublin administration consistently favoured Preston over Ó Néill, adding further fuel to the fire.

In 1634, Thomas Wentworth considered Preston ‘one of the civilest gentlemen of his nation’ , and wrote a letter of recommendation to the Spanish on his behalf. 

The following year Preston became colonel of his own regiment, as did  Eoghan Ruadh. He successfully defended Louvain in June 1635 against the combined forces of France and Holland, further enhancing his military reputation. Appointed governor of Genappe in Brabant, Preston surrendered the town to Frederick of Orange, commander of the Dutch forces in 1641. Accusations of betrayal surfaced early in 1642, by which time a major rebellion had erupted throughout Ireland. 

His nephew, Nicholas Preston, Viscount Gormanston, sent a messenger to Flanders, urging the colonel to assist the insurgents. Seizing the opportunity to escape a potential scandal over his conduct at Genappe, Preston received permission from the Spanish authorities to return home. 

Preston immediately assumed command of the insurgents in Leinster and immediately suffered a defeat  at Timahoe on the 5th October. A few weeks later the first Confederate General Assembly in Kilkenny appointed him general of the Leinster army. Eoghan Ruadh  served as his counterpart in Ulster.

Preston had earned his military reputation on the continent for siege warfare,  but he lacked confidence on the battlefield, a failing that would ultimately prove disastrous. On 20th January 1643 he captured Birr Castle, Co. Offaly, but two months later his army suffered its first defeat in an engagement  at Ross, Co. Wexford.

The following year, Preston's rivalry with Eoghan Ruadh forced the Confederates to appoint a compromise candidate, the Earl of Castlehaven, to lead an army against the Scottish covenanters in Ulster. The campaign, plagued by poor leadership and internal divisions, proved a costly failure.

In early 1645 Preston besieged Duncannon,  which he successfully took in March with negligible losses. Later that year, however, he quarrelled with Castlehaven during a joint campaign in Munster,  preventing the Confederates from seizing the few remaining enemy strongholds in the province. 

In 1646 Preston moved his forces into Connacht, supplied with arms and money from the newly arrived papal nuncio, Archbishop GianBattista Rinuccini. He captured Roscommon, but failed to push on towards his ultimate objective, the port of Sligo. At the end of July, in the middle of this campaign, Ormond proclaimed the peace treaty agreed between the Royalists and Confederates four months earlier. The military leaders supported the move, but Rinuccini strenuously opposed the deal. This crisis presented Preston with an awkward dilemma. He had attended Supreme Council meetings from 1643 onwards, in an unofficial capacity, and clearly sympathised with the peace faction. None the less, his friend Nicholas French, bishop of Ferns, urged him not to oppose the clergy. Plagued by doubts, Thomas declared for the peace at first, before changing his mind under the threat of clerical sanctions.

Preston joined Rinuccini's newly formed Supreme Council, and assisted in the arrest of peace-faction leaders, including Muskerry and Bellings. Rinuccini ordered Eoghan Ruadh to attack Dublin, but Bishop French insisted that Preston also be involved in the campaign. This dual command proved a fiasco, with both Ó Néill and Preston more wary of each other than the enemy. Their combined force reached the outskirts of the city in early November, but Ó Néill abandoned the idea of a siege after an Parliamentarian squadron sailed into Dublin Bay. 

At the subsequent general assembly in early 1647, the clergy laid charges of treason against Preston for   maintaining a secret line of communication with the Royalist leadership through Clanricarde. This almost started an internecine Confederate civil war, before Rinuccini intervened to calm the situation. 

In an attempt to calm tension within the Confedration, the Supreme Council ordered Preston to take the offensive in Leinster, and at the end of April his forces captured Carlow. As he advanced towards Dublin, however, the general became distracted by further splits within the Confedration. After Ormond surrendered Dublin to Parliament at the end of July, Preston resolved to attack the forces of the new governor, Colonel Michael Jones. 

Preston failed to fight on his own terms and  was forced into battle on 8th August at Dungan's Hill near Trim. In one of the bloodiest battles in Irish history, Jones annihilated the best trained and supplied Confederate army, although Preston and a number of his officers escaped. 

Temporarily appointed governor of Kilkenny and Waterford, Preston tried to rebuild his shattered army. By November 1647 he had gathered together 4,000 men, mostly raw recruits with no military experience. 

In 1648, when civil war erupted within the Confederation, Preston joined forces with the peace faction in opposing Rinuccini and Ó Néill, although he carefully avoided engaging the Ulster army on the battlefield. 

Exasperated by the general's frequent switches of allegiance, Rinuccini denounced him as ‘a most unsteady man, unfit to take council with, and easily dictated to by the evil-minded’. 

As the Royalist position in Ireland collapsed, Preston proposed recruiting 5,000 men for service in Flanders, but even a reduced offer proved beyond the means of the Spanish exchequer. Appointed governor of Galway by Clanricarde, he sailed for the Continent shortly before its surrender (April 1652), and was subsequently exempted from pardon by the Parliamentarians. After his arrival in Flanders he received the promise of a Spanish pension, although not on active service. When the money failed to materialise, Preston switched allegiance to France, but he failed to receive a military commission. He died in Paris on 21st October 1655. 

*Do we ever finish a wargames army? Or would the phrase 'finished for now' be more appropriate? Probably.

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