TOPFOTOyear he was confirmed as Earl of Tyrone –
he betrothed his daughter Rose to Sir Hugh
O’Donnell’s heir, ‘Red Hugh’.
As a strategy for extending O’Neill’s power
in Ulster, the double alliance was a master-
stroke. However, it signalled a potential
threat to English plans to establish control
of Ulster. And so, in an attempt to block the
marriage, the Dublin authorities abducted
Red Hugh (having lured him aboard a ship
with the promise of wine) and held him
hostage in Dublin.
Hugh O’Neill described his intended
son-in-law’s detention in Dublin Castle
as “most prejudice that might happen unto
me”. Red Hugh languished in the castle for
over four years till 1592 when, using a silk
rope supplied by accomplices outside, he
slipped out through a privy. Back in Ulster
with his father-in-law, together they
subdued local opponents and began
secretly swearing in confederates to
thwart English control.Sleight of hand
Hugh O’Neill was a supremely canny
operator – a master at wrong-footing his
opponents with sleight of hand – reflected
in his initially low-key campaign for the
territory of Fermanagh in Ulster. When an
English sheriff was imposed there in 1593,
O’Neill was determined to resist – but by
stealth. He fought a proxy war, pretending to
be a supporter of the crown while directing
a military campaign against it. When his
brother Cormac defeated an English attempt
to resupply its garrison at Enniskillen, Hugh
absolved himself of responsibility by
claiming he was unable to control his
followers. Yet he was reported as arriving
soon afterwards to divide up the spoils.
Meanwhile, Hugh was in the process of
converting the traditional axe-wielding
gallowglasses (a class of elite mercenaryA statue of O’Neill’s ally Red Hugh
O’Donnell in Donegal TownThe Dublin
authorities
abducted Red Hugh,
having lured him
aboard a ship with
the promise of wine
southern Ulster. Veterans in that English
expedition were stunned by how well armed
and disciplined O’Neill’s army was.
An increasingly anxious Queen Elizabeth
now sent in renowned soldier Sir John
Norris. He was flushed with recent successes
against Spanish armies in Brittany, but was
defeated at Mullaghbrack near Armagh. The
English, fearing a protracted struggle and
Spanish intervention, offered the Irish con-
federation de facto control of most of Ulster
and North Connaught, and tacit toleration
of Catholicism (banned since Elizabeth’s
accession). However, soon after the Irish had
agreed, Spanish agents arrived in Tirconnell
urging O’Neill to escalate the war.
Spanish king Philip II, eager to keep
England distracted to prevent its resources
being committed elsewhere, now provided
the Irish with money and munitions to
continue the war and spread their actions
into other provinces. In a stop-start
campaign of truces and talks, O’Neill kept
upping the ante. By December 1597 he was
demanding “free liberty of conscience” for
all Irishmen, and reciting abuses against
the Irish going back 30 years. Soon he was
calling into question the entire English
presence in Ireland.
These escalating demands forced Elizabeth
back onto the offensive – with disastrous
consequences for the English. On 14 August
1598, O’Neill’s army killed Bagenal and
crushed his army at Yellow Ford – the heaviest
defeat ever suffered by the English in Ireland.
It’s been argued that this was the moment
at which O’Neill should have struck the
decisive blow against the English – marching
on Dublin, which was virtually defenceless.
He didn’t, instead lingering in the north,
more concerned with preventing an English
amphibious landing behind his lines at Derry.
Nevertheless, his confederation extended
its control to Ireland’s midlands beforewarriors) into musketeers, and sending
Catholic clerics to ask Spain for aid.
Such smoke and mirrors could work for
only so long. In June 1595 O’Neill was
declared a traitor for conspiring with Spain- and was forced to swap subterfuge for open
conflict. Abandoning any pretences of
aiding the English, he joined with O’Donnell
in leading Ireland’s Gaelic lords in a
campaign that later become known as the
Nine Years’ War. That year O’Neill launched
attacks at Blackwater Fort, an English
garrison in the heart of Tyrone, and then
against Sir Henry Bagenal, the marshal of
the queen’s army in Ireland, at Clontibret in
Elizabethans and the world / Irish rebellion