Battle of Scarrifholis
The Battle of Scarrifholis was fought near Newmills, County Donegal, in northwestern Ireland on 21 June 1650, during the Irish Confederate Wars. An English Parliamentarian army commanded by Charles Coote, and composed of troops from the New Model Army and local Ulster Protestant settlers defeated the Confederate Ulster Army, commanded by Heber MacMahon, Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher. The Ulster army lost of most of its men, officers, weapons, and supplies. The battle secured the north of Ireland for the English Parliament and contributed greatly to Cromwell's conquest of Ireland.
Background
The Ulster Army was created by the Irish Confederate Catholics in 1642 to organise the insurgent forces that were operating there since the rebellion of the previous year. Up to 1649, it was commanded by Owen Roe O'Neill, a professional soldier who had served in the Spanish army in Flanders. However, O'Neill died on 6 November 1649. After his death, command of the army fell to his son Henry Roe until a replacement was found. At a meeting on 18 March 1650 at Belturbet Bishop Heber MacMahon of Clogher was appointed in his place. MacMahon had no real military experience, but was elected by the Ulster officers to avoid political infighting among themselves. The army was split between, on one hand, those who supported the Confederates' treaty with the Royalists, mainly pre-war land-owners such as Phelim O'Neill and, on the other hand, the army's professional officers and the Catholic clergy, who rejected a deal that did not guarantee the public exercise of the Catholic religion and the return of confiscated lands to Catholic landowners.In 1648, Owen Roe O'Neill had left the Confederation and briefly fought against the other Confederate armies over the treaty with the Royalists. He had even negotiated with the English Parliamentarian forces in Ulster to try to secure a better deal for Catholic interests. He only rejoined the Confederation after the invasion of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell in August 1649, when it was clear that the English Parliament was the most dangerous enemy faced by Irish Catholics. The local Protestant population fled to the fortified towns in the area, as the war in Ulster had, from its outset, been characterised by atrocities against civilians by both sides.
On the other side, the English and Scottish Protestant forces in Ulster had also been split by the events of the English Civil War. Up to 1649, the Protestants had been led by the Scottish Covenanters, based in Carrickfergus and a British settler army based around Derry. However, in 1649, following the execution of Charles I by the English Parliament, the Protestants split into Royalist and Parliamentary factions.
Most of the English settlers like Charles Coote sided with the Parliament and they took control of Derry. They were joined by a Parliamentary army sent to Ulster by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, commanded by Robert Venables and Theophilus Jones. The Covenanters, on the other hand, sided with the Royalists. In 1648, the Ulster Royalists besieged Coote at Derry, but Coote held out. The following year, the Scots and Royalists in Ulster were routed by Venables at the Battle of Lisnagarvey in Antrim. After that time, it was the Confederate's Ulster army that took the fight to the Parliamentarians.
The campaign
Bishop MacMahon assembled the Ulster army in Loughgall in south Armagh, with 5,000 infantry and 600 cavalry. They were, however short of ammunition and over half of their men carried pikes rather than muskets. He planned to march through the centre of Ulster and cut Coote's troops at Derry off from Venables's headquarters at Carrickfergus in the east. With the Parliamentarian troops engaged by the activities of Irish guerrillas or "Tories", the Ulster army marched on Ballycastle on the northern coast of Ulster, deploying garrisons along the centre of the province. They then marched west, towards Coote's army located at Lifford, near Strabane, County Tyrone. He crossed the River Foyle not far below Lifford, fending off an attack by the English cavalry and marched northwords to Letterkenny.Coote was joined on 18 June in Lifford by a troop of 1000 Parliamentarian foot commanded by Colonel Fenwick which Venables had sent by ship from Belfast, bringing his forces up to 3,000 men, compared to 4,000 Irish. With this addition, the British force had more ammunition and more cavalry than their enemies. The Irish camped on the Doonglebe/Tullygay Hill overlooking the pass of Scarrifholis on the River Swilly, at Castle Sollus two miles west of Letterkenny. MacMahon's officers warned him not to leave their strong defensive position and risk battle, as the Parliamentary army was tactically superior to them. Rather, they should stay put and wait for the enemy to disperse when their supplies ran out, leaving the Irish free to march back to their stronghold along the border with Leinster.
The battle
MacMahon refused to listen to military advice and on the morning of 21 June 1650 ordered his troops down from their mountain camp to give battle to the Parliamentary army although much of his cavalry was engaged in domestic issues in Kilmacrennan.MacMahon's inexperience was further exposed by how he drew up his troops for battle. He placed a small advance guard in front his army and positioned the rest of his troops in a huge solid mass, which meant that it would be very difficult to manoeuvre and very few units could actually engage the enemy, being stuck within the ranks of their own men. Coote, meanwhile, who had been fighting since 1641 and whose father had been a professional soldier, drew up his men in small flexible units – able to support one another and to move around on the battlefield.
The battle started when Coote sent an infantry detachment to meet the Irish advance party. The two sides exchanged musket volleys at close range and then fought hand to hand with pikes and musket butts. However, Coote steadily reinforced his infantry and eventually drove the Irishmen back into the front of their formation. Because of the deployment method MacMahon adopted, it hemmed in the front ranks of the Ulster army, who were trapped behind their own panicked skirmishers and the pursuing Parliamentarian infantry. Seeing his chance, Coote sent more infantry to attack the flanks of the Irish formation, trapping the whole force between his men and the mountain, the initial position of advantage they had descended from to engage Coote's troops.
The fate of the Ulster Army resembled that of the Roman army that Hannibal destroyed at Cannae in 216 BC. Although they outnumbered their enemies, they were pinned in a dense uncoordinated mass, unable to defend themselves against the troops who had surrounded them. Increasingly, they were a mob of terrified individuals rather than a disciplined military unit. They were also very short of ammunition, which meant that the Parliamentarians could pour volleys into this dense mass without effective reply, cutting down their quarry from a distance.
At that point, all was lost, and the Confederate leaders and horsemen fled the battlefield, pursued by the Parliamentarian cavalry and by the local Protestant population – seeking revenge for massacres at the hands of the Irish in 1641–42. Nevertheless, the doomed Ulster infantry fought doggedly until they were slaughtered at Meenaroy, Stranabratog and Welchtown after fleeing southward over Cark Mountain into Cloghan. Two-thirds of the Irish dead were found on the battlefield itself rather than along the line of pursuit, which stands as stark testament to the determination of the Ulster troops knowing Coote's reputation as a merciless killer and a breaker of treaties.
Aftermath
The battle was a decisive victory for Coote and the Parliamentarian forces in the region. Over 3,000 of the Ulster army were killed – 2,000 on the field and another 1,000 in the pursuit – about 75% of their total numbers. The Parliamentarians lost only around 100 soldiers killed. Coote ordered that Irish wounded and prisoners taken were to be killed including Henry O'Neill, Owen Roe O'Neill's son, who had surrendered on terms. MacMahon was captured a week later at Enniskillen and hanged.The battle marked the destruction of the Ulster army, the only remaining military obstacle to pacifying Ulster. The loss of men and material, coupled with the loss of so many of the experienced officer cadre, removed the Ulster army as an operational force – with time these losses could be turned around, but time was now the enemy. In addition to O'Neill and MacMahon, the Irish lost 9 Colonels, 4 Lieutenant Colonels, 3 Majors, 20 Captains and much of their junior officers corps. This represented a huge cull of Ulster's Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Irish elite, more significant than that which had occurred in 1607 with the Flight of the Earls. For this reason, the battle has been described as "Ulster's Aughrim" – furthermore, this particular battle marked the decline of the province's native aristocracy through the attrition of battle and disease. For this land that had been at war for the best part of eight years, this battle consequently assured the successful planting and supremacy of a new wave of colonist settler populations.
Coote went on to besiege Charlemont, the remaining stronghold held by the Ulster Army under Phelim O'Neill. Despite causing severe losses in several failed assaults, O'Neill surrendered the fort to Coote on 14 August 1650. Coote's army proceeded to march south, taking Sligo and then Galway after a long siege in 1652. The surrender of this city on 12 May 1652 marked the effective end of the Confederacy's resistance to Cromwell's invasion.