The Battle of Glentaisie is fought in the north of Ulster on May 2, 1565. The result is a victory for Shane O’Neill over the Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg. The conflict is a part of the political and military struggle for control of the north of Ireland, involving the English and occasionally the Scots. Although the MacDonalds are a Scottish family, based principally on the island of Islay in the Hebrides, they have long been associated with the Gaelic polity rather than the Kingdom of Scotland.
O’Neill assembles his army for the attack on the MacDonnells at the tower house of Feadan, at Fathom Mountain, near Newry. Traditionally, he “kept Easter” at Feadan, and an assembly of his clan would be unremarked until its size draws notice.
The MacDonnells expect O’Neill’s sizeable army to take some weeks to reach their territory on the Antrim coast. They start gathering as many warriors in the Highlands and Islands as they can muster. However, O’Neill advances with unprecedented speed. Within a week his army arrives at Edenduffcarrick.
Sorley Boy MacDonnell gathers a small holding force at a forward base at Cloughdonaghy. He attempts to stop O’Neill’s advancing army at Knockboy, a wooded pass in the hills above Broughshane. O’Neill sweeps Sorley’s ambush away, takes Cloughdonaghy and sends a force of cavalry to seize James MacDonald of Dunnyveg’s recently constructed Red Bay Castle. With the landing beaches at Waterfoot and Cushendall now controlled by O’Neill’s army, the first several hundred of MacDonnell’s men are compelled to land farther north. They land at Ballycastle beach to await the locally raised MacDonnnell army. Their plan is to await the arrival of their brother Alexander, the MacDonnell seneschal of Cantyre, who is assembling a second army composed from late comers to James of Dunnyveg’s army.
O’Neill does not permit the MacDonnells any time for their reinforcement to arrive. His advance guard continues to press the retreating MacDonnell army, who fall back from the beach through Ballycastle. They are driven past the area of the modern Diamond and well away from the river Tow, denying them the necessary water supply for a sizeable army.
Both armies set up camp for the night. O’Neill’s army occupies land at the centre of modern Ballycastle, between the modern Diamond and the river Tow, giving them full access to water. The combined MacDonnell army of around five hundred men occupy the exposed higher ground at Ramon, the ridge at the head of modern Castle Street, Ballycastle, where the Presbyterian Church now stands, with only a small well for their needs.
At very first light, O’Neill attacks uphill with a sudden onslaught led by his heavy Gallowglassinfantry. By forgoing the customary exchange of spears, darts, and arrows by the light infantry kernagh and Scots archers that customarily precede the usually decisive deployment of the Gallowglass corrughadh, or battalions, O’Neill surprises the MacDonnell army. The MacDonnell leaders try to rally their men, but after a violent interlude of some confusion, they break and flee over Knocklayd mountain in the direction of Glenshesk, heading back toward the beach at Cushendun. James of Dunnyveg is seriously wounded in the early fighting and his brother Angus MacDonnell is killed.
The attempt to flee by the old mountain road between Greenan and Ballypatrick Forest in an attempt to reach a possible landing place for their birlinns at Cushendun beach is finally stopped at a hollow at Legacapple. Sorley Boy and James are both taken prisoner. James dies of his wounds two months later at Castle Crocke, near Strabane. Their brother Alistair Og MacDonnell had landed at Rathlin, with the final levies raised in the Highlands and Islands, reputed to be nine hundred men. However, in the immediate aftermath of O’Neill’s decisive victory, Alistair can achieve nothing without a base on the mainland. O’Neill marches on along the north coast to mop up the MacDonnell garrisons and deny Alistair any foothold from which to launch a MacDonnell recovery. Dunseverick and Dunluce fall within a few days, and Alistair returns to Scotland.
In a letter to his family written on April 30, 1916, Thomas MacDonagh recalls “I was astonished to receive by a messenger from P.H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, an order to surrender unconditionality to the British General. I did not obey the order as it came from a prisoner. I as then in supreme command of the Irish Army, consulted with my second in command and decided to confirm the order. I knew that it would involve my death and the deaths of other leaders. I hoped that it would save many true men among our followers, good lives for Ireland. God grant it has done so and God approve our deed. For my self I have no regret. The one bitterness that death has for me is the separation it brings from my beloved wife Muriel, and my beloved children, Donagh and Barbara. My country will then treat them as wards, I hope. I have devoted myself too much to National work and too little to the making of money to leave them a competence. God help them and support them, and give them a happy and prosperous life. Never was there a better, truer, purer woman than my wife Muriel, or more adorable children than Don and Barbara. It breaks my heart that I shall never see my children again, but I have not wept or murmured. I counted the cost of this and am ready to pay it. Muriel has been sent for here. I do not know if she can come. She may have no one to take the children while she is coming. If she does.”
MacDonagh and Pearse are contemporaries of one another: poets, progressive educators, Gaelic revivalists. They are men who gird for battle “with a revolver in one hand and a copy of Sophocles in the other.” Each man commands a unit of Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, which takes place the week of April 24-30,1916. MacDonagh occupies Jacob’s biscuit factory and Pearse the General Post Office (GPO), from which he issues the surrender at the end of the week.
McDonagh and Pearse are signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army at the beginning of the Easter Rising, proclaiming Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin‘s main thoroughfare, marks the beginning of the Rising.
Pearse’s and MacDonagh’s signatures on the Proclamation are a fatal endorsement for them and for each of the other five men to lend it their signatures. After being court-martialed, both Pearse and MacDonagh, along with Thomas Clarke, are executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916, the first of the rebels to be executed.
(Pictured: Thomas McDonagh (left) and Patrick Pearse)
In January and February 1689, Butler votes against the motion to put William of Orange and Mary on the throne and against the motion to declare that James II has abdicated it. Nevertheless, he subsequently joins the forces of William of Orange, by whom he is made colonel of the 2nd Troop of Horse Guards on April 20, 1689. He accompanies William in his Irish campaign, debarking with him in Carrickfergus on June 14, 1690, and commands this troop at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. In February 1691 he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.
Butler serves on the continent under William of Orange during the Nine Years’ War and, having been promoted to major general, he fights at the Battle of Steenkerque in August 1692 and the Battle of Landen in July 1693, where he is taken prisoner by the French and then exchanged for the Duke of Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son. He is promoted to lieutenant general in 1694.
Butler plays a dramatic role at the notorious meeting of the Privy Council on March 8, 1711, when Antoine de Guiscard, a French double agent who is being questioned about his treasonable activities, attempts to assassinate Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, against whom he has a personal grudge for drastically cutting his allowance, by stabbing him with a penknife. Harley is wounded, but not seriously, due largely to the fact that he is wearing a heavy gold brocade waistcoat in which the knife gets stuck. Several Councillors, including Butler, stab Guiscard in return. Guiscard implores Butler to finish the deed, but he replies that it is not for him to play the hangman. In any case, he has the sense to see that Guiscard must be kept alive at least long enough to be questioned, although as it turns out Guiscard’s wounds are fatal, and he dies a week later.
On April 23, 1712, Butler leaves Harwich for Rotterdam to lead the British troops taking part in the war. Once there he allows himself to be made the tool of the Tory ministry, whose policy is to carry on the war in the Netherlands while giving secret orders to him to take no active part in supporting their allies under Prince Eugene. In July 1712, he advises Prince Eugene that he can no longer support the siege of Le Quesnoy and that he is withdrawing the British troops from the action and instead intends to take possession of Dunkirk. The Dutch are so exasperated at the withdrawal of the British troops that they close the towns of Bouchain on Douai to British access, despite the fact that they have plenty of stores and medical facilities available. Butler takes possession of Ghent and Bruges as well as Dunkirk, in order to ensure his troops are adequately provided for. On April 15, 1713, he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk.
Ormonde’s position as Captain-General makes him a personage of much importance in the crisis brought about by the death of Queen Anne and, during the last years of Queen Anne, he almost certainly has Jacobite leanings and corresponds with the Jacobite Court including his cousin, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, who keeps barrels of gunpowder at Kilkenny Castle. King George I, on his accession to the throne in August 1714, institutes extensive changes and excludes the Tories from royal favour. Butler is stripped of his posts as Captain-General, as colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and as Commander in Chief of the Forces with the first two posts going to the Duke of Marlborough and the role of Commander-in-Chief going to John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair. On November 19, 1714, Butler is instead made a member of the reconstituted Privy Council of Ireland.
Accused of supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715, Butler is impeached for high treason by Lord Stanhope on June 21, 1715. He might avoid the impending storm of Parliamentary prosecution, if he remains in England and stands trial but instead, he chooses to flee to France in August 1715 and initially stays in Paris with Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. On August 20, 1715, he is attainted, his estate forfeited, and honours extinguished. The Earl Marshal is instructed to remove the names and armorial bearings of Butler and Bolingbroke from the list of peers and his banner as Knight of the Garter is taken down in St. George’s Chapel.
On June 20, 1716, the Parliament of Ireland passes an act extinguishing the regalities and liberties of the county palatine of Tipperary; for vesting Butler’s estate in the crown and for giving a reward of £10,000 for his apprehension, should he attempt to land in Ireland. But the same parliament passes an act on June 24, 1721, to enable his brother, Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, to purchase his estate, which he does accordingly.
Butler subsequently moves to Spain where he holds discussions with Cardinal Giulio Alberoni. He later takes part in a Spanish and Jacobite plan to invade England and puts James Francis Edward Stuart on the British throne in 1719, but his fleet is disbanded by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. In 1732, he moves to Avignon, where he is seen in 1733 by the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He dies at Avignon in exile on November 16, 1745, but his body is returned to London and buried in Westminster Abbey on May 22, 1746.
On July 20, 1682, Butler, then called Lord Ossory, marries Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Laurence Hyde, who is then Viscount Hyde of Kenilworth but becomes Earl of Rochester in November. The couple has a daughter, Mary, who dies young in 1688.
Following the death of his first wife in 1685, Butler plans to marry again in order to secure a male heir. He gains permission from the House of Lords for the arranging of a jointure for another marriage in May 1685, and in August of that year, he marries Lady Mary Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort and Mary Capel. The couple has a son, Thomas (1686–1689), and two daughters, Elizabeth (1689–1750) and Mary (1690–1713). His second wife is a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Their younger daughter, Mary, marries John Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham.
(Pictured: Portrait of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, by Michael Dahl, National Portrait Gallery)
Moylan is born to a Catholic family in Cork, County Cork, in 1737. His father, John Moylan, is a well-to-do merchant in Shandon, County Cork. His older brother Francis becomes Bishop of Cork. His family sends him to be educated in Paris. He then works in Lisbon for three years in the family shipping firm. He settles in Philadelphia in 1768 to organize his own firm. He is one of the organizers of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, an Irish American fraternal organization, and serves as its first president.
Moylan joins the American Continental Army in 1775 and upon the recommendation of John Dickinson, is appointed Muster-Master General on August 11, 1775. His brother John acts as United States Clothier General during the war. His experience in the shipping industry affords the United States a well-qualified ship outfitter, who helps fit out the first ships of the Continental Navy. On March 5, 1776, he becomes secretary to General George Washington with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is appointed Quartermaster General in the American Continental Army on June 5, 1776, succeeding Thomas Mifflin. He resigns from this office on September 28, 1776. However, he continues to serve as a volunteer of General Washington’s staff through December 1776.
In January 1776, Moylan writes a letter using the term “United States of America,” the earliest known use of that phrase.
Moylan then raises a troop of light dragoons, the 4th Continental Light Dragoons, also known as Moylan’s Horse, on January 3, 1777, at Philadelphia, and is appointed colonel in the Continental Army on January 5. The regiment is be noted for taking the field in captured British red coats. However, they see action in green coats at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, and the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777, and end the year by protecting the Cantonment at Valley Forge. He succeeds General Casimir Pulaski as Commander of the Cavalry in March 1778. Moylan’s Horse sees action at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778.
In the campaign of 1779 Moylan and the 4th Dragoons are stationed at Pound Ridge, New York, and see action when the British raid Norwalk, Connecticut, on July 11, 1779. He and the 4th Dragoons take part in the Battle of Springfield in New Jersey, on June 23, 1780, and General Anthony Wayne‘s expedition at Bull’s Ferry, New Jersey, on July 20, 1780. He commands his Dragoons at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, after which he is to take the cavalry to the Southern Campaign. However, his failing health causes him to leave the field and return to Philadelphia, where he constantly appeals to the Continental Congress to man, equip and maintain the Continental Dragoon Regiments.
Moylan is married to Mary Ricketts Van Horne on September 12, 1778, and has two daughters, Elizabeth Catherine, and Maria. His two sons die as children. He dies in Philadelphia on April 11, 1811, and is buried there in the churchyard at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.
She is born Leslie Mary Price in Dublin on January 9, 1893, to Michael and Mary Price. Her father is a blacksmith, and she is one of six children. She wants to be a teacher and by 1911 has become a Monitress, a common way for girls to get into the teaching profession. Two of her brothers are involved in the Irish Volunteers and she is a member of Cumann na mBan. In advance of the Easter Rising, with the confusion over orders and lack of information, she states that she “did not question anything” as, with all that was happening, there are often odd events in her house. But they all wait for the mobilisation orders for the Rising.
De Barra’s role during the republican rebellion in Ireland, Easter 1916, is to act as a courier carrying messages and ammunition between the main headquarters in the General Post Office (GPO) and other posts. She does her role well during the Rising and gains the respect of many Irish Republicans. On the orders of Seán Mac Diarmada, one of the principal leaders of the rising, she and fellow Cumann na mBan member Bríd Dixon are promoted in the field and treated as officers. She later admits that the job was stressful. She is stationed both in the GPO and in the Hibernian Bank. It is while she is in the bank that she comes closest to death, standing beside Captain Thomas Weafer while he is shot. Another soldier who goes to his aid is also shot. She barely has time to grab Captain Weafer before he dies. She is the person sent to fetch a priest for the dying and wounded soldiers on the Thursday. By Friday evening, she is in the GPO and is with the group evacuated with Louise Gavan Duffy. Once they reach the hospital on Jervis Street, she parts company from Duffy and heads to Jacob’s factory to see how the rebels are getting on there. She is also arrested and held in Broadstone Station but quickly released.
By 1918, de Barra represents West Cork in the Cumann na mBan convention and becomes a member of the executive committee. She leaves her teaching career to focus fully on the organisation required by the republican movement in 1918. She travels the country by train and by bicycle to get women to join the local branches of the Cumann and take part in the activities needed by the movement. She is tasked by the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) General Headquarters to set up specific lines of communication between Dublin and the Provincial commands. Within the year the organisation has grown from 17 to over 600 branches. She is Director of the organisation during the period up to the end of the war.
De Barra marries Tom Barry on August 22, 1921, in Cork during the Truce period in the lead up to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. At the wedding are men who later end up on opposite sides. Both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins are guests. Her husband is staunchly Anti-Treaty even though he has been friends with Collins. Although her husband is a staunch republican and a major figure in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, while she is serving in the GPO in Dublin during the rising, he is in Mesopotamia serving in the British Army in World War I.
In later years de Barra is central to the Irish Red Cross. Initially she gets involved by organising the care of children orphaned by World War II. She represents the Irish Red Cross at conferences in Toronto, Oslo, Monaco, New Delhi, Geneva, Vienna, The Hague, Athens, Istanbul and Prague. She and her husband handle refugees from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through the Red Cross she is able to ascertain the status of Irish held by the Spanish during the Spanish Civil War, as officially Ireland remains neutral and cannot get involved. She is Chairman of the Irish Red Cross from 1950 to 1973.
De Barra is instrumental in the setting up of the Voluntary Health Insurance organisation in the late 1950s. In 1962, with the Red Cross she launches the “Freedom from hunger” campaign in Ireland which later becomes the organisation Gorta. She serves as chairman of Gorta also.
In 1956, a memorial to 1916 is unveiled in Limerick. It is designed by Albert Power and the commemoration of the Rising is held in May 1956 and the monument is unveiled by de Barra. In 1963 she is awarded an honorary degree from University College Dublin (UCD) along with Éamon de Valera and others.
In 1971, de Barra is part of a series to look back on the events leading to Irish Independence and her story is broadcast by Raidió Teilifís Eireann. In 1979 she wins the Henry Dunant Medal which is the highest award of the Red Cross Movement.
De Barra and her husband live on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork from the 1940s until his death in 1980. She dies in Cork on April 9, 1984, and is buried with her husband in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. She is remembered today in the Leslie Bean de Barra Trophy awarded for the Cork Area Carer of the Year.
Church is born on February 23, 1784, the second son of Matthew Church, a Quaker merchant in the North Mall area of Cork, County Cork, and Anne Dearman, originally from Braithwaith, Yorkshire, England. At the age of sixteen, he runs away from home and enlists in the British Army. For this violation of its principles, he is disowned by the Religious Society of Friends, but his father buys him a commission, dated July 3, 1800, in the 13th Somerset Light Infantry. He serves in the demonstration against Ferrol, Spain, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801, where he takes part in the Battle of Abukir and the taking of Alexandria. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt he returns home but goes back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanies the expedition which lands in Calabria and fights a successful battle against the French at the Battle of Maida on July 4, 1806. He is present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Royal Corsican Rangers. His zeal attracts the notice of his superiors, and he has begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies. His Corsicans form part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 until the island is taken by an expedition directed against it by Joachim Murat, in September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples. Church, who has distinguished himself in the defence, returns to Malta after the capitulation.
In the summer of 1809 Church sails with the expedition sent to occupy the French-occupied Ionian Islands. Here he increases the reputation he has already gained by forming a Greek regiment in British pay. On September 9, 1809, he takes the position of Major in the 1st Regiment Greek Light Infantry. On November 19, 1812, he becomes Lieutenant-Colonel of the unit, by then renamed The Duke of York’s Greek Light Infantry Regiment. Having gained the experience of managing foreign troops, he commands the regiments made up of Greeks he recruits himself in 1813, when he forms a second regiment composed of 454 Greeks (2nd Regiment Greek Light Infantry) to occupy Paxoi islands. These regiments include many of the men who are afterward among the leaders of the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence including Theodoros Kolokotronis, with whom he keeps a friendship and correspondence. He commands this regiment at the taking of the island of Santa Maura (Lefkada), on which occasion his left arm is shattered by a bullet.
During his slow recovery Church travels in northern Greece, in Macedonia, and to Constantinople. In the years of the fall of Napoleon (1813 and 1814) he is present as British military representative with the Austrian troops until the campaign which terminates in the expulsion of Murat from Naples. He draws up a report on the Ionian Islands for the Congress of Vienna, in which he argues in support, not only of the retention of the islands under the British flag, but of the permanent occupation by Britain of Parga and other formerly Venetian coastal towns on the mainland, then in the possession of Ali Pasha of Ioannina. The peace and the disbanding of his Greek regiment leaves him without employment, though his reputation is high at the war office, and his services are recognized by the grant of a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
In 1817, Church enters the service of King Ferdinand I of Naples as lieutenant-general, with a commission to suppress the brigandage then rampant in Apulia. Ample powers are given him, and he attains a full measure of success. In 1820 he is appointed governor of Palermo and commander-in-chief of the troops in Sicily. The revolution which breaks out in that year leads to the termination of his services in Naples. He escapes from violence in Sicily with some difficulty. At Naples he is imprisoned and put on trial by the government but is acquitted and released in January 1821. King George IV confers on him a Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1822. He is further promoted to Knight Grand Cross by William IV in 1837.
The rising of the Greeks against the Turks has his full sympathy from the beginning. But for some years he has to act only as the friend of the insurgents in England. In 1827 he takes the honourable but unfortunate step of accepting the commandership-in-chief of the Greek army. At the point of anarchy and indiscipline to which they have now fallen, the Greeks can no longer form an efficient army and can look for salvation only to foreign intervention. Church, who lands in March, is sworn archistrategos on April 15, 1827, but cannot secure loyal co-operation or obedience. The rout of his army in an attempt to relieve the Acropolis of Athens, then besieged by the Ottomans, proves that it is incapable of conducting regular operations. With the acropolis capitulated, he turns to partisan warfare in western Greece.
After the Battle of Navarino, and during the Kapodistrias period, Church is placed commander-in-chief of the Greek regular forces in Central Greece, together with Demetrios Ypsilantis. However, he surrenders his commission as a protest against the unfriendly government of Capodistrias on August 25, 1829. He lives the remainder of his life in Greece.
Church’s activity has beneficial results and leads to a rectification in 1832, in a sense favourable to Greece, of the frontier drawn by the Great Powers in the London Protocol (1830). Under King Otto, he occupies senior military positions. On October 3, 1833, he is promoted to lieutenant general in the Hellenic Army, and in January 1835 becomes commander of the forces in Continental Greece. On June 10, 1835, he is appointed head of the Secretariat of State for Military Affairs (Army Minister), becoming Inspector-General of the Army on October 28, 1836. He serves as a senator from 1844 to 1845. He is promoted to full general in February 1854, the grade being established for the first time for this purpose in the Hellenic Army.
Church dies following an illness on March 20, 1873. The funeral service takes place in the Anglican Church in Filellinon Street in the presence of King George I and a large number of official guests. Panagiotis Chalkiopoulos, the Minister of Justice, gives the funeral speech in Greek, while John Gennadius gives a speech in English. He is buried at the First Cemetery of Athens at public expense on March 27. The funeral monument has an inscription in English on the front and Greek on the back.
(Pictured: Portrait of Sir Richard Church, oil on cardboard by an unidentified artist, 1873)
The Protestant forces are taken by surprise and there is little fighting, reflected in the term “Break,” a Scottish word for rout. Victory secures eastern Ulster for the Jacobites but they fail to fully exploit their success.
While much of the Protestant population of east Ulster supports the claim of William III to thrones of Ireland, England and Scotland, the rest of Ireland, including the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and the army, support James II. As a result, war breaks out in Ireland after James is deposed in the Glorious Revolution. At the start of the conflict, the Jacobites are left in control of two fortified positions at Carrickfergus and Charlemont in territory which is predominantly Williamite in sympathy. The local Williamites raise a militia and meet in a council at Hillsborough. They make an ineffective assault on Carrickfergus. However, this is easily beaten off and a local Catholic cleric named O’Hegarty reports that the Williamite are badly armed and trained.
The Jacobite commander in the north is Richard Hamilton, an experienced soldier who serves with the French military from 1671 to 1685, when he is appointed a colonel in the Irish Army. In September 1688, he and his regiment are transferred to England. When James flees into exile, he is held in the Tower of London. Released on parole by William in February, he is sent to negotiate with Talbot but drops this mission once back in Ireland. Alexander Osbourne, a Presbyterian clergyman, is sent to offer the Hillsborough council a pardon in return for surrender but they refuse, reportedly encouraged by Osbourne. On March 8, Hamilton marches north from Drogheda with 2,500 men to subdue the Williamites by force.
On March 14 Hamilton crosses the River Lagan and attacks a 3,000 strong Williamite force under Lord Mount Alexander at Dromore. Alexander’s cavalry falls back in disorder following a charge by the Jacobite dragoons. Seeing this, Hamilton orders a general advance of his infantry and the Williamite foot flee toward Dromore itself. They are overtaken in the village by the Jacobite cavalry and slaughtered, roughly 400 being killed and the rest fleeing for their lives.
Lord Mount Alexander rides to Donaghadee and takes a ship to England, while many other Protestants leave for Northern England or Scotland. Hamilton’s men capture Hillsborough, along with £1,000 and large stocks of food but fail to pursue their opponents. This allows the bulk of the militia under Rawdon and Henry Baker to reach Coleraine, then make their way to Derry, where they take part in the successful defence of the city.
The Capture of Bandon begins on February 23, 1689, when the town of Bandon, County Cork, is forcibly seized from its rebellious Protestant inhabitants by force of Irish Army troops under Justin McCarthy. The skirmishing at the town takes place during the early stages of the Williamite War in Ireland. The Jacobite success at Bandon helps suppress any chance of a general Munster uprising against the rule of James II similar to that which occurs in Ulster the same year. The slogan “No Surrender!” is believed to have been first used at Bandon and subsequently taken up, more famously, by the defenders at the Siege of Derry later in the year.
In 1685, the Catholic James II comes to the throne. This leads to a sharp reversal of government policy in Ireland, which had previously favoured the Protestant inhabitants. This is quickly changed by James’ representative Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell. Under Talbot’s administration, the army and civil government are mostly purged of Protestants, who are replaced by Catholics. In Bandon, the previous town burgesses are replaced by Catholic nominees.
Talbot’s actions lead to a growing hostility amongst the Protestant inhabitants across the island toward the King and his Irish government. Bandon is a historic centre of Protestants, dating back to the Plantation of Munster in the Elizabethan era and is a natural focus of dissent against James’s rule. In 1688, a similar opposition in England leads to the Glorious Revolution, in which William III successfully invades with a Dutch Army. Many Protestants now believe William to be their rightful King while Catholics, and some Protestants, remain loyal to James. During the growing turmoil, many rural County Cork Protestants come to shelter in Bandon.
Fearing a potential outbreak of rebellion in Bandon will occur, the government sends a detachment of the Irish Army under Captain Daniel O’Neill to take the town. They reportedly enter on a Sunday morning while the inhabitants are attending church services. The following day, February 24, sometimes referred to as “Black Monday,” the townspeople rise and attack the soldiers. Various sources say between three and eight of the redcoats are killed and the remainder are driven out of the town. Using their captured weapons, the Protestants then make an effort to prepare Bandon to withstand an assault.
Having received word about the growing rebellion in the county, Talbot in Dublin has already dispatched six companies of infantry under Justin McCarthy, an experienced Irish Catholic soldier. Instead of immediately assaulting Bandon, McCarthy first seizes nearby Cork, another major centre of Protestants in the south of the country and clamps down on other potential dissidents. He then proceeds to Bandon with his troops, plus some cavalry and artillery. Although they had previously hung out a banner proclaiming “No Surrender,” the defenders negotiate a surrender in exchange for generous conditions. Despite the usual punishment for rebellion being death, the town corporation is fined £1,000 and the walls are ordered to be demolished.
The comparatively light terms imposed on the town are part of a wider attempt by King James to convince Protestants of his goodwill toward them. It angers more hardline Catholics, including McCarthy’s nephew, Donough MacCarthy, 4th Earl of Clancarty, who wants a harsher punishment for the rebels.
The fighting at Bandon is part of a succession of defeats of locally raised Protestant troops both across Munster (at Castlemartyr) and Ireland as a whole, with the Ulster-raised Army of the North suffering heavy defeats at the Break of Dromore and the Battle of Cladyford. The advance of the mainly Catholic Jacobite Army is halted by the successful Protestant defence of Enniskillen and Derry. The arrival of large-scale reinforcements under Frederick Schomberg and King William reverse the tide, and Dublin is captured following the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The same year, Bandon is re-taken by Protestant forces following John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough‘s successful Siege of Cork. The walls are not rebuilt, as they are becoming increasingly militarily obsolete.
O’Hare is born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 13, 1914, the son of Edward Joseph O’Hare and Selma Anna (née Lauth). He is of Irish and German descent. When his parents divorce in 1927, he and his sisters, Patricia and Marilyn, stay with their mother in St. Louis while their father moves to Chicago. His father is a lawyer who works closely with Al Capone before turning against him and helping convict Capone of tax evasion.
On Sunday evening, January 11, 1942, as O’Hare and other VF-3 officers eat dinner in the wardroom, the USS Saratoga is damaged by a Japanese torpedo while patrolling southwest of Hawaii. She spends five months in repair on the west coast, so VF-3 squadron transfers to the USS Lexington on January 31.
At 15:42 on February 20, 1942, a jagged vee signal draws the attention of the USS Lexington‘s radar operator. The contact is then lost but reappears at 16:25 forty-seven miles west. O’Hare is one of several pilots launched to intercept nine Japanese Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers from the 4th Kōkūtai‘s 2nd Chutai. His squadmates shoot down eight bombers but he and his wingman, Marion “Duff” Dufilho, are held back in the event of a second attack.
At 16:49, the USS Lexington‘s radar picks up a second formation of “Bettys” from the 4th Kōkūtai’s 1st Chutai, only 12 miles out, on the disengaged side of the task force. With the majority of VF-3 still chasing the 2nd Chutai, only O’Hare and Dufilho are available to intercept.
O’Hare’s initial maneuver is a high-side diving attack from the formation’s starboard side employing deflection shooting. He manages to hit the outside Betty’s right engine and wing fuel tanks. When the stricken aircraft abruptly lurches to starboard, he switches to the next plane up the line. The plane catches fire, but the crew manages to extinguish the flames with a fire-extinguisher. This plane catches up with the group before bomb release.
With two “Bettys” out of formation, O’Hare begins his second firing pass, this time from the port side. His first target is the outside plane. His bullets damage the right engine and left fuel tank, forcing the pilot to dump his bombs and abort his mission. O’Hare then targets another plane which becomes his first definite kill.
As O’Hare begins his third firing pass, again from the port side, the remaining “Bettys” are nearing their bomb release point. He shoots down another plane, leaving the lead plane exposed. His concentrated fire causes the plane’s port engine nacelle to break free from its mountings and fall from the plane. The resulting explosion leaves a gaping hole in the left wing, and the plane falls out of formation.
Shortly afterward, O’Hare makes a fourth firing pass, likely against the plane that had caught fire during his initial pass but runs out of ammunition. Frustrated, he pulls away to allow the ships to fire their anti-aircraft guns. The four surviving bombers drop their ordnance, but all their 250 kg bombs miss. O’Hare believes he has shot down six bombers and damaged a seventh. Captain Frederick C. Sherman later reduces this to five, as four of the reported nine bombers are still overhead when he pulls off.
In fact, O’Hare destroys only three “Bettys.” One of the planes, however, is not yet finished. The command pilot regains enough control to level his damaged plane and attempts to crash it into USS Lexington. He misses and crashes into the water near the carrier at 17:12. Another three “Bettys” are damaged by O’Hare’s attacks. Two safely land at Vunakanau Airfield at 19:50, while the third becomes lost in a storm and eventually ditches at Simpson Harbour at 20:10.
On March 26, O’Hare is greeted at Pearl Harbor by a horde of reporters and radio announcers. Credited with shooting down five bombers, he becomes a flying ace, is selected for promotion to lieutenant commander, and becomes the first naval aviator to receive the Medal of Honor. With PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt looking on, his wife Rita places the Medal around his neck. After receiving the Medal of Honor, he is described as “modest, inarticulate, humorous, terribly nice and more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing.”
O’Hare receives further decorations later in 1943 for actions in battles near Minamitorishima in August and subsequent missions near Wake Island in October.
O’Hare’s final action takes place on the night of November 26, 1943, while he is leading the U.S. Navy’s first-ever nighttime fighter attack launched from an aircraft carrier. During this encounter with a group of Japanese torpedo bombers, his Grumman F6F Hellcat is shot down. A radio message is sent out, but there is no response. The aircraft is never found. He is declared dead a year later, his widow Rita receiving her husband’s posthumous decorations, a Purple Heart and the Navy Cross on November 26, 1944. On January 27, 1945, the U.S. Navy names a Gearing-class destroyer, USS O’Hare (DD-889), in his honor.
On September 19, 1949, the Chicago-area Orchard Depot Airport is renamed O’Hare International Airport, six years after O’Hare perished. A Grumman F4F Wildcat, in a livery identical to the aircraft flown by O’Hare, is on display in Terminal 2. The display is formally opened on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his Medal of Honor flight.
(Pictured: Lieutenant Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, USN, circa April-May 1942, official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives)
The assault focuses on the English fort which sits at a bridge on the River Blackwater, marking the border between Counties Tyrone and Armagh. It is built by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex, in 1575 as an outpost of English military strength in the heart of Gaelic Ulster, but also to secure the power of the main Irish ally in the region, Hugh O’Neill, Baron of Dungannon. The fort is composed of a square earthwork bawn “twelve score yards in circuit” reinforced by two bulwarks and punctuated with gun loops in its ramparts. In one corner stands a wooden tower, four stories tall, topped with a wooden walkway and a slate-covered building. It is accessed by two doors, one leading out onto the ramparts, another leading to a cellar. Each story has defensive firing loops, also known as spike holes. This tower overlooks a road and bridge across the river. At the other side of the river, on the Tyrone side, is a stone tower. The stone tower controls access to the bridge, as the road runs through it via large wooden doors.
Hugh O’Neill, Lord of Tyrone, is thought an ally of the English Crown and he is supported by the English authorities in Dublin as a counterweight to the power of other native lords in Ulster such as Turlough Lynagh O’Neill. However, encroachment by English authorities on the liberties of the native Irish lords in Ulster during the 1580s and early 1590s causes O’Neill to create an alliance of Irish lords, which look to throw off English rule with the help of Philip II of Spain. From April 1593, O’Neill orchestrates a proxy war against the English using Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh, and Hugh Roe O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell. They engage the English in the west of Ulster while O’Neill, outwardly still loyal to the Crown, strengthens his power base in Ulster and subdues the Crown’s Irish allies in the north. The Irish lay siege to Enniskillen Castle and defeat an English force sent to relieve it.
O’Neill’s alliance is not limited to Ulster as he is allied to Fiach McHugh O’Byrne in Leinster. He has come under increasing pressure from Lord DeputyWilliam Russell‘s military expeditions into the Wicklow Mountains. In desperation, Fiach McHugh asks that Tyrone offer help or at least raid the northern Pale to draw Russell out of Wicklow. O’Neill requests a meeting with Russell to discuss how to proceed but this is dismissed by the Lord Deputy as a ploy to draw him out of O’Byrne’s lands. Therefore, to help O’Byrne, O’Neill makes his first open move against the Crown.
On the morning of Sunday, February 16, 1595, Art MacBaron O’Neill approaches the fort from the direction of Armagh with 40 men, escorting what appears to be two prisoners. As they cross the bridge one of the English warders notices the match cords of the Irishmen’s matchlock calivers are lit, a sign that they are ready to fire. The English open fire and MacBaron’s men force their way into the stone tower, but the English withdraw to the upper stories and prevent the Irish from taking the tower. Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, 200 Irish soldiers sweep over the earth ramparts and take the bawn. The English soldiers and their families retreat to the wooden tower. Defensive fire from within keeps the Irish back and twice the warders thwart MacBaron’s attempts to burn the position. Fifteen of MacBaron’s men are killed attempting to storm the towers, and eight more later die of their wounds. The stalemate lasts until five o’clock in the evening when MacBaron calls for a ceasefire. He offers the garrison terms for their surrender. The English, led by Edward Cornwall, are critically low on ammunition but still prevaricate until MacBaron threatens to burn the fort to the ground with all in it. The ward’s surrender is agreed and MacBaron guarantees their safe passage to Newry.
The loss of the fort is doubtless a military setback for the Crown, but of more significance is the presence of the Earl of Tyrone in person. According to the English commander, O’Neill arrives after the surrender and is outraged at the losses suffered in taking the fort and is angry that the defenders had not been executed. After the English soldiers and their families leave, O’Neill looks on as the bridge is demolished and the fort’s defence slighted. Up until this point there is no concrete proof that O’Neill was active in the attacks by Maguire and O’Donnell in the west of Ireland. Now there is indisputable proof that the Crown was at war with O’Neill.
(Pictured: The Blackwater Fort at present-day Blackwatertown in County Armagh, built by the Earl of Essex during a foray into Ulster in 1575 and captured and destroyed by the Irish in 1595. This pen and ink sketch measures 22½ by 16½ inches and is dated March 27, 1587.)
seamus dubhghaill 