Qualla: Battle of Clones

Battle of Clones: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eoghan Ruadh O Neill had spent over thirty years on the continent learning his trade. He had defended Arras in 1640 against superior numbers and earned the kind of European reputation that made expatriate Irish soldiers proud. In July 1642 he sailed home to Ireland with arms, munitions, and 200 hand-picked veterans from the Spanish service, charged with turning a shambolic Confederate army into a real fighting force. Eleven months later, on 13 June 1643, on the road south of Clones, the Laggan Army of Ulster Scots Royalists found him before he was ready. The battle that followed lasted barely an hour. By its end, 150 of his men were dead, including a sickening number of the veteran officers he had brought with him from Flanders, and the Confederate timetable for Ulster lay in ruins on the south bank of the Finn River.

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Clones: A General Returns

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown, Van Brugens, Public domain. Eoghan Ruadh O Neill, born in 1585, was a descendant of the old O Neill royalty of Tyrone. As a boy he watched the Nine Years War end in Irish defeat and the Treaty of Mellifont in 1603. Like many young Irishmen of his generation he took the Flight of the Earls route into Europea...

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Image: Unknown, Van Brugens | Public domain

Battle of Clones: The Army He Inherited

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. What O Neill found in Ulster was not an army. His predecessor, Sir Felim O Neill of Kinard, had taken poorly trained levies into the field with disastrous results. The Confederate forces in the north were a corps of raw recruits, badly armed, badly fed, and outclassed by every pr...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Clones: The Stewarts and Their Militia

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Laggan Army was the creation of the Stewart brothers, Sir William and Sir Robert, wealthy Protestant landowners in northwest Ulster who had received large grants of escheated land during the Plantation. Both brothers had served the English Crown militarily. After the 1641 ris...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Clones: The Road South

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 9 June 1643, O Neill sent messengers to his outlying commanders telling them to rendezvous with him at Clones. He arrived first, with a convoy estimated at 3,100 individuals: 1,600 fighting men, plus their families, supply wagons, baggage carts, livestock, and the nomadic herd...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Clones: An Hour That Lost a Year

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cavalry scouting ran straight into Stewart's vanguard. After a short clash O Neill fell back to his army. Stewart sent his own cavalry forward against the musketeers, drove them off, and pulled back to coordinate a full attack. Before that attack could be mounted, O Neill sen...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0