Owen Roe O'Neill

Eoghan Rua Ó Néill, anglicised as Owen Roe O'Neill (c. 1590–1649) ("Red Owen"), was one of the most celebrated of the O'Neill family of Ireland, the subject of the well-known ballad The Lament for Owen Roe, was the son of Art O'Neill, a younger brother of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone (the Great O'Neill). As a young man, left Ireland in the Flight of the Earls to escape the English conquest of his native Ulster.

After 40 years abroad, and having served with distinction for many years in the Spanish army, most recently in Flanders, he returned to Ireland to aid the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The subsequent war is known as the Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Because of his military experience, O'Neill was recognised on his return to Ireland, at Doe Castle in Donegal (end of July 1642), as the leading representative of the O'Neills and head of the Ulster Irish. Sir Phelim O'Neill resigned the northern command of the Irish rebellion in Owen Roe's favour, and escorted him from Lough Swilly to Charlemont. But jealousy between the kinsmen was complicated by differences between Owen Roe and the Catholic Confederation which met at Kilkenny in October 1642. Owen Roe professed to be acting in the interest of Charles I; but his real aim was the complete independence of Ireland, while the Old English Catholics represented by the council desired to secure religious liberty and an Irish constitution under the crown of England.

Although Owen Roe O'Neill possessed the qualities of a general, the struggle dragged on inconclusively for three or four years. In 1646 O'Neill, furnished with supplies by the papal nuncio, Rinuccini, attacked the Scottish Covenanter army under Major-General Robert Monro, who had landed in Ireland in April 1642. On 5 June 1646 O'Neill utterly routed Monro at the battle of Benburb, on the Blackwater; but, being summoned to the south by Rinuccini, he failed to take advantage of the victory, and suffered Monro to remain unmolested at Carrickfergus.

In March 1646 a treaty was signed between between Ormonde and the Catholics, which would have committed the Catholics to sending troops to aid the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. The peace terms however, were rejected by am majority of the Irish Catholic military and the Catholic clergy. O'Neill led his Ulster army, along with Thomas Preston's Leinster army, in a failed attempt to take Dublin from Ormonde. However, the Irish Confederates suffered heavy military defeats the following year at the hands of Parliamentarian forces in Ireland, leading to a moderation of their demands and a new peace deal with the Royalists. This time O'Neill was alone among the Irish generals in rejecting the peace deal and found himself Isolated by the departure of the papal nuncio from Ireland in February 1649.

He refused to join the Catholic/Royalist coalition and his Ulster army fought with other Irish Catholic armies. He made overtures for alliance to Monck, who was in command of the parliamentarians in the north, to obtain supplies for his forces, and failing to obtain them from Monck he turned once more to Ormonde and the Catholic confederates, with whom he prepared to co-operate more earnestly when Cromwell's arrival in Ireland in August 1649 brought the Catholic party face to face with serious danger.

Before, however, anything was accomplished by this combination, Owen Roe died on 6 November 1649. The Catholic nobles and gentry met in Ulster in March to appoint a commander to succeed Owen Roe O'Neill, and their choice fell on Heber MacMahon, Bishop of Clogher, the chief organizer of the recent Clonmacnoise meeting. O'Neill's Ulster army was unable to prevent the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, despite a successful defence of Clonmel and was destroyed at the battle of Scarrifholis in Donegal in 1650.[[