As the Irish war developed, both the Confederate and British forces suffered from acute shortages of money and supplies. During the winter of 1642 and spring of 1643, a war of attrition developed where both sides tried to bring economic ruin to the other by destroying crops, killing or stealing cattle and burning settlements.
Campaigns of 1643
Initially, Thomas Preston's Leinster army was unable to finance regular troops and relied upon raising levies to react to British raids. On 2 March 1643, the Marquis of Ormond advanced from Dublin with 3,000 foot, 700 horse and six artillery pieces. He intended to capture New Ross in County Wexford in order to disrupt communications between the Confederate capital Kilkenny and the ports of Waterford and Wexford. Ormond's advance was delayed by the stubborn resistance of the defenders of Timolin Castle in County Kildare and he finally reached Ross on 11 March where his attempt to storm the town was driven back by the defenders. On the approach of Confederate reinforcements from Munster, Ormond abandoned the siege on 16 March. Preston had finally raised the Leinster militia and manoeuvred to block Ormond's withdrawal to Dublin, but at the battle of Ross (Balinvegga) on 18 March, Ormond routed the Leinster Confederates and fought his way back to safety.
In Ulster, where Owen Roe O'Neill's army was too small to contain the British forces, the relentless raids of Monro's Covenanters and the Laggan army forced many Irish to abandon settled agriculture and adopt a nomadic lifestyle based on the creaght, following the Ulster army with their herds of cattle. O'Neill and the creaghts withdrew from Ulster towards Connacht, but were ambushed and defeated by Sir Robert Stewart and the Laggan army at Clones in County Monaghan on 13 June 1643. After this setback, O'Neill joined forces with his kinsman Sir Phelim O'Neill who came up from Kilkenny with a consignment of weapons, ammunition and artillery supplied by the Spanish. However, O'Neill resolved not to fight the British in a pitched battle until his forces were properly trained and equipped. Consequently, he left Ulster and moved into County Meath to raid for supplies and threaten Dublin from the north-west. When British forces under Lord Moore tried to drive him back, O'Neill took up a defensive position at Portlester. The British retreated when Lord Moore's head was blown off by a cannon shot aimed, according to legend, by O'Neill himself.
By the summer of 1643, siege artillery bought with Spanish and papal subsidies enabled General Preston to begin an effective campaign against British garrisons in Leinster. The combination of Preston's operations in west Leinster and O'Neill's marauding creaghts in the north-west forced Ormond and the Lord Justices in Dublin onto the defensive. The Confederates of Connacht had belatedly mustered an army which was besieging Castle Coote in County Roscommon. In Munster, the Earl of Castlehaven defeated Lord Inchiquin's cavalry under Sir Charles Vavasour at Cloghlea, gaining control of large areas of east Cork for the Confederates.
At this stage of the war, the Confederates agreed to negotiate a cease-fire in the hope of gaining constitutional and religious concessions from the King.
The Cessation of Arms, 1643-4
During 1643, the negotiations for an alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters forced King Charles to seek military help from Ireland. Initially, the Earl of Antrim tried to revive his plan for an attack on Scotland first envisaged during the Bishops' Wars. Antrim wanted to negotiate a secret treaty between Irish Royalists and the Confederates to mount a joint attack on the Ulster Scots. From Ulster, the combined Irish army would invade Scotland via the western isles to link up with a second army raised by Antrim and Scottish Royalists, while a third Royalist army invaded from England. Antrim's ambitious plan had little hope of succeeding and in any case it was made public in May 1643 when he was taken prisoner by Covenanter forces in Ulster. His captured correspondence revealed full details of the plot and encouraged the Covenanters and the English Parliament to hurry ahead with negotiations for the Solemn League and Covenant. This in turn prompted the King to step up negotiations for a treaty with the Confederates.
On the King's behalf, the Marquis of Ormond entered into negotiations with Viscount Mountgarret of the Confederates in April 1643. Despite opposition from Irish Catholics at Kilkenny, a one-year cease-fire, the Cessation of Arms, was signed in September 1643. In exchange for contributions of money and supplies to the Royalists in England, the Confederates were allowed to retain control of all the lands they had captured in Ireland. In addition, the King promised to consider granting freedom of worship to Catholics and making constitutional reforms in Ireland. Confederate representatives went to Oxford to negotiate a permanent treaty, but this came to nothing because the King was reluctant to antagonise his Protestant supporters.
The Cessation allowed government troops stationed in Ireland to return to England to fight for the Royalists. However, Parliament used the situation to political advantage by implying that the returning troops were bloodthirsty Irish papists, thus playing upon the worst fears of English Protestants. At the same time as the Cessation, the Scottish Covenanters joined the civil war in England on the side of Parliament. The Scots refused to recognise the Cessation and Monro's army remained active in Ulster, though the Protestant Laggan army was divided over whether to accept the Cessation or the Covenant. In Munster, Lord Inchiquin changed sides and declared for Parliament in July 1644, partly because he repudiated the King's dealings with the Catholic Confederacy, partly because the King refused to appoint him Lord-President of Munster.
Early in 1644, the Earl of Antrim tried to persuade the Supreme Council to back his proposal to send 2,000 Confederate soldiers against the Covenanters in Scotland and a further 10,000 against the Parliamentarians in England. The Council agreed to send a force to Scotland but the plan to send Irish troops to England was rejected when negotiations between Confederate representatives and the King at Oxford broke down. In June 1644, a force of 1,600 Confederate soldiers under the command of Alasdair MacColla left for Scotland. These veterans formed the nucleus of the army commanded by the Marquis of Montrose in his spectacular Scottish campaign against the Covenanters during 1644-5.
Ulster 1644
During the summer of 1644, with contingents of Major-General Monro's Ulster Covenanters recalled to Scotland to counter the threat from the Royalist Marquis of Montrose, the Confederates planned an offensive against Monro, hoping to use the combined Ulster and Leinster armies to drive the weakened Covenanters out of Ulster. However, split by political factionalism, the Confederate Supreme Council found it difficult to decide upon a commander. To the annoyance of the generals Owen Roe O'Neill and Thomas Preston, command of the expedition was eventually given to the Earl of Castlehaven. Meanwhile, in June 1644, Monro led a pre-emptive attack by advancing into southern Ulster with over 6,000 men in an attempt to bring the Irish army to battle before it was fully prepared. The Scottish advance threw the Irish into disarray, but Monro was unable to force a decisive encounter. After burning the town of Kells in County Meath, a shortage of supplies forced him to withdraw.
Castlehaven finally joined forces with O'Neill at Portlester towards the end of July and their combined forces marched into Ulster. However, Castlehaven was reluctant to risk a battle and O'Neill's resentment at not being given command left him surly and uncooperative. When the Scots advanced again, the Confederates withdrew to the stronghold of Charlemont Fort and the two forces faced one another in a seven-week stand-off. The expedition against the Ulster Covenanters ended in mutual recrimination between Castlehaven and O'Neill when their supplies ran out. Castlehaven withdrew into County Cavan, claiming that he had successfully pinned down Monro's forces in Ulster and prevented any threat to the other three provinces.
The Confederate War reached stalemate. The King, Parliament and Covenanters were preoccupied with the civil war in England. In Ireland, raids and skirmishes continued, strongholds occasionally changed hands, but neither the Confederates nor the remaining Protestant forces were strong enough to deal a decisive blow.
Confederate Factions
In January 1645, King Charles issued a warrant to the Earl of Glamorgan, a Welsh Catholic nobleman, to negotiate for a secret treaty with the Confederates. The King desperately needed more troops in England, particularly after his crushing defeat at Naseby in June 1645, and he was now prepared to recruit Irish Confederates despite the potential political damage to his cause amongst English and Scottish Protestants. Glamorgan was empowered to promise major concessions to Roman Catholics in Ireland in exchange for a Confederate army. At the same time, the staunchly Protestant Marquis of Ormond was negotiating an official treaty with the Confederates. Ormond was apparently unaware of the secret Glamorgan treaty, or the extent of the King's duplicity.
The situation was further complicated by the arrival at Kilkenny of Archbishop Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, in November 1645. Rinuccini's instructions from Pope Innocent X were to work for nothing less than the expulsion of all Protestants from Ireland and for the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church to its former power. Rinuccini adopted a hardline approach, rejecting the negotiations with Ormond and attempting to gain more concessions from Lord Glamorgan. When that failed, Rinuccini promoted the "Roman Treaty" signed between Sir Kenelm Digby and the Pope at the instigation of Queen Henrietta Maria. Tortuous negotiations continued until the spring of 1646, when it became clear that the King had lost the English Civil War.
Rinuccini's uncompromising attitude split the Confederacy. His most fervent supporters sought the restoration of the Catholic church in Ireland above all other considerations. This group included the Catholic clergy, the native Gaelic Irish and many of the exiles who had returned to Ireland, including Owen Roe O'Neill. However, the Supreme Council at Kilkenny was dominated by the Anglo-Irish noblemen, led by Ormond's brother-in-law Viscount Muskerry. The nobles favoured a negotiated peace treaty with King Charles and looked to Ormond for guidance. A third moderate faction emerged, led by the distinguished lawyer Nicholas Plunkett, which tried to preserve the unity of the Confederacy whilst still protecting Irish political and religious interests.
Sources:
S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War vol. i, (London 1888)
Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War 1641-49, (Cork 2001)
C.P. Meehan, The Confederation of Kilkenny, (Dublin 1846)
Jane Ohlmeyer, The Civil Wars in Ireland (in The Civil Wars, a military history of England, Scotland and Ireland 1638-60), Oxford 1998
C.V. Wedgwood, The King's War (London 1955)