Battle of Dungans Hill: Encyclopedia II - Battle of Dungans Hill - The Battle

Battle of Dungans Hill - The Battle

From a Parliamentarian point of view, victory in this battle was presented to them by the incompetence of the Irish commander. Preston was a veteran of the Thirty Years War where he had been a commander of the Spanish garrison at Leuven, but had no experience of open warfare or handling cavalry (Jones by contrast had been a cavalry officer in the English Civil War). As a result, he tried to move his cavalry along a narrow covered lane (site of the present day main road), where they trapped and subjected to enemy fire without being able to respond. The demoralised Irish cavalry fled the field, leaving Preston’s infantry alone.

The Confederate’s infantry were primarily equipped with pikes and heavy muskets, and trained to stand in tercios in the Spanish manner. This meant they were difficult to break, but also highly immobile, without cavalry to cover their cumbersome formation when it moved. What was worse, Preston had positioned them in a large walled field, so that when their cavalry had run away, the Parliamentarians could surround and trap them. Some of the Irish infantry, Scottish Highlanders, brought to Ireland by Alasdair MacColla, managed to charge and break through Jones’ men and escape into a nearby bog, where the English cavalry could not follow. Preston and about 2-3000 of his regular infantry managed to follow the Highlanders to safety, but the remainder were trapped.

What happened next is disputed. The Irish infantry managed to hold off several assaults on their position, before trying to follow their comrades into the safety of the bog. This made them lose their formation and the Parliamentarians got in amongst them and then surrounded them in the bogland. Parliamentarian accounts simply say that the Irish force was then destroyed. Irish accounts, however, claim that the Confederate troops surrendered and were then massacred. One account, by a Catholic friar named O Meallain, says taht the corpses of the Iirsh foot soldiers were found with their hands tied. A recent study (Padraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War, Cork 2001), suggests that the Irishmen probably tried to surrender, but that, according to the conventions of 17th century warfare, this had to be accepted before it entitled them to safety. In this case, it was not accepted and the infantrymen were butchered. Around 3000 Confederate troops and a small number of Parliamentarians died at Dungans Hill. Most of the dead were Irish infantrymen killed in the last stage of the battle. Those prisoners who were taken were mainly officers, whom the Parliamentarians could either ransom or exchange for prisoners of their own. Richard Talbot (later Earl of Tyroconnell and Lord Deputy of Ireland, but then a junior cavalry officer) was among the Confederate prisoners.

In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Owen Roe O'Neill's Ulster army came south to protect Confederate held Leinster from Jones. However the Confederates best trained and equipped army had been destroyed and with it, their last chance of winning the war without Royalist help.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Battle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki