Battle of Scarrifholis: Encyclopedia II - Battle of Scarrifholis - The Battle

Battle of Scarrifholis - The Battle

MacMahon’s inexperience was further exposed in how he drew up his troops for battle. He placed a small advance guard in front his army and positioned the rest of his troops in a huge solid mass, which meant that it would be very difficult to manoeuvre and very few units could actually engage the enemy, being stuck within the ranks of their own men. Coote, meanwhile, who had been fighting since 1641 and whose father had been a professional soldier, drew up his men in small flexible units – able to reinforce one another and to move around the battlefield.

The battle started when Coote sent an infantry detachment to meet the Irish advance party. The two sides exchanged musket volleys at close range and then fought hand to hand with pikes and musket butts. However, Coote steadily reinforced his infantry and eventually drove the Irishmen back into the front of their formation. Because of the formation MacMahon had adopted, this virtually imprisoned the front ranks of the Irish army, who were trapped behind their own panicked skirmishers and the pursuing British infantry. Seeing his chance, Coote sent more infantry to attack the flanks of the Irish formation, trapping the whole force between his men and the mountain side that they had marched down from before the battle.

The predicament the Irish now found themselves in was a little like the Roman army that Hannibal destroyed at battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Although they still outnumbered their enemies, they were pinned in dense uncoordinated mass, unable to defend themselves against the troops who had surrounded them. Increasingly, they were a mob of terrified individuals rather than a disciplined military unit. The fact they were also very short of ammunition meant that the Parliamentarians were able to pour volleys into this dense mass without effective reply, cutting down the Irish from a distance. At this point, the Irish were routed, and their leaders and horsemen fled the battlefield, pursued by the Parliamentarian cavalry and by the local Protestant population –who took the opportunity to avenge the massacres they had suffered at the hands of the Irish Catholics in 1641-42. Nevertheless, the doomed Irish infantry fought doggedly until they were slaughtered. Testament to this is that two thirds of the Irish dead were found on the battlefield itself rather than along the line of pursuit.

Battle of Scarrifholis - Aftermath

The battle was a decisive victory for Coote and British Parliamentarians. Over 3000 of the Ulster army were killed – 2000 on the field and another 1000 in the pursuit – about 75% of their total numbers. The Parliamentarians lost only around 100 soldiers killed. Coote ordered that Irish wounded and prisoners taken were to be killed, including Henry O’Neill, Owen Roe O'Neill’s son, who had surrendered on terms. MacMahon was captured a week later at Enniskillen and hanged.

The battle marked the destruction of the Ulster army, not only because of the loss of manpower, which could be replaced, but because of the loss of many officers and virtually all their weapons and equipment, which could not. In addition to O’Neill and MacMahon, the Irish lost 9 colonels, 4 lieutenant colonels, 3 majors, 20 captains and hundreds of other junior officers. This represented a huge cull of the Ulster Irish Catholic land-owning class, far bigger than in the famous Flight of the Earls in 1607. For this reason, the battle has been described as "Ulster’s Aughrim" – a battle marking the extermination of the province’s native aristocracy and assuring the continued existence and supremacy of its Protestant settler population.

Coote went on to march south, taking Sligo and then Galway after a long siege in 1652. The surrender of this city marked the effective end of the Irish resistance to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

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