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Confederate Catholics at War, 1641-1649(Hardback - 2001) €29.00 |
Price: €29.00
Add to BagThis book locates the background to the 1641 risingin the anomalous position of Irish Catholics in a predominantly Protestant composite monarchy and traces, in that rising, the precursors to the Confederate war-effort. A chronological narrative then sets subsequent events of the period 1642-49 in the context of the ongoing wars in all three Stuart kingdoms and evaluates the range of strategic options open to the Confederate Catholics.
The author isolates key aspects of the war-effort for thematic evaluation. Extracting money, the proverbial 'sinew of war', from an agrarian and a comparatively unmonetized economy posed a hard challenge to the infant regime. The author shows how the Confederate Catholics surmounted this challenge and maintained large standing armies. The transition to a modern continental model of warfare was mediated by returned mercenary officers. They helped the Irish develop a qualitative edge in fortifications and siegecraft. Their mastery of these, the most technically demanding operations of the age, confounds easy assumptions of 'Celtic' primitivism. Crucially, however, the Confederate Catholics did not develop a comparable qualitative edge on the battlefield. Using their most shattering defeat, Dungan's Hill in 1647, as an exemplar, the author suggests why this was so. The consequence of military failure was the self-liquidation of the regime early in 1649. Traditional explanations that the Confederate Catholic regime failed because it was torn asunder by internal conflicts are transcended here without substituting crude military determinism. Military reverses were as likely to be a cause as a symptom of debilitating factionalism. The Confederation of Kilkenny died in battle.
Hardback: 2001
Printed Pages: 306
Size: 220 x 145mm
ISBN: 9781859182444
