Battle of Affane

Part of the Private war between Fitzgeralds and Butlers

Date	February 1565
Location	Affane, County Waterford, Ireland
Result	Butler victory

Belligerents

Geraldines of Desmond and allies.

Butlers of Ormonde and allies

Commanders and leaders

Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond

Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde

Strength

c.180 horse, 3-400 heavy infantry, hundreds more lightly armed infantry.

Casualties and losses

c.300 killed

c. low

The Battle of Affane was fought in county Waterford, in south-eastern Ireland, in 1565, between the forces of the Fitzgerald Earl of Desmond and the Butler Earl of Ormond. The battle ended in the rout of the Desmond (or Geraldine) forces. It was one of the last private battles fought in Britain or Ireland.

Munster had been dominated by the Old English Fitzgeralds of Desmond and Butlers of Ormonde since the 13th century. The vast Fitzgerald lands spanned the south and south-west of Ireland, across the modern counties – Cork, Kerry and Tipperary.

Ormonde territory centred on the city of Kilkenny and concentrated in counties Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary. The rival dynasties were locked in a cycle of raids as each side sought to consolidate and expand its territory at the expense of the other. In the 1560s, this exploded into war.

In the preceding years the widowed Countess of Ormonde, mother of Sir Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde, had married Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, with a view to reconciliation between the two houses. In 1560 her intervention secured a peaceful outcome to a stand-off at Bohermore (known as, the battle that never was). Her death in 1564 ended the truce, and raiding was resumed on both sides.

As the dispute ebbed and flowed, Sir Maurice Fitzgerald – a Desmond dependant resident in the borderland between the territories – declared his intention to accept the protection of his first cousin, Tom Butler, Earl of Ormonde. In response, Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond, mustered his forces in January 1565, and marched east into the Decies in Waterford, Maurice Fitzgerald's place.

Ormonde mobilised his men to intercept the Geraldines at Affane, a ford over the Finisk tributary of the Blackwater River, in the foothills of the Knockmealdown Mountains near Lismore.

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Wikipedia