Battle of Benburb

Battle of Benburb
Part of the Irish Confederate Wars
Date 5 June 1646 Location Benburb, County Tyrone 54°24′43″N 6°44′46″W / 54.412°N 6.746°W / 54.412; -6.746Coordinates: 54°24′43″N 6°44′46″W / 54.412°N 6.746°W / 54.412; -6.746 Result Irish Confederate victory
Belligerents
Irish Confederate Catholics Ulster Army	Scots Covenanters and English and Scottish settlers
Commanders and leaders
Owen Roe O'Neill	Robert Monro
Strength
5,000	6,000
Casualties and losses
c.300 killed	2–3,000 killed
Location within Island of Ireland

The Battle of Benburb took place on 5 June 1646 during the Irish Confederate Wars, the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It was fought between the forces of Confederate Ireland under Owen Roe O'Neill and a Scottish Covenanter and Anglo-Irish army under Robert Monro. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the Irish Confederates and ended the Scottish hopes of conquering Ireland and imposing their own religious settlement there.

The Scots had landed an army in Ulster in 1642, to protect the Scottish settlers there from the that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1641. They also hoped to conquer the country, to destroy Catholicism there and impose Presbyterianism as the state religion. They landed at Carrickfergus and linked up with an army of British settlers based around Derry who were led by Robert Stewart. They cleared Ulster of Irish rebels by 1643, but were unable to advance south of mid-Ulster, which was held by Owen Roe O'Neill, the general of the Irish Confederate Ulster army. Both sides robbed and killed civilians in territory controlled by their enemy, so that by 1646, a sort of no man's land of scorched earth separated the opposing sides. O'Neill remarked of the devastation that Ulster looked, "not only like a desert, but like hell". While the three armies continued to raid into each other's territory, none of them could organise enough supplies to hold any captured territory.

In 1646, Monro and Stewart joined forces, making a major foray into Confederate held territory. According to some accounts, this was an attempt to take the Confederates' capital at Kilkenny; other sources say it was only a major raid. Either way, the combined British force was about 6,000 strong. Monro had ten regiments of infantry, of whom six were Scottish and four were English or Anglo-Irish, and 600 Ulster Protestant cavalry. O'Neill, who was a very cautious general, had previously avoided fighting pitched battles. However, he had just been supplied by the Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, with muskets, ammunition and money with which to pay his soldiers' wages. This allowed him to put over 5,000 men into the field – an army slightly smaller than his enemy's. The Covenanters had six cannon, whereas the Confederates had none.