Battle of Dungans Hill

Part of the Irish Confederate Wars

Date	August 1647
Location	Dungan's Hill, near Summerhill, County Meath
Result	English Parliamentarian Victory, destruction of Leinster army

Belligerents

Irish Confederate Catholics Leinster Army and some Highland Scots

English Parliamentarians

Commanders and leaders

Thomas Preston

Michael Jones

Strength

6000 Irish

900 Highland Scots

6000

Casualties and losses

over 3000 killed, many officers captured and supplies, artillery and equipment lost

low

6000 Irish

The Battle of Dungan's Hill took place in County Meath, in eastern Ireland in August 1647. It was fought between the armies of Confederate Ireland and the English Parliament during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Irish army was intercepted on a march towards Dublin and destroyed. Although it is a little-known event, even in Ireland, the battle was very bloody (with over 3000 deaths) and had important political repercussions. The Parliamentarian victory there destroyed the Irish Confederate forces’ Leinster army and contributed to the collapse of the Confederate cause and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649.

By 1647, The Irish Catholic Confederation controlled all of Ireland except for Parliamentarian enclaves around Dublin and Cork and a Scottish outpost in Ulster. The previous year they had rejected a treaty with the English Royalists in favour of eliminating the remaining British forces in Ireland.

In August 1647, the Confederate Leinster army under Thomas Preston was attempting to take Dublin from the English Parliamentarian garrison under Michael Jones, when it was intercepted by the Roundheads and forced to give battle. Jones had marched to Trim to relieve the Parliamentarian outpost there at Trim Castle. Preston, who had been shadowing Jones' movements, attempted to march on Dublin before Jones' army returned there, but covered only 19 of the 60 or so kilometres (12 of the 40 miles) before being caught at Dungan's Hill, where the Confederate forces had to form up for battle.

The battle took place near the modern village of Summerhill and along the present main road between Trim and Kilcock.

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, Preston tried to move his cavalry along a narrow covered lane (site of the present day main road), where they were trapped and subjected to enemy fire without being able to respond. Even worse, Preston had placed a large number of his troops in wheat fields over seven feet tall. As a result these troops were unable to see the Parliamentarians until it was too late. With the Confederate army spread out and in confusion, Jones' troops fell in amongst them causing the demoralised Irish cavalry to flee the field, leaving the remainder of Preston’s infantry unsupported.

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Wikipedia