Sack of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel, the citadel in which the defenders of Cashel attempted to hold off the assault

Date	September 1647
Location	Cashel, County Tipperary
Result	English Parliamentarians take the town and massacre its garrison

Belligerents

Irish Confederate Catholics Munster army garrison

English Parliamentarians

Commanders and leaders

Lieutenant-Colonel Butler

Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin

Strength

c.600 soldiers

Casualties and losses

c.600 soldiers & hundreds of civilians killed

low

The Sack of Cashel (also known as the Massacre of Cashel) was a notorious atrocity which occurred in the Irish County of Tipperary in the year 1647, during the Irish Confederate Wars, part of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The town of Cashel was held by the Irish Catholic Confederate's Munster army and was besieged and taken by an English Protestant Parliamentarian army under Murrough O'Brien the Baron of Inchiquin. The attack and subsequent sack of Cashel was one of the more brutal incidents of the wars of the 1640s in Ireland.

The Sack of Cashel occurred against the background of a complex conflict in the south of Ireland. In 1642, most the province of Munster had fallen to Irish Catholic rebels with the exception of Cork city and a few towns along the south coast, which remained in the hands of Protestant, largely English settlers. Since then, the province had been fought over by the Catholics, organised in the Catholic Confederation, and the Protestants, led by the Earl of Inchiquin.

The political and military situation was further fragmented by the English Civil War, in which the Catholics gave their support to King Charles I, and the Protestants, since 1643, to the English Parliament. What was more, the Confederate Catholics were themselves split over the terms on which they should sign a peace deal with the King. A deep rift developed within their ranks in 1647 between those who were prepared to accept a mere toleration of Catholicism in return for an alliance with the English Royalists and those who in effect wanted Ireland to be Catholic kingdom, albeit under sovereignty of the Stuart monarchy. This infighting was to fatally hamper the war effort of the Confederates in Munster and make possible the Protestant sack of Cashel.

On 12 June 1647 Donough MacCarthy, the Viscount of Muskerry entered the camp of the Irish Confederate Munster army. The Viscount Muskerry was probably the most powerful Confederate leader in Munster and was known to be sympathetic to the powerful Irish Royalist Ormonde. At that time, the Munster army was commanded by the Earl of Glamorgan, an English Catholic nobleman who had been granted command of the army by the Confederate Supreme council for reasons of political expediency, being aligned neither to the Royalist nor clerical faction.

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