Ulster's Defence Tradition
- Part 1 -

By Robert K. Campbell
New Ulster, Spring, 1993

The modern defence tradition of Ulster can be dated from 1641 (though the preceding years had by no means been quiet). In October of that year the Irish rose in revolt, the climax of a carefully planned conspiracy, encouraged by both the local situation and the political crises in England and Scotland. Most of the towns and castles in Ulster were captured and many of the Protestant inhabitants and their families were slaughtered, often with appalling cruelty. The result was widespread panic and many fled to Britain. Those that did not flee organised themselves. Captain Lawson, no longer a soldier but owner of the ironworks at Old Forge, Belfast, recorded:

bought a drum, and beating the same through the town, raised about twenty men, who came with me again up to the Iron Works, having Mr. Forbes, and some number with me, where I also gathered in all ahout 160 horse and foot.

With this band of citizen soldiers, Lawson marched to Lisburn and successfully held the town against Irish Forces under Sir Conn Magennis. Meanwhile, other volunteers dug a ditch and threw up a rampart to defend Belfast. Further west, armed volunteers from Garvagh were defeated by a much larger Irish army at the Battle of Revelyn's Hill, the survivors fleeing to Coleraine, which was successfully defended by 650 armed citizens, organised into 7 companies. Limavady and Ballycastle (Co. Londonderry) were two other places which held out, as, of course, did Londonderry City.1

After the first shock of the rebellion and the initial frantic defence measures, the Protestants began to hit back. For example, volunteers from the Laggan district (Co. Donegal, near Londonderry) launched a counter-attack in early summer 1642, organized by two brothers and professional soldiers, Sir William and Sir Robert Stewart. The Laggan men swiftly recaptured Strabane; relieved Limavady; destroyed rebel bands in the Magilligan Peninsula; swept through the Roe Valley and at the Gelvin Burn near Dungiven and finally, relieving Coleraine.2

Elsewhere, enraged Protestants engaged in counter-massacres to avenge their families and friends; however, most atrocities committed against the Irish population seem to have been the responsibilty of the Scottish army of Major-General Robert Monro, which arrived in Ulster in the Spring of 1642. The conflict subsequently became entangled and confused with the English Civil War. Only in 1653 did the fighting cease, with the victory of the Cromwellians. A peace of exhaustion lasted 35 years. 3

The conflict which englufed Ulster in 1689 - 90 was, as with 1641, triggered by upheavals in the wider spheres of British and European politics: the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the international attempts; ultimately successful, to curb the power, ambition and aggressions of King Louis XIV of France.

As James II's Viceroy in Ireland, Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, had purged the Royal army in Ireland of many of its Protestant officers and soldiers (in an age when religious affiliation was equivalent to ideological affiliation in the Cold War) Ulster Protestants again found themselves lacking the protection of a regular army. So after declaring for William III they organised themselves into County Associations, co-ordinated by a Council of the North. Volunteers were recruited, but arms and training were both in short supply and the appointed commander, the Earl of Mount Alexander, lacked the necessary military experience. An attack on Carrickfergus, held by a garrison of Tyrconnell's, failed. In March 1689, Ulster was invaded by the Irish army under Lt.-Gen. Richard Hamilton. Ulster volunteers, seeking to oppose them were routed at the 'Break of Dromore'. Again, the population split into those that panicked and fled to England and Scotland - these including the Earl of Mount Alexander - and those who determined on further resistance. Even for the latter, retreat to relatively better positions was a military necessity. The surviving Protestant forces, some 4,000 strong, fell back on Coleraine. They were accompanied by civilian refugees and a scorched earth policy was adopted:

the Protestants destroyed their homes, burnt ferry-boats, broke down bridges; whole towns were destroyed this way.

Richard Hamilton's army of 7,000 (one-third regulars) followed up. But when the Irish attacked Coleraine on 28 March 1689, they were unpleasantly surprised by the stubborn and effective resistance of the Ulstermen. About 60 Irishmen were killed; 3 Ulstermen fell. There followed a short campaign-in-miniature as the Ulstermen tried to prevent the Irish from crossing the River Bann. But there were too few defenders for the task and by 7 April, the Irish were over the river. Lacking the resources to withstand a siege and with his communications with Londonderry threatened, Gustavus Hamilton, the commander in Coleraine, abandoned the town and fell back on Londonderry.

Richard Hamilton followed and marched his army down the eastern bank of the River Foyle so as to be able to cross the narrower and shallower tributaries, the Mourne and the Finn and then advance north on Londonderry City. The garrison of Londonderry attempted to block the fords but, despite having a substantial numerical superiority, were defeated and driven back to the city. The reasons are not hard to find: the Ulsterman had hardly any ammunition (one troop was issued with three rounds per man) and they were sketchily trained citizens, while the enemy vanguard troops were experienced regulars.4

So the siege of Londonderry began. That garrison was composed of 30 volunteer regiments from all over Ulster, such as Sir George Maxwell's regiment from Killyleagh, Co. Down; Colonel Edmonstone's regiment from Ballymena, Co. Antrim; Lord Blaney's regiment, from Armagh; Mountjoy's dragoons from Newtownstewart, Co. Tyrone and George Phillip's regiment from Limavady, Co. Londonderry, to give a few examples. However, most of these were regiments in name only and in total numbered some 7,000 men. For greater efficiency these volunteer soldiers were regrouped into 8 regiments, which contained a total of 117 companies of 60 men each. Many of the company officers were elected by their men.5 As the details of the siege, the privations of the garrison and inhabitants and the drama of the eventual relief are all well known, they will not be repeated here.

Londonderry was not the only centre of Ulster resistance. There was also Enniskillen and if Londonderry's walls were weak, Enniskillen had no walls at all. The town could only be defended by keeping the enemy at a safe distance; this in turn required an aggressive and mobile defence by the town's citizen soldiers. Fortunately, their commander Gustavus Hamilton (another Gustavus Hamilton) was a former professional soldier and highly skilled in that profession. In early May 1689, the Enniskilleners routed an Irish force at Ballyshannon and relieved Belleek. They then launched a series of raids against the lines-ofoommunication of the Irish army besieging Londonderry, significantly aiding the besieged garrison. According to contemporary accounts, the Enniskilleners tied down half the Irish army in Ulster. But their greatest triumph was undoubtedly the Battle of Newtownbutler (30 July 1689) where 2,000 Enniskilleners, led by Colonel Wolseley, a professional English officer, attacked and routed an Irish army twice as large. The news of this defeat caused the main Irish army, already with-drawing from Londonderry, to abandon all its heavy equipment and retreat at top speed. Dromore had been avenged.6

With the arrival of substantial regular forces from England, initially under the Duke of Schomberg and later under King William III himself, Ulster's volunteer soldiers were no longer needed and most were demobilized, to rebuild their shattered homes. However, the dragoons from Enniskillen were retained and attached to William's army, distinguishing themselves at the Battle of the Boyne and subsequently being incorporated into the regular army.7

The terrible conflicts of the seventeenth century established the pattern of response by the Ulster Protestant people to direct military threats: the raising or armed citizen volunteers, or, in other words, militias. Indeed, Macaulay wrote that: 'they were both as militiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in the mother country'. 8

Whether they were really superior jurymen is dubious; but that Ulstermen were superior militiamen (and have remained such) there can be no doubt:

they had to be. The Irish have always been most formidable enemies.

The next occasion it became necessary to raise a militia was in the late eighteenth century. The United States was fighting for independence; almost all regular troops (and all of the best trained units) had been withdrawn from Ireland and France had declared war. The Ulster and Irish Protestants both responded to the French threat by establishing the militia, popularly known as the Volunteers, recruited from the middle classes and officered by the aristocracy. The first company was raised in Belfast in 1778. As is well known, the Volunteers also became a political movement and were able to bring about a series of very necessary constitutional reforms, creating the 'Constitution of 1782'. Thereafter the Volunteer movement split, one strand going on to become the United Irishmen, the other leading to the Orange Order. Subsequently, United Irish influence in Volunteer units and associations in Antrim and Down alarmed the government, which responded by raising an official militia, the Yeomanry, in 1795. The Yeomanry had to be raised because the regular army remaining in Ireland was in a dreadful state: in 1798 that great Scots General, Sir Ralph Abercromby, described it as being in a state of: 'licentiousness that made it formidable to everyone but the enemy'.

From 1795 to 1798 there were frequent clashes between the volunteers and the Yeomanry.9

Thus the United Irish revolt of 1798 largely took the form, in Ulster of a civil war between Ulster Protestants. The rival militias fought each other at the Battles of Antrim and Ballynahinch. Following the defeat of the United Irishmen in Ulster, the Ulster Yeomanry became available for operations elsewhere in Ireland. A detachment of North Antrim Militia was caught up in the defeat of a body of King's troops at Tubberneering, Co. Wexford. On the other hand, Yeomanry units from Co. Armagh and Down participated in the defeat of a United Irish force at Ballinamuck, Co. Longford.

Following the crushing of the United Irishrrien, the Yeomanry were disbanded or allowed to fade away. However, unofficial local militias survived, especially in Co. Armagh. Originally these too were offshoots of the volunteer movement. In Armagh, they evolved into the Protestant 'Peep O'Day Boys' and the Catholic 'Defenders'. They engaged in small but fierce local battles, such as those of Lisnagade (1791) and the Diamond (1795), the Protestant victory at the latter leading directly to the formation of the Orange Order. A later example of such a clash between local Ulster Protestant and Catholic militias occurred at Dolly's Brae in Co. Down in 1849.

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