Battle of The Yellow Ford - The Battle

The Battle

The crown forces were organized in six regiments—two forward, two center, and two rear, and with cavalry at center. As soon as they left Armagh garrison, they were all harassed with musket fire and thrown spears from rebel forces concealed in the woods. As a result the different regiments became separated from one another as they paused to deal with the hit and run attacks. This problem was accentuated when one of their ox-drawn artillery pieces became stuck in the bog with a damaged wheel and a rear regiment got left behind guarding it as it was slowly coaxed through the bog. The regiment at the front of the march encountered a mile-long trench, 4 feet wide and 5 feet deep. The regiment succeeded in crossing this trench but then came under heavy attack from large forces and decided to retreat back behind the trench again, and it suffered significant losses during that retreat. This regiment in disarray then merged into the ranks of the other forward regiment. Standardly at the time, it was desirable for a marching army to take on a more compact, less elongated form when large enemy forces were present.

At this point, Henry Bagenal was killed by a shot through the head. In post-mortems in Dublin, Bagenal was criticized for being near the vanguard of the march, instead of keeping himself in a more protected position near the center. Command of the army was taken over by Thomas Maria Wingfield. Further demoralising the crown troops and causing chaos, their gun-powder store exploded, apparently ignited accidentally by the fuse of a matchlock musket. Daunted, Wingfield decided to retreat to Armagh. But the commander of the forward part (Evans) either didn't get the command or refused to obey it, or was unable to execute an orderly retreat and judged it necessary to maintain his forward position. Anyway, seeing their enemy in confusion, the O'Neill cavalry rushed at the head of the forward part, followed by swordsmen on foot. Crown troops in this part of the field (at the "yellow ford" from which the battle gets its name) were cut to pieces, and any wounded survivors left on the field after the battle were slain as well. The rest of the crown forces had to struggle their way back to the Armagh garrison. They reached it largely intact, but were harried all the way by the Irish.

Crown forces lost about 900 killed at the battle. This included 18 "captains" or officers dead. Several hundred soldiers deserted to the rebels, and many hundreds more deserted back to their families, or went astray in the Armagh drumlins. Out of 4000 soldiers who had set out from Armagh, just over 2000 reached the town after the battle. Those who did reach Armagh were virtual prisoners inside. The cavalry broke out and dashed south escaping the Irish. After three days negotiations, it was agreed that the crown troops could leave Armagh as long as they left their arms and ammunition behind them. They were evacuated by sea from Newry to Dublin. O'Neill's forces lost perhaps 200 to 300 killed in the battle, though sources for the number lost on O'Neill's side are very scanty. In light of the battle's result, the court at London undertook to greatly and rapidly increase its military forces in Ireland; and simultaneously many in Ireland who had been neutral on the sidelines undertook to support the rebellion. Thus the ultimate outcome of the battle was an escalation of the war.