Civil War Career
The rebellion quickly spread to the rest of Ireland. By the spring of 1642 only fortified Protestant enclaves, around Dublin, Cork and Derry, held out. King Charles I sent a large army to Ireland, which would probably have put down the rebellion, had the English Civil War not broken out. As it was, the Irish Catholic upper classes had breathing space to form the Irish Catholic Confederation, which acted as a de facto independent government of Ireland until 1649. Felim O'Neill was a member of the Confederate's parliament, named the General Assembly, but was sidelined in the leadership of Irish Catholics by more wealthy landed magnates.
On the military side, O'Neill was also sidelined. After his disastrous defeat at Glenmaquin near Raphoe in County Donegal, his kinsman, Owen Roe O'Neill, a professional soldier, arrived from the Spanish Netherlands and was made general of the Confederate's Ulster army. Felim O'Neill was a cavalry commander in this force, and spent most of the next six years fighting against the Scottish Covenanter army that had landed in Ulster. He fought in the army's victory at the Battle of Benburb.
In Confederate politics, O'Neill was a moderate, advocating a deal with Charles I and the English Royalists as a means of winning the war against the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters. In 1648, he voted for such a deal, The Second Ormonde Peace, splitting with Owen Roe O'Neill, who opposed it along with most of the Ulster army. In the summer of that year, the Confederate armies fought among themselves over this issue, with the pro-Royalists prevailing.
Read more about this topic: Felim O'Neill Of Kinard
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or career:
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.”
—Baudouin I (b. 1930)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)