Wars of The Three Kingdoms - War Breaks Out

War Breaks Out

See also: Bishops' War, Irish Rebellion of 1641, English Civil War, Irish Confederate Wars, and Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Modern historians have emphasised the lack of the inevitability of the Civil Wars, pointing out that all sides resorted to violence in a situation marked by mutual distrust and paranoia. Charles' initial failure to bring the Bishops' Wars to a quick end also made other discontented groups feel that force could serve to get what they wanted.

Alienated by English/Protestant domination and frightened by the rhetoric of the English and Scottish Parliaments, a small group of Irish conspirators launched the Irish Rebellion of 1641, ostensibly in support of the "King's Rights". The rising featured widespread assaults on the Protestant communities in Ireland, sometimes culminating in massacres. Rumours spread in England and Scotland that the killings had the King's sanction and that this foreshadowed their own fate if the Kings' Irish troops landed in Britain. As a result, the English Parliament refused to pay for a royal army to put down the rebellion in Ireland and instead raised their own armed forces. The King did likewise, rallying those Royalists (some of them members of Parliament) who believed that loyalty to the Legitimate King outweighed other important political principles.

The English Civil War broke out in 1642. The Scottish Covenanters, as the Presbyterians called themselves, sided with the English Parliament, joined the war in 1643, and played a major role in the English Parliamentary victory. The King's forces found themselves ground down by the efficiency of Parliament's New Model Army — backed by the financial muscle of the City of London. In 1646, Charles I surrendered. After he failed to compromise with Parliament, the Parliamentary party had him detained and then executed him in 1649. In Ireland, the rebel Irish Catholics formed their own government — Confederate Ireland — with the intention of helping the Royalists in return for religious toleration and political autonomy. Troops from England and Scotland fought in Ireland, and Irish Confederate troops mounted an expedition to Scotland in 1644, sparking the Scottish Civil War. In Scotland, the Royalists had a series of victories in 1644–45, but were crushed with the end of the first English Civil War and the return of the main Covenanter armies to Scotland.

After the end of the Second English Civil War in January 1649 the victorious Parliamentary forces, now commanded by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland and crushed the Royalist-Confederate alliance there in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649. The English Parliament's alliance with the Scottish Covenanters had broken down, and the Scots crowned Charles II as king, sparking renewed hostilities with England. Cromwell embarked on a conquest of Scotland in 1650–51 and on 3 September 1651 defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester after the latter had led a Scottish army south in the hope that a Royalist rising in England would allow him to regain the English throne.

At the end of the wars, the Three Kingdoms emerged as a unitary state called the English Commonwealth, ostensibly a republic, but having many characteristics of a military dictatorship.