Nine Years' War (Ireland)
The Nine Years' War (May 1593 – 30 March 1603) was a conflict in Ireland between a confederacy of Irish lords (with Spanish support) and the English-led government. The war was primarily a response to the English Crown's advances into territory traditionally owned by the Gaelic nobility. It was also part of the broader Anglo-Spanish War and the European wars of religion.
The Kingdom of Ireland was established as an English client state in 1542, with various clans accepting English sovereignty under "surrender and regrant". By the early 1590s, widespread resentment against English rule developed amongst the Gaelic nobility, due to the execution of Gaelic lords, the pillaging of settlements by appointed sheriffs and Catholic persecution.
The war is generally considered to have started in May 1593, when Irish lord Hugh Maguire revolted against the appointment of Humphrey Willis as sheriff of Fermanagh. Subsequently an Irish confederacy, led by lords Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh Roe O'Donnell, was formed to resist English incursions into their territory. Across 1593 and 1594, the confederacy utilised guerrilla warfare against royal forces in Ulster and northern Connacht. The confederacy won numerous victories against the royal army, such as the Battle of Clontibret (1595) and the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598). By 1599, the war engulfed the entire island and took on a religious and nationalist dimension.
The confederacy suffered various military losses in 1600, such as the appointment of Charles Blount as Lord Deputy, the establishment of Henry Docwra in Derry and the defection of unsatisfied confederates. The confederacy were not able to secure Spanish reinforcements until the siege of Kinsale (1601-2), where royal forces decimated the confederacy. The war ended with Tyrone signing the Treaty of Mellifont (1603). In 1607, many of the defeated northern lords left Ireland to seek support for a new uprising in the Flight of the Earls, never to return. This marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and paved the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
The Nine Years' War was the largest conflict fought by England in the Elizabethan era and also its costliest. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland. By contrast, the English army assisting the Dutch during the Eighty Years' War was never more than 12,000 strong at any one time.