User:Lord Cornwallis/Siege of Derry (1649)

The Siege of Derry took place from March to August 1649 during the War of the Three Kingdoms when a combined force of Irish Royalists and their Scottish Covenanter allies laid siege to the city of Derry in Ulster whose Anglo-Irish garrison under Sir Charles Coote was allied to the English Republicans. Following the intervention of the renegade Ulster Army under Owen Roe O'Neill of the Irish Confederates, the siege was broken. Derry remained in English republican hands for the next decade, and O'Neill's army having changed sides to join the Royalist coalition was effectively destroyed by their former allies the following year.

Background
The London Parliament had recently executed Charles I, and shock at the act had brought together a coalition of forces in Ireland under the command of the Marquess of Ormonde in support of the heir to the throne Prince Charles. This included former enemies such as the Catholic Irish Confederates, Protestant Irish inhabitants and the Scottish Coventanter expeditionary force that had been operating in the country since 1642, in the wake of the Irish Rebellion of the previous year.

Coote and his fellow Parliamentarian commander George Monck had gained almost total control of Ulster in 1648, following the disastrous defeat of the Engagemant and had seized settlements such as Belfast and Carrickfergus from the weakened garrisons. Derry was taken from remains of the Laggan Army in December 1648 by Coote. The execution of the King gave a fresh impetus to the Royalist cause in Ireland and Derry was now vulnerable to the growing strength of the new coalition. The campaign was given added emphasis by the imminent arrival of an expected expeditionary force commanded by Oliver Cromwell which was expected to arrive from Wales. In March the Laggan Army, made largely of Anglo-Scottish settlers moved to blockade Coote in his stronghold of Derry.

Owen Roe O'Neill, formerly a Spanish mercenary, had returned to Ireland to command the Ulster Army of the Irish Confederacy. He was frequently at odds with his fellow confederates, and in 1648 disputed the Second Ormonde Peace agreed with the Royalists. Having run out of any other allies, O'Neill turned to the English Commonwealth forces under George Monck based at Dundalk and agreed a three-month temporary alliance. This alliance cut across religious and political boundaries, and placed O'Neill in alliance with the anti-Catholic London Parliament against his own former Irish Catholic comrades.

Aftermath
Even before the arrival of Cromwell's reinforcements, the tide began to turn against the Confederate-Royalist alliance. Setback followed setback as the allied Siege of Dublin was abandoned following a heavy defeat at the Battle of Rathmines before Cromwell and his reinforcements then took the offensive storming Drogheda and taking Wexford.

Coote fought his former allies at Derry at the Battle of Scarrifholis in 1650, routing them. Some of the survivors continued to fight on until 1652 under the command of Sir Phelim O'Neill but his surrender led to the effective end of organised resistance in the province.