Garret Barry (died March 1646) was an Irish Confederate soldier who served as General of the Munster Army during the Irish Confederate Wars of the 1640s.
Biography[]
Garret Barry was born in the late 16th century, the eldest of four sons of David FitzGarret Barry of Rincorran, County Cork. Barry, along with his parents and three brothers, were captured by the English at the Siege of Kinsale in 1602, but they were allowed to leave Ireland with the defeated Spanish expeditionary force. He served for four years as a Spanish Navy marine before serving in the Army of Flanders during the Dutch Result, and he served in the newly-created Irish tercio at the siege of Rheinberg in 1608. He became an ensign in 1623 and served under Owen Roe O'Neill at the Siege of Breda in 1624-1625, and he retired from active service in 1632 with the rank of captain. He returned to Ireland in 1639 to recruit for the Army of Flanders. While there, he joined Phelim O'Neill's Irish rebellion, and he took part in the siege of Youghal in 1642. He was given command of the insurgents' Munster army, besieging Cork in March 1642 and Limerick in 1642, taking the latter city through the use of undermining techniques he had learned in Flanders. He was defeated at the Battle of Liscarroll in September 1642 while mounting a renewed invasion of County Cork, and he was defeated again at the Battle of New Ross in March 1643. He died in Limerick in 1646, three years after the Cessation ended the war in southern Ireland.