Owen Roe O'Neill (1585-6 November 1649) was a Gaelic Irish soldier and a scion of the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster. He served as a commander of the Irish Confederates during the Irish Confederate Wars of the 1640s.
Biography[]
Owen Roe O'Neill was born in County Armagh, Ireland in 1585, the illegitimate son of Art MacBaron O'Neill, a son of Matthew O'Neill, 1st Baron Dungannon. O'Neill was educated by Franciscan monks and fought against the English in the Nine Years' War, serving under his great-uncle Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone; several of his brothers were slain during the rebellion. He left Ireland during the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and he served in the Spanish Army for 40 years, fighting against the Dutch Army and the French during the Dutch Revolt and the Franco-Spanish War. He distinguished himself while commanding the Spanish garrison at the Siege of Arras in 1640, and, in 1642, he led 300 Irish veterans back to Ireland to aid the Irish Rebellion of 1641. He took command of the Ulster Irish in July 1642, and he battled the Covenanters in Ulster, losing central Ulster at the Battle of Clones. He was able to stop the killing of Protestant civilians, and, during the stalemate in Ulster from 1642 to 1646, he trained and disciplined his army. In 1646, he defeated the Laggan Army and the Covenanters at the Battle of Benburb, but he was summoned to the south by papal nuncio Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, preventing him from exploiting his victory. In 1647, he was sent to capture Dublin before James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond could hand over the Royalist-controlled city to the Parliamentarians, but his army was destroyed at the Battle of Dungan's Hill. He died in November 1649, possibly poisoned by a priest in the employ of the English, but more likely a victim of gout.