The Royalist Army in Exile was the army formed by those loyal to Charles II from 1656 to 1660 during his exile from the throne. They were a mixture of Royalist troops from his three Kingdoms including men from England and Scotland, with the bulk being Catholics from Ireland, many of whom had previously served in the Irish Confederate armies.
Charles had been living in exile in France since his escape following the defeat at Worcester. However the Treaty of Paris between France and Oliver Cromwell's English Commonwealth forced him to leave the French capital. He signed the Treaty of Brussels with Spain, committing to raise forces for their war with France. Exiled Royalists had been living on the continent since the defeat of their cause, while many former Irish Confederates had taken up service as mercenaries following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Whole Irish regiments were serving in the French Army as was Charles' younger brother James, Duke of York.
Charles had committed to his Spanish allies to recruit those Irish soldiers serving in the French armies. Some troops began deserting in small numbers to serve the Royalist cause, Charles' principal advisors Edward Hyde and the former Irish Viceroy Lord Ormonde opened negotiations with the various colonels of the regiments, many of whom had fought for Charles following his alliance with the Irish Confederates during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. [1] Ultimately despite French resistance to the move, which Charles justified by his need to secure his restoration, and the status of the French-born queen mother Henrietta Maria, the Irish colonels all transferred into the king's service. Their troops, if denied permission, deserted in droves and made their way to the Spanish Netherlands. However some Irish soldiers chose to stay in French service despite their alliance with Cromwell, which led to the Royalists recruiting fresh troops direct from Ireland. [2] James, Duke York was reluctant to abandon his position in the French court and military which he felt would serve the Royalist cause far better, until he received a direct order from his brother. [3]
English cavaliers filtered in and formed an infantry regiment under Lord Rochester which formed the basis of the later Grenadier Guards. [4] A separate Scottish infantry regiment was raised under the command of Lord Middleton, formed of a mixture of veterans from the 1648 campaign and Glencairn's Rising. [5] The Irish troops were formed into regiments under the notional command of several exiled princes and grandees, but under the effective command of their previous colonels. Ormonde's Regiment was led by Richard Grace, the Duke of York's Regiment was commanded by Lord Muskerry, the Duke of Gloucester's by Lord Taaffe. A fourth Irish regiment was formed under Lisagh Farrell who led his regiment across from a French garrison near Brussels. He exercised control but it was under the formal command of Lord Bristol who had arranged their defection to the King's service. In addition to the six infantry regiments, a small Lifeguard of horseman was raised to serve with the King's brother, the Duke of York. A regiment of cavalry was planned to be raised under Lord Gerard but this was never accomplished. [6] In a more junior role, the future Jacobite Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Richard Talbot served with the Duke of York.
In return for supplies and ammunition from their Spanish allies, the Royalist Army pledged to attempt to seize a port in England and launch a rising against the regime of Oliver Cromwell. The activities of the exile army were closely monitored by agents of Cromwell's spymaster John Thurloe. [7]
In 1658 an allied force of Cromwell's English soldiers and French troops under Turenne advanced to lay siege to Dunkirk. The Spanish and their English Royalist allies confronted them at the Battle of the Dunes and were decisively defeated, with Dunkirk falling soon after. The army continued to serve with the Spanish field armies until the Treaty of the Pyrenees brought an end to the conflict in November 1659. By that time internal developments in Britain following the death of Oliver Cromwell laid the path towards the Restoration the following year.
Following the Restoration the new political settlement in England called for a dramatically reduced standing army following the disbanding of the large New Model Army. The reimposed penal laws forbade Catholics from serving in the reformed English Army or its Irish equivalent. Many of the troops of the exiled Royalist Army remained at Dunkirk until it was sold to the French in 1662, serving alongside their former opponents from the Battle of the Dunes. [8] They were then dispersed, either to serve in the Tangier Garrison in Morocco or the English expedition to Portugal.
The Battle of the Dunes, also known as the Battle of Dunkirk, took place on 14 June 1658, near the strategic port of Dunkirk in what was then the Spanish Netherlands. Part of the Franco-Spanish War and concurrent Anglo-Spanish War, a French army under Turenne, supported by troops from the Commonwealth of England, had besieged Dunkirk. Led by John of Austria the Younger and Louis, Grand Condé, a Spanish force supported by English Royalists and French Fronde rebels attempted to raise the siege but suffered a severe defeat.
George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle KG PC JP was an English soldier, who fought on both sides during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A prominent military figure under the Commonwealth, his support was crucial to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, who rewarded him with the title Duke of Albemarle and other senior positions.
Lieutenant-General James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, KG, PC, was an Anglo-Irish statesman and soldier, known as Earl of Ormond from 1634 to 1642 and Marquess of Ormond from 1642 to 1661. Following the failure of the senior line of the Butler family, he was the second representative of the Kilcash branch to inherit the earldom.
Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara was an Irish soldier of the 17th century. After lengthy service as a mercenary in the Spanish Army, Preston returned to Ireland following the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641. He was appointed to command the Leinster Army of the Irish Confederacy, enjoying some success as well as a number of heavy defeats such as the Battle of Dungans Hill in 1647 where his army was largely destroyed. Like other Confederate leaders, Preston was a Catholic Royalist. He remained in close contact with the Lord Lieutenant the Marquess of Ormonde, and was a strong supporter of an alliance between Confederates and Royalists against the English Republicans.
The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War, took place in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in the kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland – all ruled by Charles I. The conflict had political, religious and ethnic aspects and was fought over governance, land ownership, religious freedom and religious discrimination. The main issues were whether Irish Catholics or British Protestants held most political power and owned most of the land, and whether Ireland would be a self-governing kingdom under Charles I or subordinate to the parliament in England. It was the most destructive conflict in Irish history and caused 200,000–600,000 deaths from fighting as well as war-related famine and disease.
Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell PC was an Irish politician, courtier and soldier.
Confederate Ireland, also referred to as the Irish Catholic Confederation, was a period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1649, during the Eleven Years' War. Formed by Catholic aristocrats, landed gentry, clergy and military leaders after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the Confederates controlled up to two-thirds of Ireland from their base in Kilkenny; hence it is sometimes called the "Confederation of Kilkenny".
The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland or Cromwellian war in Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell invaded Ireland with the New Model Army on behalf of England's Rump Parliament in August 1649.
The Battle of Rathmines was fought on 2 August 1649, near the modern Dublin suburb of Rathmines, during the Irish Confederate Wars, an associated conflict of 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It has been described as the 'decisive battle of the Engagement in Ireland.'
Colonel Edward Wogan was an Irish Royalist officer. He is known as one of the last royalists to lose his life in the civil war.
The English Army existed while England was an independent state and was at war with other states, but it was not until the Interregnum and the New Model Army that England acquired a peacetime professional standing army. At the Restoration of the monarchy, Charles II kept a small standing army, formed from elements of the Royalist army in exile and elements of the New Model Army, from which the most senior regular regiments of today's British Army can trace their antecedence. Likewise, Royal Marines can trace their origins back to the formation of the English Army's "Duke of York and Albany's maritime regiment of Foot" at the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company on 28 October 1664.
Events from the year 1650 in Ireland.
The siege of Dunkirk in 1658 was a military operation by the allied forces of France and Commonwealth England intended to take the fortified port city of Dunkirk, Spain's greatest privateer base, from the Spanish and their confederates: the English royalists and French Fronduers. Dunkirk was a strategic port on the southern coast of the English Channel in the Spanish Netherlands that had often been a point of contention previously and had changed hands a number of times. Privateers operating out of Dunkirk and other ports had cost England some 1,500 to 2,000 merchant ships in the past year. The French and their English Commonwealth allies were commanded by Marshal of France Turenne. The siege would last a month and featured numerous sorties by the garrison and a determined relief attempt by the Spanish army under the command of Don Juan of Austria and his confederate English royalists under Duke of York and rebels of the French Fronde under the Great Condé that resulted in the battle of the Dunes.
The Treaty of Brussels was an agreement between representatives of Philip IV of Spain and Charles II, the leader of the exiled royalists of England, Ireland, and Scotland. It was signed in Brussels, in the Spanish Netherlands, on 2 April 1656. Marquess of Ormonde and the Earl of Rochester signed on behalf of Charles. Alonso de Cárdenas, a former Spanish ambassador to London, signed on behalf of Philip.
The Irish Army or Irish establishment, in practice called the monarch's "army in Ireland" or "army of Ireland", was the standing army of the Kingdom of Ireland, a client state of England and subsequently of Great Britain. It existed from the early 1660s until merged into the British Army in 1801, and for much of the period was the largest force available to the British monarchy, being substantially larger than the English and Scottish establishments.
Lisagh Farrell or Lewis Farrell was an Irish soldier of the seventeenth century.
The Sale of Dunkirk took place on 27 October [O.S. 17 October] 1662 when Charles II of England sold his sovereign rights to Dunkirk and Fort-Mardyck to his cousin Louis XIV of France.
The Second Ormonde Peace was a peace treaty and alliance signed on 17 January 1649 between the Marquess of Ormonde, the leader of the Irish Royalists, and the Irish Confederates. It united a coalition of former Protestants and Catholics enemies from Ireland, Scotland and England - the three Kingdoms ruled by Charles I who was then held a prisoner by the Puritan London Parliament. His execution on 30 January drew together the signatories in allegiance to his young son Charles II.