Four hundred years ago, the Ulster Hughs were rather restless. Hugh O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill, Earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone respectively, found the interference of their would-be overlords in Dublin irksome, and there were frequent skirmishes as each side tried to establish its control.
The outcome is familiar to us all. In 1601, the Spaniards, good friends of any enemy of England, chose perhaps the most inconvenient spot in all the country to effect a landing. Don Juan d'Aquila arrived in Cork, and took possession of Kinsale, and our Ulster heroes were obliged to march 300 miles to meet him. Meanwhile, the new Lord Deputy, Mountjoy, put d'Aquila and his fellow Spaniards under siege, and stood between them and the approaching earls.
Now, there is an interesting story about the long march from Donegal to Cork. The northerners under Red Hugh O'Donnell reached Holy Cross Abbey on the banks of the Suir, just south of Thurles, on the bitterly cold, frosty evening of November 22nd, 1601, and their spies produced unwelcome news. Sir George Carew was waiting at Ardmayle, some four miles further down the road.
O'Donnell did not like his options. A battle with Carew, even if won, would seriously deplete the resources needed to relieve the Spaniards in Kinsale; marching east would risk meeting further English contingents advancing from the Pale; and the way west was blocked by the notorious quagmire of the bogs of the Slieve Felim Mountains. The only safe direction seemed to be back the way they came.
But O'Donnell thought again. The night was freezing hard and waxing even colder. Surely the water in the Slieve Felim bogs would soon be frozen, and firm enough to provide safe passage for his troops?
And so it was. O'Donnell headed west, and as described in an account by John Purcell, kindly sent to me by Tom Carroll of Limerick, "the bare, heather slopes which were lately almost moving bog and swamp were now frozen solid, hard and rough underfoot". On the morning of this day 400 years ago, November 23rd, 1601, O'Donnell and his men descended on to the plains of Limerick, and the way to Cork lay open before them.
Of course, the whole undertaking was ultimately a failure. Mountjoy defeated the Ulster chieftains and in 1607, O'Neill and O'Donnell left Lough Swilly for the Continent. But it was a brave try, and Sir George Carew was later to describe the night march over the Slieve Felim mountains as "the greatest winter march in history".