Kinsale, Tuesday, 22 September 1601
Invasion Day
KINSALE, on a grey, squally morning in late September. Dark rainclouds rolled in from the Atlantic, and the tail-end of a devastating storm whipped the sea into an angry, rolling boil.
Inside the town, the atmosphere was as electric as the thunder in the turbulent skies. When dawn lit up the eastern sky, the apprehensive townsfolk, red-eyed from a sleepless night, could distinguish the dim outlines of the Spanish warships, anchored more than a mile out to sea. A flotilla of small craft was battling its way through the heaving waves to the shore. Eventually, the leading boat beached on the shingle and the first Spanish soldier set foot on Irish soil.
The invasion had begun.
More boats arrived, and the air was loud with shouted commands in Spanish and Italian as hundreds of soldiers fell into ranks and formed companies. The watery sun climbed higher to reveal a quayside transformed into a parade ground, alive with colour and exotic spectacle. Twenty-five brightly decorated regimental flags rolled and snapped in the brisk, skittish wind. Aristocratic officers, resplendent in colourful doublets and puffed-out hose, barked orders to the assembled ranks of 1,700 troops. Diagonal red crosses of Burgundy declared their allegiance to the King of Spain. Swords forged from Toledo steel flashed in the weak autumn sunlight. Pikemen moved into formation, their long, spear-like weapons bristling from the ranks. Musketeers and arquebusiers fell into rank, their guns at the ready.
Inside the walls of Kinsale, the townsfolk waited in anguished uncertainty. Would the invaders demolish their walls with artillery fire? Would they choose to lob missiles over the ramparts, raining down death and carnage from the air? Or would the Spanish simply wait patiently, until starvation and plague won the war for them?
No shots rang out in anger. The two squadrons of Spanish troops began to march … but not towards the gates. Instead, they wheeled to the side and marched around the walls. Past each gate they walked in grim silence: the Cork Gate, the Friars’ Gate, the Blind Gate, the World’s End.
The Spanish were not mounting an attack. They were putting on a parade.
Eventually the soldiers came to a halt and a grizzled old warrior stepped forward. His voice, rich with the cultured accent of his native Castile, shattered the tense silence and echoed around the old walls. Speaking in English, he said he had come not to harm them, but ‘to banish fear, and win their love’. He pledged that anyone who wanted to leave could do so with no danger to themselves or their property. Even the English troops could depart in safety. Equally, those who wished to stay could rest assured that they would not be harmed.
Then, referring to himself in the third person, he gave a solemn undertaking. ‘Don Juan del Águila, general to the army of Philip, King of Spain … do promise that all the inhabitants of the town of Kinsale shall receive no injury by any of our retinue, but rather shall be used as our brethren and friends.’
It was quite a remarkable offer. By the harsh standards of the era, it would have been no surprise if Águila had killed everyone in reprisal for the Smerwick massacre – or, indeed, for the English slaughter and the Irish robbery of the shipwrecked Spanish survivors from the Great Armada. However, it was also a shrewd and sensible offer. Águila had nothing to gain from alienating the Irish, whose support was vital. And if his approach succeeded, he stood to gain control of a key port without wasting a single shot.
Even so, the episode still reflects credit on Águila. As one nineteenth-century historian later observed: ‘Non-combatants and private property were never so [humanely] treated in Ireland before. Don Juan was the first military commander who ever waged war in Ireland according to the rules of modern civilised warfare.’
Standing in the ranks of officers that day was Alférez Bustamante, an ensign who specialised in deep infiltration behind enemy lines. ‘[We] marched around the town of Kinsale,’ he wrote in his journal. ‘When they saw us with two regiments lined up outside, they capitulated without resistance.’
General George Carew’s secretary, Thomas Stafford, who was present for most of the Kinsale siege, agreed with the Spaniard’s account. ‘Upon their approach, the townsmen, not being able to make resistance [even] if they had been willing, set open their gates and permitted them, without impeachment or contradiction, to enter the town,’ he wrote.
However, another English account suggests that the townsfolk were initially defiant. ‘The Spaniards, on asking admission to Kinsale town, asked for it as friends, saying they were come “for the supportation of the Roman Catholic religion”,’ this eyewitness report read. ‘But the town rejected them and stood on their guard, on which they departed.’
Shortly after – according to the same report – Águila sent an ultimatum to the Sovereign, or mayor, of Kinsale. ‘[He warned that] if they gave up the town, they would be favourably dealt with, but that, if it had to be taken by force, they would all be put to the sword.’
In this version of events, Águila granted safe conduct to two town officials to inspect the troops aboard the warships. The invaders showed they had provisions for a lengthy siege. They claimed to be 11,000 strong, although the Kinsale men doubted this and estimated the true number of invaders at 6,000. (This figure seems to have stuck in the minds of the English, even though it was itself a grossly inflated estimate. In fact, only around 1,700 of the 4,464 soldiers who’d set sail from Lisbon arrived on that fateful St Matthew’s Day. Later, as more latecomers limped ship by ship into the harbour, the number would swell to around 3,400.)
Whichever version of events was true, the end result was the same. At some stage on Tuesday, 22 September, the ancient gates of Kinsale swung open to admit the occupying forces of King Felipe of Spain.
Once the town had been secured and Spanish guards posted on the main gates, a bizarre mixture of soldiers, civilians and animals poured from the boats onto the beaches and quays of Kinsale. Along with the cows, goats and chickens that every seafaring expedition carried to supply fresh food, the Spanish ships contained a number of lowing bulls, whose job was to haul the heavy guns around the uneven terrain. ‘They have twelve cannon, besides field pieces with oxen for their carriages,’ reported the Scots mariner Silvester Steene.
The former galley slave John Edie gives us a rare hint at the colour and chaos of the landing as the civilians poured ashore. ‘They have 200 or 300 women and children with them,’ he wrote. ‘Many priests and friars are on board, also three Bishops, and one [James] Archer, a priest … They have also brought nuns.’
In a particularly nasty assessment written shortly after the invasion, a Dublin clergyman named John Rider wrote that there were ‘4,000 poor seabeaten Spaniards, 50 friars, 12 nuns, 100 priests [and] 200 whores’. He said there was ‘a chanterie of priests to pray for the dead and a most damnable pestiferous stews [ie, brothel] of nuns and whores, for both their recreations’.
Ignoring such slurs, it was true that the invasion was oddly family-friendly. The Spaniards’ chief pilot – one Lambert Gould – had even brought his wife and children along for the trip. John Meade, the mayor of Cork, reported: ‘They have many women and children.’
The decision to send so many mothers and youngsters to a battle zone seems insane – and it was. But it illustrated the Spaniards’ lack of proper intelligence from Ireland. They genuinely believed that their troops would be so welcome that they could establish their own colony of settlers right away.
Shouldering their way through this mélange of families, clerics, nuns and farmyard animals, Águila and his senior officers marched through the main gate and into the narrow, twisting streets. History doesn’t record whether there was a formal changeover between Águila and the English commander, William Saxey. (One source says Saxey’s men left ‘before the surprise’.) Either way, the English troops left peacefully, in accordance with their orders. Saxey’s superiors had considered Kinsale ‘not worth preserving’.
With the departing soldiers went a number of the wealthier townsfolk – the ‘persons of better sort’ – clutching their possessions. As always, the poorer citizens were left to take their chances. Their last sight of their betters was the tail-end of a convoy of creaking wagons disappearing up the steep hill towards Cork.
One man who stayed was the unnamed mayor or Sovereign of Kinsale, who went out of his way to ingratiate himself with the newcomers. Carrying his ceremonial rod, he ushered them into his town and allocated their sleeping quarters. His collaboration left the English outraged. ‘The Sovereign of Kinsale, with his white rod in his hand, [went] to billet and cess them in several houses, more ready than if they had been the Queen’s forces,’ sniffed Thomas Stafford.
Águila and his entourage occupied the best quarters – the Desmond Castle, a squat stone ‘keep’ built a hundred years earlier. Located just a short but exhausting walk up a steep hill from the quayside, it commanded a clear view of the harbour and could easily be transformed into a redoubt for a final stand if the outer walls were breached. These assets outweighed its disadvantages – it was stone-cold, it was damp from seeping hill-water, and the erratic layout of its rooms reflected its original site on a rocky outcrop.
A contemporary Irish chronicler named Philip O’Sullivan recorded that the inhabitants gave the invaders a rapturous welcome. ‘The townsmen, expelling the English garrison, conducted the Spanish general and his army of 2,500 foot into the town with great enthusiasm and open arms,’ he reported. An English official, Sir Charles Wilmot, reported bitterly that the Spanish ‘bewitch them with promises of ancient liberty, freedom of conscience and religion, and sugar them all they can’.
The helpful mayor was allowed to remain nominally in charge. ‘The Sovereign still exercises his place as he did before,’ Wilmot reported, ‘and the people here are pleased at this.’ However, the real power rested with the invaders. ‘On their arrival,’ wrote the Irish annalist in the Annals of the Four Masters, ‘they took to themselves the fortifications, shelter, defence and maintenance of the town from the inhabitants.’
The locals’ enthusiasm began to wane when their homes were given over to the officers. ‘[The Spanish] quartered their gentlemen, captains and auxiliaries throughout the habitations of wood and stone which were in the town,’ the annalist added.
Despite all its many disadvantages, Kinsale had one huge asset – it was a wine-importing town. The most experienced officers chose to move into houses with deep stone cellars. They wanted to be safe in readymade shelters when the cannonballs started flying.
With the town under control, Águila’s first task was to secure the harbour entrance. He had realised immediately that the defence of Kinsale depended upon the twin fortresses – Rincorran and Castle Park – that commanded the approach from the open sea. ‘[Kinsale] overhangs a large and excellent harbour facing to the south,’ the Irish writer Philip O’Sullivan explained. ‘Also overhanging the harbour are two forts, one on either side, and if these were fortified with cannon, access to the harbour could not easily be gained.’
Rincorran, which commanded the entire haven and entrance, was particularly important. ‘Truly,’ wrote one English military expert, ‘without this fortification there can be no surety made of the town and haven of Kinsale.’
Águila moved right away to station a company of veterans – ‘some of their [most] distinguished men’, according to another Irish chronicler – at this vital fortress.
Águila’s next priority was to link up with the insurgent Irish in the region. He was highly sceptical about promises that local warlords would march to his banner with 20,000 cheering soldiers and 1,600 prancing stallions. But he was counting on Irish support in the form of manpower, fresh meat and (above all) horses for his cavalry officers. His hopes rested on the two southern insurgent leaders, Florence MacCarthy and James FitzThomas FitzGerald, the Earl of Desmond.
The Spanish commander summoned the Sovereign to his headquarters in the castle. As a go-between, he used one of the Irish expatriates who’d sailed with him from Spain. Many of these were members of the southern Irish MacCarthy clan. They included Dermot MacCarthy, known to the Spanish as Don Dermutio; and a seasoned veteran named Cormac (Don Carlos) MacCarthy, who had fought in France with Águila.
Still clutching his white rod, the mayor scurried obediently into the room where Águila stood, his eyes worriedly scanning the bay for the naval attack he knew would soon come.
The Irish expatriate stepped forward to interpret.
—It is vitally important that we make contact with Florence MacCarthy and James FitzThomas FitzGerald, he said to the mayor, using the Irish language. Where are they?
The Sovereign was surprised that the invaders were so far behind with the news.
—I thought you knew, he blurted out. They’re both locked up in the Tower of London.