‘A BARBAROUS NATION FOR WHICH CHRIST NEVER DIED’
AN OFFICER named Martin de Oleaga was the first to bring the bad news of the defeat back to Spain. He said that the Irish chieftains, with six to seven thousand infantry and six hundred horse, had been ‘surprised’ by the English near Kinsale. ‘They fell upon the weakest of the Irish squadrons, and beat them, whereupon the rest fled without fighting,’ his report read.
The Spanish Council of State told the King it regretted the defeat of O’Neill and O’Donnell, whose support had been crucial. ‘The few troops we have there can hardly hold out,’ it predicted, adding: ‘The worst of it is that Your Majesty’s prestige is at stake.’
The Council said there was no prospect of sending aid to Águila due to lack of resources. ‘If the time were further advanced,’ it mused, ‘… galleys might be sent to rescue Don Juan or take him to a safer place; but that is not to be thought of, at least until the end of April … The great difficulty is the troops which must be raised, for there are none.’
In the meantime, it would be great if Águila could just hang on. ‘It will be most advantageous,’ wrote the Council, ‘to keep that thorn in their flesh.’
Young King Felipe took the news surprisingly well. He certainly didn’t blame Águila for the defeat – on the contrary, he promised to richly reward him. ‘I recognise that our only hope now rests upon your bravery and prudence, which I prize highly,’ he wrote to his besieged commander on 20 January. Felipe praised his commander’s ‘spirit and experience’, and in a final footnote, promised: ‘You, and the army that is with you, shall experience my liberality and thanks.’
They were words that Juan del Águila would later recall with bitterness … as he was hauled before a Spanish court martial.
After Carew despatched Richard Boyle on his epic trip to London, news of the surprise defeat flashed across Europe. The Venetian ambassador in Paris reported that the Irish and Spanish had marched to the relief of Kinsale when ‘nel quale essendi fuggiti li Irlandes li Spagnoli furono rotti’ – the Irish ran away and the Spanish were routed. He added: ‘The Spanish were left to the mercy of the English, who with only 1,000 foot and 300 horse routed the whole army … 1,200 were left dead on the field, 800 wounded.’
The Venetians predicted: ‘Don Juan del Águila will not be able to hold out for long.’
There were sighs of relief in Paris for, as the Venetian diplomats had warned, a Spanish success would have necessitated a French invasion of Ireland to restore the balance of power.
As O’Donnell sailed south with Zubiaur, the unwitting Don Martin de la Cerda was sailing north toward Kinsale with the two hundred soldiers and a cargo of food and ammunition. However, most of his fleet was forced back to Spain by a howling gale. Only two ships made it to Kinsale. They arrived on 4 January, when the ink was scarcely dry on the two-day-old agreement.
Blount sent a boatful of eleven men to greet him.
—You can approach safely, they said. Peace has been made. Don Juan del Águila and Charles Blount are now good friends.
But Cerda was taking no chances. He snatched the eleven men and headed home ‘with all speed’. In Spain, the news of the deal was greeted with scepticism. ‘There is, up to the present, no confirmation of this,’ cautioned the Council of State.
The Spanish diarist Luis Cordóba was bemused. ‘Although it is said that Águila made a deal with the English, which lets him leave Ireland and gives him passage back to Spain with his people, it is doubtful,’ he wrote in late February.
But when questioned separately, the eleven men stuck to their story.
—We personally saw Don Juan dine with Charles Blount, they said.
The Council decided to send two fast ships to Ireland to verify the news. In the meantime, they continued to plan a Fourth Wave of eight ships which would carry supplies and munitions to Ireland. More should follow and ‘every possible effort [be] made to relieve Don Juan’.
‘Don Juan and I are good friends.’
The wording of Blount’s message to Cerda was warmer than it needed to be in order to describe a temporary accommodation between enemies. The truth was that he had forged a friendship with the crusty Spanish commander. They were enjoying their conversations over dinner in the bishop’s house in Cork city. The two military buffs probably re-fought many a classic battle late into the night. At one stage Águila talked of ‘the kind friendship which your Lordship has shown to me’.
The Spanish commander said he would be glad to leave Ireland. ‘Truly,’ he told Blount, ‘I think that when the Devil took our Saviour Jesus Christ to the pinnacle of the Temple and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, he kept Ireland hidden … to keep it for himself. For I believe that it is the Inferno itself, or some worse place.’
(It recalls the reaction of British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling as he flew home from his first visit to Northern Ireland in the 1970s: ‘For God’s sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country.’)
The conversation took a serious turn, with Águila suggesting that they both lobby for a general peace between their nations. Blount remained noncommittal.
However, this air of camaraderie didn’t stop the English playing dirty. Carew heard that a Spanish ship had secretly arrived with despatches for Águila. They were to be carried by hand across the county and delivered to him.
—Would you like to know the contents before he does? Carew asked Blount.
Blount didn’t hesitate. They could be orders countermanding the peace deal.
—Intercept them, he said, if you can handsomely do it.
Carew knew exactly what ‘handsomely’ meant. He called in a dirty-tricks specialist named Captain William Nuce. Nuce enlisted a few soldiers who dressed like road brigands. As the messenger came close to Cork, the ‘robbers’ swooped and snatched his letters. Leaving him tied up, Nuce headed straight back to his boss. It was mealtime and the unsuspecting Águila was being hosted to dinner at George Carew’s home in Cork. Carew excused himself and brought the letters to Blount at his temporary lodgings in the bishop’s house.
Eventually the messenger managed to free himself. He made his way to Águila, who immediately smelled a rat. He stormed across to Blount’s quarters.
—My messenger was robbed by your soldiers, the furious Águila complained.
—They were probably just country thieves, Blount told him. If they were soldiers, they were renegades.
Águila was far from satisfied.
—I suspect that this was President Carew’s doing, he stormed.
Blount was earnest in his reply.
—I can swear upon my faith that he does not have your letters, he said truthfully.
The letters, which Águila received only while leaving Ireland, were from King Felipe, Lerma and War Secretary Ibarra. They ordered him to hang on, but gave no solid assurances that any sizeable reinforcements would arrive any time soon. Perhaps Águila was later secretly relieved that he hadn’t seen them.
Meanwhile, other relationships were being formed between the English officers and the temporary guests they labelled ‘Don Diegos’. They found they had much in common, and this curious meeting of minds among influential officers on the far fringes of Europe was a key element in creating the future peace.
Fynes Moryson became fascinated with the family roots of his namesake, the Spanish hero Pedro Morejón, and quizzed him about his English background. Ocampo gave his captor John Pikeman a jewelled gold chain. In Baltimore, Captain Roger Harvey had a long chat with the expedition’s quartermaster general, Pedro Lopez de Soto. Lopez de Soto confided that the expedition was not about religious freedom. It was revenge for Elizabeth’s aid to the Dutch rebels. ‘Did you ever think otherwise?’ Lopez de Soto asked.
The quartermaster expressed contempt for Ireland, ‘a barbarous nation for which, I think, Christ never died’.
Were the Spanish sincere in these racist rantings? Secretary Robert Cecil doubted it. He believed it was all a red herring – ‘howsoever Don Juan did flatter you all at his departure with seeming to detest the country’.
As he said farewell, Águila presented George Carew with a gift – a military handbook on how to erect and destroy fortifications.
When the Spanish garrison finally quit Kinsale, they marched out with colours flying. The musketeers shouldered their firearms and almost certainly carried their bullets in their mouths – an important symbol, since that was how soldiers carried them in battle. It showed they had not surrendered.
It was 20 February before the first batch was shipped home. There were nearly 1,400 of them – twenty captains and 1,374 soldiers. Águila joined the second batch on 8 March, but the wind shifted and he spent eight days at anchor before finally setting sail on 16 March. He had with him ‘1,200 able men’, but there were also ‘boys and women’, testifying to the fact that many of the Spanish settler families had survived the entire ordeal.
A separate tally puts the first consignment at 1,880 soldiers, including 400 prisoners and deserters, and the second batch at 1,000 soldiers and 300 civilians.
Águila was returning with 60-70 percent of his original force, which was quite an achievement considering the energy of his sallies and the losses suffered by Blount and O’Neill. O’Neill lost 1,000 to 1,200 in the battle. Águila must have lost at least 1,000 in the mission. More were dying daily of sickness. In the entire siege, the English came off worst. Philip O’Sullivan reckons they lost 8,000 overall, although one eminent historian later estimated it at 10,000. Carew was more conservative. ‘I do verily believe,’ he wrote, ‘that at that siege and after the sickness we got, we lost about 6,000 men that died.’
He concluded: ‘Kinsale was bought at so dear a rate, that while I live, I will protest against a winter siege.’