The Battle Of The Yellow Ford, 1598
A defeat for the English in Ireland that cost many lives for no discernible purpose
In Elizabethan times, English troops in Ireland, during its conquest by the Tudors, were often isolated in small garrisons, cut off from the support of their fellows in Dublin Castle.
To convey supplies and reinforcements to these men it often needed almost the whole army as escort. This played into the hands of able Irish leaders, notably Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, who would try to draw the English into terrain suited to the Irish style of warfare.
Siting small bases in the wilderness thus placed the English at a dangerous disadvantage, since it rendered them liable to be attacked while on the march. One such fort was that built on the River Blackwater (which flows into Lough Neagh in what is now Northern Ireland) by Thomas Lord Burgh in 1597.
Burgh saw the fort as “an eyesore in the heart of Tyrone’s country”, and as key to an English victory over the rebel Earl. But Burgh was wrong. In fact, the positioning of the fort was a dreadful strategic error which would lead to one of England’s worst defeats at the hands of the Irish.
Burgh had planned the fort to be a symbol of England’s strength, but it was a paltry thing, of a rough…
