Battle of Dungan's Hill
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Battle of Dungan's Hill took place in County Meath, in eastern Ireland on 8 August 1647. It was fought between the armies of Confederate Ireland and the English Parliament during the Irish Confederate Wars. The Irish army was intercepted on a march towards Dublin and destroyed. Although it is a little-known event, even in Ireland, the battle was very bloody (with over 3000 deaths) and had important political repercussions. The Parliamentarian victory there destroyed the Confederate Leinster Army and contributed to the collapse of the Confederate cause and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649.
By 1647, The Irish Catholic Confederation controlled all of Ireland except for Parliamentarian enclaves around Dublin and Cork and a Scottish outpost in Ulster. The previous year they had rejected a treaty with the English Royalists in favour of eliminating the remaining British forces in Ireland.
In August, the Confederate Leinster army under Thomas Preston was attempting to take Dublin from the English Parliamentarian garrison under Michael Jones, when it was intercepted by the Roundheads and forced to give battle. Jones had marched 32 miles to Trim to relieve the Parliamentarian garrison at Trim Castle. Preston, who had been shadowing Jones' movements, attempted to march on Dublin before Jones' army returned, but covered only 12 miles before being caught at Dungan's Hill, where the Confederate forces had to form up for battle.
The battle took place two miles south of the village of Summerhill.
From a Parliamentarian point of view, victory in this battle was presented to them by the incompetence of the Irish commander. Preston was a veteran of the Thirty Years' War, where he had been a commander of the Spanish garrison at Leuven, but had no experience of open warfare or handling cavalry. Jones, by contrast, had been a cavalry officer in the English Civil War. As a result, Preston tried to move his cavalry along a narrow covered lane (site of the present-day main road), where they were trapped and subjected to enemy fire without being able to respond. Even worse, Preston had placed a large number of his troops in wheat fields over seven feet tall. As a result, these troops were unable to see the Parliamentarians until it was too late. With the Confederate army spread out and in confusion, Jones' troops fell in amongst them causing the demoralised Irish cavalry to flee the field, leaving the remainder of Preston's infantry unsupported.
The Confederate army's infantry were primarily equipped with pikes and heavy muskets and trained to stand in tercios in the Spanish manner. This meant they were difficult to break, but also highly immobile, without cavalry to cover their cumbersome formation when it moved. What was worse, Preston had positioned them in a large walled field, so that when their cavalry had run away, the Parliamentarians could surround and trap them. Some of the Irish infantry, Scottish Highlanders ("redshanks") brought to Ireland by Alasdair MacColla, managed to charge and break through Jones's men and escape into a nearby bog, where the English cavalry could not follow. Preston and about 2,000-3,000 of his regular infantry managed to follow the Highlanders to safety, but the remainder were trapped.
The ground they fought on
The site of Battle of Dungan's Hill lies on Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation And South Wales Middle Coal Measures Formation (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Moscovian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone, sandstone, coal, ironstone and ferricrete.
- English Parliamentarians: Low
- Irish Confederates *Redshanks: Over 3,000 killed
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