The Battle of Knocknanauss was fought in 1647, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, between Confederate Ireland’s Munster army and an English Parliamentarian army under Inchiquinn. The battle resulted in a crushing defeat for the Irish Confederates. When combined with the battle of Dungans Hill, it led to the collapse of the Confederate Catholic cause and forced them to make a deal with the English Royalists.
In the summer of 1647, Murrough O’Brien, Earl Inchiquinn, commander of the English Parliamentarian forces in Cork, ravaged and burned the Confederate territory in Munster. This caused severe food shortages and earned Inchiquinn the Irish nickname, Murchadh na doiteann (Murrough the burner). The Confederate’s Munster army was incapable of stopping Inchiquinn because of political infighting between officers who supported a deal with the English Royalists and those who rejected such a deal. Eventually, when near famine conditions were approaching as a result of Inchiquinn’s pillaging, the Confederate Supreme Council replaced Donagh MacCarthy, Viscount Muskerry, as commander of the Munster army with Viscount Taafe and ordered him to bring Inchiquinn to battle.
Taafe was an English Catholic and not an experienced soldier. Moreover, although he had an excellent contingent of veteran troops under Alasdair MacColla, most of his men were similarly inexperienced. Furthermore, the Irish troops were demoralised by the internal factionalism in their ranks and most of them had little loyalty to Taafe. Inchiquinn, on the other hand, had been commanding his force since 1642 and was well tried in battle. His troops were a mixture of well trained Parliamentarian soldiers shipped from England and British settlers who had been driven from their homes in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The two armies met at Knocknanauss, near Mallow in Cork in November 1647.
The battle that followed was essentially an uncoordinated rout of the Irish forces. Taafe positioned his men on either side of a hill, so that they could not see one another. So one wing of the Confederate army had no idea of what the other wing was doing. MacColla’s men charged the Parliamentarians opposite them and put them to flight. Thinking the battle was over, they then took to looting the enemies baggage train. However, on the other wing, Inchiquinn’s cavalry had charged the raw Irish horsemen, causing them to run away. Despite Taafe’s desperate attempt to rally them, the Irish infantry followed suit, many of them being cut down by the pursuing roundheads. MacColla and his men surrendered when they realised what had happened but were subsequently killed by their captors. Around 3000 men died at Knocknanauss, the vast majority of them Confederates.
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