Irish Partisans: Rapparees of the Williamite Wars, 1689- 1691 Ruairi Gallagher Introduction 1691. What the Rapparees and the To- ries had in common, however, is that they To better understand this article, one should both provided Ireland with fighting-men and read the previous piece I wrote in the Irish fighting-leaders throughout the upheavals of Marxist Review 9 on Irish Tory social- the seventeenth century. Despite this, the bandits during the Cromwellian and Restora- Rapparees, like the Tories, lacked a revolu- tion periods of seventeenth century Ireland. tionary political ideology that could have el- This article, along with my previous work in evated the insurgency above the out-dated IMR 9, was based on a BA dissertation that politics of feudalism. Perhaps if Socialism I had completed a number of years ago. or Irish Republicanism had been discovered Still relevant as ever, Irish Socialist Re- a century earlier, the subject Irish people publican and Marxist, James Connolly, first could have then rejected feudalism in its wrote about the Jacobite period in his fa- entirety and liberated itself from the dead- mous Labour in Irish History. Connolly with weight of colonialism and foreign rule? Of his élan and his renowned style of writing course it’s counter-factual history, but it’s a regarded it as one of the greatest tragedies question well worth asking. of Irish history that Irish men and women, who fought in opposing armies, would die in order to seat a foreign King on the throne: It is equally beyond all ques- Origins and political signifi- tion that the whole struggle was cance of the Rapparees no earthly concern of theirs; Ah, way out on the moors where the wind shrieks and howls, that King James was one of Sure, he’ll find his lone home there amongst the wild fowl. the most worthless representa- No one there to welcome, no comrade has he. Ah, God help the poor outlaw, the wild rapparee. tives of a race that ever sat upon the throne... The war be- He has robbed many rich of their gold and their crown. He has outrode the soldiers who haunted him down. tween William and James offered Alas, he has boasted, they’ll never take me, a splendid opportunity to the Not a swordsman will capture the wild rapparee. subject people of Ireland to make -Popular folk song devoted to the Rapparee2 a bid for freedom while the forces of their oppressors were rent in civil war. The opportunity was Rapparees (derived from the Irish word cast aside, and the subject peo- rapaire, meaning half-pike or pike wielding ple took sides on behalf of the person), were Irish partisans that fought opposing factions of their ene- alongside the Jacobites armies against the mies.1 Williamite forces during the Irish Williamite This article will, nevertheless, analyse Wars (1689-1691). Rappareeism in Ire- the Irish partisans that were active through- land originated, in 1687, during a period out the Williamite Wars in Ireland: the Rap- which would lead to the remodelling and parees. They differed somewhat from their ‘Catholization’ of the Irish army by Richard Tory social-bandit predecessors, insofar as Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell; and provided Rappareeism was more politicised and was the opportunity for former vagrants or To- recognised as a political force under the ar- ries to join the Jacobite armies under King ticles of the Treaty of Limerick signed in James II as irregulars or commissioned of- 1James Connolly, Labour in Irish History, (Dublin, 1973), pp. 6-7. 2Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Folklore and History of an Ulster Community, (Dublin, 1982), p. 110. 75 ficers.3 Since the landing of the Williamite cised ‘Jacobite partisans’.7 Duke of Schomberg in Ireland, on 13 Au- gust 1689, the Jacobites were gradually los- The Rapparees: a fighting par- ing the conflict. Guerrilla war soon ensued and King James II encouraged Rapparee in- tisan force and the Bog of Allen cursions into enemy territories: the crowns In view of this, the Rapparees success- support helped to institutionalise Rappa- fully conducted a war of attrition against reeism. However, English contemporaries Williamite forces, notably making it difficult of the Williamite Wars tried in earnest to for Williamites, under the command of the depoliticise the Rapparees, dismissing them Duke of Schomberg, to leave camp for fear of as outlaws that were hand-in-glove with being ambushed or killed. As the Williamite the enemy in order to indirectly suppress historian, George Story further explained; Protestant settlers. Pro-Williamite histo- rian, George Story, also depoliticised the For they straggled abroad and Rapparees, linking it with Italian type ban- plundered those few people who ditry then prevalent throughout the con- were left, and some of them were tinent. This was not, in fact, a valid murdered by the Rapparees, a comparison as the banditry that engulfed word which we were strangers to Italy was regarded as non-political (Italy ‘till this time ... such of the Irish was not a unitary state until the nine- as are not in the army but the teenth century); whereas Ireland was, and country people, armed in a hos- the Williamite Wars strengthened the racial tile manner with half-pikes and and religious elements of Rappareeism.4 De- skeans, and some with sythes, or spite this, Williamite authorities continued musquets.8 to harangue and depoliticise the Rapparees. John Stevens, an English Jacobite, in- Operating in small cells and being con- congruously downplayed the political signif- cealable from the rest of the Irish popula- icance of the Rapparees and regarded them, tion would be an important factor for the too, as mere outlaws that solely robbed military effectiveness of the Rapparees; and and plundered the country ‘under pretence this can be attributed to the Williamite fail- of suppressing the rebellious Protestants’.5 ure to quickly suppress them.9 Historian, G. This disparagement is further illustrated by Simms, attributed the potency of the Rap- King William of Orange, who dismissed the parees to their extensive knowledge of the Rapparees as ‘Irish Papists, and other lewd local terrain and the compliance of the lo- and vagrant persons disaffected to the gov- cal Catholic population.10 This was evident ernment, [which] are observed to wander up during the Duke of Schomberg’s march to and down, to the terror of his Majesty’s sub- the Boyne: Rapparees had constantly ha- jects’.6 On the contrary, Irish historian Éa- rassed Williamite armies before the Battle monn Ó Ciardha has argued that contem- of the Boyne in July 1690. As with all suc- porary leaders of the political divide in Ire- cessful partisan movements, the element of land, such as the French Jacobite, General surprise provided the Rapparees with effec- D’Avaux, did view the Rapparees as politi- tive camouflage, as they could subsequently 3James Anthony Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, (3 vols, New York, 1888), p. 178. 4Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Woodkerne, tories and rapparees in Ulster and north Connacht in the seventeenth century (M.A thesis, University College, Dublin, 1991) , p. 185. 5Robert H. Murray (ed), The Journal of John Stevens, (Oxford, 1912), pp. 61-62. 6Warrant Book, 6th May Whitehall (Cal. S.P. Dom., 1689-1690, p. 92). 7Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766: A fatal attachment, (Dublin, 2004), p. 71. 8George Warter Story, A true and impartial history, 9th September, 1689, p. 16. 9Harman Murtagh. ‘The War in Ireland 1689-91’, in W.A. Maguire (ed), Kings in Conflict: The Revo- lutionary War in Ireland and its Aftermath 1689-1750, (Belfast, 1990), p. 82. 10J.G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 1685-91, (new ed., Dublin, 2000), p. 198. 76 melt into the Irish populace, without be- in Ireland; for it reaches through ing detected by the Williamite authorities. a great part of the country, from George Story summed up the Rapparees hence as far as Athlone, and is at modus operandi; least forty miles in length having several islands full of woods in When the Rapparees have no the midst of it): These robbed mind to show themselves upon and plundered the country all the bogs they commonly sink about; for they had an island on down between two or three lit- this end of the Bog which they tle hills, grown over with long fortified.14 grass, so that you may as soon find a hare as one of them: they Reference to fortifications provides ev- conceal their arms ... you may idence that the Bog of Allen had been search till you are weary before a key strategic zone for the Rapparees you find one gun: but when which further proves that they cannot sim- they have a mind to do mis- ply be regarded as bandits; but instead chief, they can all be ready in should be viewed as well organised parti- an hour’s warning, for everyone sans. The south Ulster border was another knows where to go to and fetch area that continued to be troublesome to the his own arms, though you do Williamite forces, and, during May 1690, a not.11 detachment of Rapparees ‘came over the bog near Newry and carried away horses, cows, Detachments of Rapparees disrupted and men’ - causing Williamite armies a great Williamite communications by successfully deal of trouble.15 George Story, again, com- raiding small garrisons, stealing horses, in- mented on the remoteness of the south Ul- tercepting mail and couriers, together with ster area and the menace it had been to the destroying bridges; yet these operations did English authorities throughout the golden- not affect the outcome of the Battle of the age of Toryism during the Restoration pe- Boyne.12 Following the ignominious Jaco- riod; bite defeat at the Boyne - which precipitated the cowardly flight of James II from Ireland The country between Newry and - Rapparee forces retreated to the Bog of Dundalk, is one of the wildest Allen (in the centre of Ireland); and many places of all Ireland, being the of the de-mobbed soldiers from the defeated hunt some years ago, of the fa- Jacobite armies also swelled the ranks of mous Tory, Redmond O’Hanlon, the Rapparees.