An Cosantóir

34 BOOKS Author: Francis Kelly Publisher: Four Courts Press (2020) ISBN: 978-84682-875-1 Price: £31.29 BOOKS The Spanish Armada of 1588 is one of the great counterfactuals of history, whereby if the troops of Philip of Spain (the veteran and elite Army of Flanders) had been successfully landed in England, the course of the European religious wars based on the Reformation, indeed world history, would have been rewritten. For it was during the reign of Elizabeth I that saw the true genesis of England as a renowned world naval power and future global Empire. The Armada was battered by extraordinary storms, the so-called "Protestant Wind" and harassed by the English "Sea Dogs" of Drake and Raleigh. As part of this titanic struggle, a lesser-known drama was taking place on board the galleon San Juan de Sicilia, where a Captain of the San Pedro, from the squadron of Castille, a certain Francisco de Cuellar, had been sentenced to death for his ship leaving formation. De Cuéllar was lucky to escape death by hanging from the yardarm, and it is at this juncture that this reprieve ensured his fate was inextricably linked to Ireland. The defeated Armada attempted to beat a retreat to sanctuary in their Spanish homeland by traversing around Scotland and the west coast of Ireland. Several ships were wrecked on the Antrim Coast and others including de Cuéllar, were bashed against the inhospitable shore of Streedagh Strand in Sligo, where the survivors were beaten and stripped by the native Irish, those caught by the English, being summarily executed. What followed was an extraordinary story of escape and survival for de Cuéllar, who lived amongst the Gaelic Irish of the northwest for seven months before eventually being able to reach Scotland, and from there to Spanish Flanders (occupied Low Countries) and thence return to Spain. In a thoroughly engaging work of academic research that at times reads as a modern version of the Hollywood film "The Fugitive," Francis Kelly explores the rise and fall of this enigmatic captain in the military profession and captures, in vivid detail, the life of a soldier of the late sixteenth century. It is fitting that Kelly is a native of Manorhamilton in Leitrim where de Cuéllar, at one point, took refuge with the O'Rourke's of Breffni, and with other Armada survivors, assisted the MacClancy clan in defending their castle at Rosclogher on the shores of Lough Melvin, County Leitrim against a concerted English attack. The utter ruthlessness of the times was evidenced by O'Rourke being hanged at London for treason in 1590; the charges against him included succouring survivors of the Armada. MacClancy was captured and beheaded in 1590 by the brother of Richard Bingham, Governor of Connaught, the latter infamously remembered in Irish folklore as the "Flail of Connaught." After several following hair-raising adventures, de Cuéllar eventually was able to return to his native Spain. De Cuéllar's memoirs of his time in Ireland gives a unique and fascinating historical insight into contemporary Gaelic culture and customs, much of which was to be swept away following the succeeding Nine Years War (1593-1603); in Ulster the last Gaelic bastion and resistance to English Tudor encroachment was sealed by the "Flight of the Earls" in 1607, when Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell took refuge in Spain, never to return. This work will remain the definitive account of the enigmatic and capricious de Cuéllar, it is fascinating, not only because of his Irish coda but also his career as a soldier in mainland Europe and in the Spanish Americas, one of the largest empires in history, which in conjunction with the Portuguese, was the first to usher the European Age of Discovery and achieve a global scale. His Irish experience begs a movie picture and Kelly has written the script. Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution. By Dr Rory Finegan (Comdt. Ret'd)

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