Pádraig Lenihan’s Raw Generals and Green Soldiers is a very welcome addition to the Helion Century of the Soldier series. Irish aspects of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms have been neglected in comparison to the various armies and campaigns elsewhere in Britain during the 1640s. This volume offers a comprehensive study of the establishment and early military campaigns of Catholic armies in Ireland during the conflict. Historical scholarship on the war in Ireland tends to focus on the 1641 rebellion and its aftermath or Oliver Cromwell’s campaign in 1649–50. Aside from Lenihan’s own earlier work on Confederate Catholics at War 1641–1649 (2001) and a number of accounts of individual sieges or battles, there has been relatively little published on detailed military aspects of the war in the 1640s. In this volume, Lenihan covers the period from the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion through to the cessation between the Confederate Catholics and royalist forces in September 1643. Lenihan seeks to make this story accessible by ironing out the “historiographical creases” [p. xiii] of the sources and literature for the reader. This was a messy and complex phase of the war with battles and numerous small-scale sieges all around Ireland that have little popular memory, outside of their localities, unlike the major early encounters of the conflict in England like the Battle of Edgehill (1642) or the siege of Hull (1642). Battles such as Liscarroll in September 1642 and Ormond’s march in the spring of 1643 culminating in the Battle of Ballinvegga (New Ross) in March 1643 are analyzed in detail. Lenihan argues that this phase of the war was “mostly a story of sieges” and this was the form of war that dominated throughout the country in 1641–43 [p. xi]. This book highlights the scale and brutality of these besieging operations with little mercy on either side such as at Baldongan, County Dublin, in June 1642 when the garrison including a number of women and children were put to the sword. The addition of a large number of maps, photos, and drawings of fortifications helps to illustrate this campaigning and will be particularly useful for anyone unfamiliar with the geography of Ireland.

This is the story of mostly amateurs going to war, in the case of tenant farmers often against their will, and how these inexperienced officers and soldiers learned the business of seventeenth century warfare. Mistakes abounded on all sides and Lenihan vividly demonstrates the deadly consequences that could occur when green troops went into action such as at Julianstown in November 1641. Luck also played a key part in many early engagements such as when Daniel O’Dunne used a mock up gun carved from wood to force the surrender of Castlecuffe or when the soldiers at Grange in Roscommon opened the door and admitted Redmond O’Fallon who seized the garrison [pp. 37–8]. As well as providing a narrative overview of the conflict as it developed following the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion, Lenihan also examines the difficulties of campaigning in Ireland. He assesses the difficulties newly arrived English soldiers faced when they arrived in Ireland to suppress the rebellion as “Irish” diseases and hard campaigning took a large toll on the men. Up to 25% of newly disembarked British soldiers were sick at any one time during the period and in Munster they reportedly died “in heaps” [p. 87]. Lenihan considers how logistical problems such as a shortage of gunpowder and cannon combined with “raw” officers hampered Catholic forces and their attempts to defeat government forces in open battle or to take key strategic fortifications. Ultimately, these failings in particular poor generals who “gave battle when they need not have” [p. 148] cost Catholic forces dearly. Lenihan also shows how as the war progressed Catholic forces became more organized and professional with the establishment of the Confederate Catholic Association in 1642 and the landing of Irish officers with continental military training and experience such as Hugh O’Neill and Thomas Preston. These veterans gradually helped to professionalize the Catholic armies, but their arrival did not necessarily equate to immediate success in field for the Confederate cause. In the end as Lenihan argues for the Confederate Catholics, “it was no small thing just to hang on” [p. 151].

The large number of contemporary illustrations in this book helps to explain different aspects of early modern warfare. There are also eight full-colour plates, beautifully drawn by Seán Ó Brógáin, which depict a range of different types of Catholic soldiers and officers as well as a short commentary on the drawings. Other than the plate for the musketeer there is relatively little information on the sources for the drawings. Lenihan includes a very full bibliography of primary sources and wide-ranging secondary books and articles for the study which is really useful. The volume is lacking an index which would be really helpful in a work like this to quickly find individual battles and sieges. Overall, this is an informative and engaging book on the Catholic armies in Ireland from 1641 to 1643 that provides an accessible and absorbing account of this bloody and often confusing phase of the conflict. Helion and the author are to be commended for producing a beautifully illustrated and affordably priced volume that will appeal to a wide readership. It is to be hoped that Lenihan will continue the story of the Catholic armies in Ireland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms with future volumes in this series.