Garret Barry (soldier)

Garret Barry
Died	1646 Limerick
Allegiance	Spain Irish Confederation
Rank	Captain in the Spanish service
Battles / wars	Eighty Years' War Irish Confederate Wars

Garret Barry, also called Gerat (died 1646), was an Irish soldier, who fought in the Eighty Years' War, the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Irish Confederate Wars. In his youth he was involved in the Siege of Kinsale, Munster, and went into Spanish exile when the town surrendered in 1602. He took Spanish service, first as marine in the Atlantic Fleet and then in the Army of Flanders fighting at the Siege of Breda in 1624. He retired with the rank of captain in 1632. He returned to Munster and was at the Irish Rebellion appointed general of the insurgents' Munster Army in 1642, taking Limerick in but conceding defeat at Liscarroll. Nevertheless, he was confirmed as General of the Munster Army by the Irish Catholic Confederation but was in practice superseded by James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven in 1643.

Birth and origins

Garret was probably the 'Garrot Barry', eldest of the four sons of 'David FitzGarret Barry', 'dwelling at Rincorran', who is mentioned in Pacata Hibernia. His father was a member of a cadet branch of the De Barrys, a landed Old English family, seated in County Cork, southern Ireland. Rincuran Castle, also spelled Rincorran, stood where Charles Fort, built in 1677, now stands. It was also called Barry Óg's Castle as it belonged to the Barry Óg branch of the de Barrys.

Siege of Kinsale

Barry's family sided with Juan del Águila's Spanish in the Siege of Kinsale in 1601 and 1602 during Tyrone's Rebellion, also called the Nine Years' War. Aquila landed at Kinsale on 23 September OS 1601. He garrisoned Rincurran Castle. Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, Deputy of Ireland rushed down to Munster and started the siege early in October. He took Rincurran Castle on 11 November. After the defeat of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Hugh Roe O'Donnell at the battle of Kinsale in December. At the surrender of Kinsale in February 1602 Barry, his father, his mother and three brothers were allowed to leave Ireland together with the Spanish.

Spanish Service

Barry served for four years as a marine in the Spanish Atlantic Fleet in the Irish company of Hugh Mostyn. In June 1605 his unit was transferred to the Army of Flanders to bolster the offensive led by Ambrogio Spinola, against the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Barry landed at Dunkirk in December 1605. His unit was attached to the newly created Irish Tercio of Henry O'Neill. Henry O'Neill was a younger son of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. This unit was therefore also called Tyrone's tercio. Barry fought at the siege of Rheinberg in 1608 and became a captain in Owen Roe O'Neill's Irish regiment in Spanish service. He fought at the capture of Breda in 1625 and was retired from active service in 1632.

General of the Munster Army

In October 1641 Phelim O'Neill launched the Irish Rebellion from the northern province of Ulster. When Barry visited Ireland in 1640 to recruit for the Spanish Army, his endeavour was interrupted by the arrival of the rebellion in Southern Ireland. Barry sided with his fellow Catholics. In January 1642 Barry and Maurice Roche, 8th Viscount Fermoy besieged Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork in Youghal. On 2 March 1642 Donough MacCarty, the 2nd Viscount Muskerry joined the rebellion When the insurgents organised in the Irish Catholic Confederation, they made him general of their forces in Munster. Barry took King John's Castle in Limerick for the Confederates through skillful use of the siege techniques he had learnt in Flanders—in particular undermining of the castle's walls (see Siege of Limerick 1642).

However, Barry failed to take Cork and was driven off in disorder at the Battle of Liscarroll when his forces advanced on the city. Despite this defeat, he was confirmed as commander of the Confederate Munster army by the General Assembly in 1642. Barry seems to have kept the position until his death in early March 1646 at Limerick but took little further part in the war.

Works

Barry was also a prolific author on military matters, writing several handbooks on how to train and discipline troops and how to handle them in battle.

• The Siege of Breda (Louvain: Henricus Hastenius, 1627) online at Google Books
• A Discourse of Military Discipline (Brussels: Widow of John Mommart, 1634) [ online at Internet Archive]

Barry's The Siege of Breda is essentially a translation into English of the book on the subject by Herman Hugo with some additions from his own experience.

Notes, citations, and sources

Sources

• Armstrong, Robert (October 2009). McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). "Barry, Garret (Gerat)". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
• Bagwell, Richard (1890). Ireland under the Tudors. Vol. 3. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. OCLC 761857292. – 1579 to 1603
• Dowen, Keith (2019). "Gerat Barry: Soldier, Military Theorist and the Irish Rebellion of 1641". In Jones, Serena (ed.). 'Britain turned Germany': the Thirty Years' War and Its Impact on the British Isles 1638-1660. Warwick, U.K.: Helion & Company. pp. 1–52. ISBN 978-1-9128666-2-5.
• Dunlop, Robert (1895a). "O'Neill, Hugh, third Baron of Dungannon and second Earl of Tyrone 1540?–1616". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 42. New York: MacMillan and Co. pp. 188–196. OCLC 8544105.
• Dunlop, Robert (1895b). "O'Neill, Phelim 1604?–1653". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 42. New York: MacMillan and Co. pp. 204–208. OCLC 8544105.
• Ekin, Des (2016). The Last Armada. New York: Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1-60598-944-0.
• Lenihan, Pádraig (2004). "Barry, Gerat (d. 1646)". In Matthew, Henry Colin Gray; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 4. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 130–131. ISBN 0-19-861354-7.
• McGrath, Brid (1997a). "Donough Mc Carthy, (1594–1665) Cork County". A Biographical Dictionary of the Membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640 to 1641 (Thesis). Vol. 1. Dublin: Trinity College. pp. 203–204. hdl:2262/77206. – Parliaments & Biographies (PDF downloadable from given URL)
• M'Enery, M. J. (1904). "A Diary of the Siege of Limerick Castle, 1642". The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. 5th. 34 (2): 163–187. JSTOR 25507363.
• Mesa, Eduardo de (2014). The Irish in the Spanish Armies in the Seventeenth Century. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-951-4. – Preview
• Ó Siochrú, Micheál (October 2009). "MacCarthy, Donough". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
• Silke, John J. (1970). Kinsale: The Spanish Intervention in Ireland at the End of the Elizabethan Wars. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9780853230908.
• Stafford, Thomas (1896) [1st pub. 1633]. O'Grady, Standish (ed.). Pacata Hibernia. Vol. 2. London: Downey and Co. OCLC 4313009. – 1601 to 1602
• Thuillier, John R. (2014). Kinsale Harbour: A History. Dublin: Gill & MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-84889-848-6. – Preview
• Townshend, Dorothea (1904). "The Irish Attack on Youghal in 1642" (PDF). Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. 10 (62): 100–102.