Hugh Dubh O'Neill ("Black Hugh") was an Irish soldier of the seventeenth century. He is best known for his participation in the Irish Confederate Wars and in particular his defence of Clonmel in 1650.

O'Neill was a member of the O'Neill clan, the leaders of which fled Ireland in the flight of the Earls in 1607. He grew up in Spain, becoming a professional soldier and serving in the Irish regiment of the Spanish army in Flanders during the Thirty Years War. In 1642, his uncle, Owen Roe O'Neill, organised the return of 300 Irish officers in the Spanish service to Ireland to support the Irish Rebellion of 1641. ONeill's men became the nucleus of the Ulster army of Confederate Ireland - a de facto independent Irish state. Hugh Dubh O'Neill rose to prominence after the death of Owen Roe O'Neill in 1649.

In 1649, after the onset of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Hugh Dubh was sent south with 2000 of the best Ulster troops to defend southern Ireland. O'Neill distinguished himself at the siege of Clonmel in May 1650, inflicting the worst casualties ever experienced by the New Model Army. He was then made commander of the defenders of Limerick, fighting off the Parliamentarian's first attempt to take the city in late 1650. However, the following year, Henry Ireton besieged the city again, eventually forcing O'Neill to surrender when the city's population was dying of hunger and plague(See also sieges of Limerick). Ireton himself died of disease. Under the terms of surrender, O'Neill was to be executed for his stuborn defence of the city, but the Parliamentarian general Edmund Ludlow did not carry out the sentence and intsead sent O'Neill into imprisonment in the Tower of London. According to some sources, O'Neill's life was saved by the intervention of the Spanish envoy to England, who argued that O'Neill was a Spanish subject.

See Also

• Irish Confederate Wars
• Wars of the Three Kingdoms