Resumen de El siglo XVII
Throughout the 17th century, at least ten of the most important Irish no-ble families fought, in Flanders or in Spain, in favour of the cause of the Spanish Monarchy. Some of the heads of these lineages, as was the case for John O´Neill or Hugh O´Donnell, even lost their lives while carrying out their missions as commanders in chief of their Irish regiments. Sev-eral thousand Irishmen, along with their wives and children, spent the long period between the end of the Nine Years� War until the close of the 17th century in the lands of a monarchy in which the defence of the Roman Catholic cause was a fundamental reason shared by Irish and Spanish, though not always the first one or even the only one, to enter into bat-tle. Being on His Catholic Majesty�s payroll, by requesting the payment of backlogs and different benefits for having served in real war over twenty years, by demanding assistance in joining the Military Religious Orders, or even when their widows requested funds from the Royal Treasury on behalf of their deceased husbands who had died while fighting in the King�s armies, all these Irishmen played, with their loyal and honourable service in the military, a major role in many of the most remarkable chap-ters of Spanish military history in the 17th century.
