The new city was slow to prosper. By the 1680s it still had only about 2,000 inhabitants; and yet it was, by far, the largest town in Ulster. Along with most parts of Britain and Ireland, the city suffered from the upheavals in the 1640s. This began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, when the Gaelic Irish insurgents made a failed attack on the city. For the next ten years of war, Derry and its environs became a stronghold for the British Protestant settlers, who raised the "Lagan army" to defend themselves from the Irish Confederates. However, the Protestants were disunited about how to respond to the events of the English Civil War, with some of them supporting the King, some the English Parliament and some the Scottish Covenanters. The Covenanters initially supported the Parliamentarians, with their goal being to protect the local Protestant population from attacks by the Catholic rebel, however later switched to support the Royalists. Much of the Covenanter army was wiped out at the Battle of Benburb by the Irish Ulster Army under the command of general Eoghan Ruadh O'Néill (Anglisized: Owen Roe O Neill). The Covenanters managed to retreat to easter Ulster but were unable to have a major impact for the rest of the war. In 1649 the city and its garrison, which supported the republican Parliament in London, were besieged by Scottish Presbyterian (Covenanter) forces loyal to King Charles I. The Parliamentarians besieged in Derry were relieved by a strange alliance of Roundhead troops under George Monck and Owen O Neill, during a brief civil war within the Irish Confederacy. These temporary allies were soon fighting each other again, however, after the landing in Ireland of the New Model Army in 1649. The war in Ulster was finally brought to an end when the Parliamentarians crushed the Irish Catholic Ulster army at the battle of Scarrifholis in nearby Donegal in 1650.