Wars of the Irish Kings (42 page)

Figure 14.
King Dermot MacMurrough of Leinster—losing a war with high king Rory O’Connor—asked Henry II to invade Ireland. Henry declined, but in 1169 the Normans living in southern Wales accepted. This illustration is from a thirteenth-century manuscript of
The Typography of Ireland
by Gerald of Wales, who, in his history of the English conquest of Ireland, depicts Dermot frolicking on the battlefield with the heads of his Irish enemies.

Figure 15.
King John was declared Lord of Ireland by his father, Henry II, in 1177 when he was ten years old. In 1185, still a prince, he was dispatched to administer the English-held parts of the island in person, although he soon returned to London. Under his older brother, Richard I, he continued his lordship from afar and reigned as king from 1199 to 1216.

Figure 16.
This illustration depicts an Irish officer or nobleman of the sixteenth century. Unlike Irish or English common soldiers, he is fully armored in a suit of plate-mail. Artist unknown.

Figure 17.
Siege of Enniskillen, February 1594, as drawn by John Thomas. English forces besiege a castle on the southern tip of Lough Erne held by Hugh Maguire, an ally of Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell. The siege equipment is much the same as that used seven years later at Kinsale. Courtesy the British Library.

Figure 18.
Ulster, 1600-1603. A three-part illustrated map by Richard Bartlett showing (top) an attack on a dwelling in a lake; (middle) the O’Neill castle at Dungannon; and (bottom) the O’Neill coronation chair at Tara. Courtesy the National Library of Ireland.

Figure 19.
Art MacMurrough (with spear), an Irishman, confronts the Earl of Gloucester in an ambush during Richard IPs journey to Ireland in 1399. The English appear in full armor while MacMurrough rides without a saddle. From Jean Cretan’s account of the expedition, illustrated by an unnamed Parisian painter between 1401 and 1405.

Figure 20.
A knight—or perhaps a gallowglass—displaying the insignia of the De Burgo family from the west of Ireland. From the
De Burgo Genealogy
that dates from about 1583.

Figure 21.
Although his helmet is not the pointed one usually associated with the gallowglass (mercenary soldiers from Scotland), the long-handled battleaxe and the chain-mail jerkin (as well as the fact that he is not barefooted) suggest that he is a Scot and not an Irish foot soldier, or
kern.
The figure is a detail from Queen Elizabeth’s charter to the city of Dublin.

Figure 22.
“The execution was don upon our men alongst this high waie by the rebells,” reads a notation on this English map of a 1599 ambush by O’Neill’s allies near a ford on a stream in Wicklow. Another note reads, “Heer broke our battaille and heer fell downe all our collors.”

Figure 23.
Yellow Ford. This short stretch of road through the rolling hills near the Blackwater River, just north of Armagh, is the site of one of Ireland’s greatest psychological victories against the England. In the 1598, the small forces of O’Neil and O’Donnell overwhelmed the England troops, killed their general, and sent shock waves through Elezabeth’s court in London. Artist unknown.

The great General Norris, with his army, entered Oriel in MacMahon’s country and came to a place not far from Monaghan which is called Clontibret (Cluoin Tiburuid), where he displayed his forces to the enemy. O’Neill, not less skilful as a general, but very inferior in strength, came against him. Here for the first time the two far-in-a-way most illustrious Generals of the two most warlike islands faced each other. The ground here was an open and level plain, but somewhat heavy with moisture. The waters flowing from the surrounding bog formed a ford over which the English might most conveniently cross. O’Neill blocked this ford; Norris tried to force it. O’Neill endeavoured to drive him back. A cavalry fight and musketry skirmish commenced simultaneously round the ford. The Royalist horse were better armed; the Irish troops were more nimble. The Irish sharpshooters were far better marksmen. This advantage was often common to both parties since there were generally more Irish than English in the Royalist army. The Queen’s musketeers were twice worsted by the Catholics, and recalled by Norris, who was always the last to leave the fight, and had even a horse shot under him by a leaden bullet. All of both parties justly admitted the superiority of Maguire’s cavalry. Norris being annoyed at his men having been twice repulsed and unable to hold their ground, James Sedgreve, an Irish Meath-man of great size and courage, thus addressed him and Bagnal—“Send a troop of cavalry with me and I promise you I will drag O’Neill from his saddle.” O’Neill was stationed
on the other side of the ford supported by forty horse and a few musketeers surveying the battle thence and giving his orders. For the third time the cavalry and musketeers renewed the fight and Sedgreve accompanied by a troop of picked Irish and English horse charged the ford. In the ford itself a few horse fell under the fire of O’Neill’s bodyguard, but Sedgreve rushed upon O’Neill and each splintered his lance on the corslet of the other. Sedgreve immediately seized O’Neill by the neck and threw him from his horse. O’Neill likewise dragged Sedgreve from his horse and both gripped each other in a desperate struggle. O’Neill was thrown under but such was his presence of mind, that prostrate as he was, he slew Sedgreve with a stab of his dagger under the corslet between the thighs and through the bladder. Eighteen illustrious cavaliers of the Royalists fell round Sedgreve and their colours were captured; the rest sought safety in flight. With them all the Queen’s forces were likewise compelled to retreat, having lost seven hundred more or less, whilst the Catholics had only a few wounded, and no number of killed worth mentioning. On the following day as Norris retreated, being short of powder, he was followed and attacked by O’Neill at Bealach Finnuise, where O’Hanlon, Chief Standard Bearer of the Royalist Army, was wounded in the leg and others were shot down by leaden bullets. Hinch, an Englishman, who held the Castle of Monaghan with three companies of foot and a troop of horse, was obliged to surrender it for want of provisions. He, himself, was let go scot free as agreed.