Military History of Ireland
- Mar 15, 2023
- 5 min read
Green Fields of France
The culture of Ireland is often summarized by happy wars and sad love songs, but occasionally those switch around. Fighting during some of the most brutal campaigns of the First World War inspired several anti-war songs both during the era and after including No Man's Land based on a poem written about a man finding the gravesite of a soldier who died at only nineteen years old in the trenches of France in 1916 and Foggy Dew detailing the appalling conditions of combat found among Irish soldiers in the Middle East campaigns. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the start of the World Wars, Ireland had undergone a gradual process of liberation for Irish Catholics under British occupation; but discussions of home rule were isolated to Protestant regions in the north. The result of Irish soldiers' deaths in the early years of the Great War paired with oppressive policies on the home front would spark the Easter Uprising- a failed revolt in 1916 that would spark a war for independence that would conclude in the establishment of the Republic of Ireland.
Quarrels over Quarrelsome
One of the biggest mysteries in Irish military history relate to the mysterious figure known as Wolf the Quarrelsome. According to Norse accounts, Wolf was a relative of Irish High King Brian Boru who assisted the king in battle at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 resulting in an Irish victory. As the story goes, defeated Vikings retreating from the battle stumbled into Boru's personal camp, killed the king, raided his tent, then made a hasty retreat. When Wolf found his relative dead, he tracked down the retreating war band, killed them, then used their intestines to leash their corpses to a tree before disappearing from the historical record.
No mention of a man named "Wolf" appeared in Irish accounts of the battle however, leaving some historians to wonder just who was this secret avenger. The greatest suspect however may point to an even more incredible narrative. Brian Boru was the youngest of three siblings with the oldest dying without an heir and the middle child being skipped over for inheriting their father's estates in southern Ireland. That middle child- named Mathgamain (pronounced "ma-HOON") assisted his brother in their campaigns against the Norse- including at Clontarf.
After Boru's death, unidentified assailants kidnapped Mathgamain before assassinating him; leaving Boru's descendents- the "O'Briens" to establish a new dynasty to rule Ireland as High Kings. The descendents of Mathgamain fled west to County Clare where they adopted the name of Mathgamain and Brian's father King Cennetig to become the "O'Kennedy's." Boru and his two brothers also had several half-siblings however; as their father supposedly had twelve sons with eleven wives, and some historians point to a mysterious figure known as Cuiduligh as the true Wolf the Quarrelsome. The only problem is, there's no record of any child of King Kennedy with that name either. Perhaps we'll never know who the mysterious Wolf was, but what is known is that the death of Brian Boru would spark multiple mysteries including the identity of his mysterious avenger and the identities of his brother's mysterious kidnappers.
Saving Grace
It's not often that a pirate impresses their enemy so much that they become best friends, but the story of Irish sea pirate Grace O'Malley has certainly impressed historians. Born in 1530 in western Ireland, Grace O'Malley was an Irish pirate queen who inherited her fleet from her father's deathbed and used it to terrorize the coasts of the British Isles during the Elizabethan Era.
At the time, gender roles were strict in Ireland and Britain, so women rarely had the opportunity to earn incomes outside of marriage- even under pirate societies. Grace married twice during her life to secure alliances with other pirate fleets and take control of key defensive coastal forts from which she could secure her loot.
During the reign of Henry VIII, England invested heavily in increasing the size of its navy- something that continued under his successors. That created nightmares for pirates operating out of coastal towns in the British Isles as the British Navy was intent on securing its territories. That tension culminated in all-out war between Grace O'Malley's fleet fighting for an autonomous Irish state and a British navy ever increasing in strength and authority.
While O'Malley consistently defeated English attempts at naval superiority over Irish coasts, O'Malley also understood she could not sustain a war against the British navy indefinitely. In a brazen move to end the war, O'Malley personally wrote to Queen Elizabeth asking to meet face to face to negotiate an end to the fighting. While many Irish contemporaries called the move treason to the cause of Irish independence, O'Malley earned the respect of Queen Elizabeth and managed to negotiate a peace between the British and Irish.
After resigning from piracy, O'Malley fell on hard times and returned to piracy at least once in an attempt to save her finances; but met defeat when British troops occupied her estates and forced her to retreat further into poverty in the south of Ireland from which she petitioned Queen Elizabeth to forgive her sons for the sins of their mother. Queen Elizabeth received backlash in England for her negotiations with O'Malley and O'Malley the same in Ireland; both the two maintained diplomatic relations throughout their lives until they both died in the same year.
Cry Havoc
Several warrior gods appear in Irish mythology, but perhaps the most fearsome would be the goddess Nemain- goddess of the havoc of war. Nemain appears prominently in the mythical Cattle Raid of Cooley in which details her fury against the armies of Queen Medb. In some versions of the folklore, Nemain is a bean nighe (or banshee) who appears to warriors on the night before a battle as a woman washing the clothes or entrails of the doomed soldiers. That may be why accounts of Nemain appear only at night among Queen Medb's warriors who create uproars upon seeing the goddess of war. In some versions of the story, Nemain is also known as "law-giver" which may give clues to her origins in Proto-Indo-European storytelling as a cognate of the Greek "Nemesis"- a figure symbolizing retributive justice; but may also take inspiration from a Proto-Celtic word for poison. Whether a venomous banshee or a vengeful war goddess, Nemain may best represent the toxic fear of psychological warfare in Ancient Ireland who continues to haunt the dreams of people today fearful of the sound of the banshee's cry for havoc.
Scorching Wind
While wars have waged throughout Irish history, few films have captured the military history of the island. One of those few remains today as one of the best films detailing the history of Ireland- The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and the movie hold up. Set during the events of the Irish War of Independence and subsequent civil war; the film centers around the struggles of the Irish community in not only gaining independence from interwar Britain, but fighting amongst themselves over. the future of the new nation.
What makes the movie a success is its depiction of the far from "black and white" nature of the two wars as the struggles of soldiers who fight a war of independence quickly devolve into a civil war over what to do with that independence. What also made it topical was the decade the film premiered. During the height of violence over the fate of Northern Ireland in the 1990's, The Wind That Shakes the Barley encapsulates the feelings of Irish revolutionaries during their war of independence and civil war and of Irish citizens undergoing the violence of "The Troubles."
Tapping into a cultural zeitgeist in Ireland, The Wing That Shakes the Barley was a critical success among audiences who saw the film as a perfect outage for their emotions towards the resumed violence in their country both at the hands of British-backed paramilitary death squads and at home-grown dissent between neighbors.
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