1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland Read online

  His heroism made a profound impression on all who saw it. Even the foreigners did not react, but stared in admiration.

  Brian gave a cry of alarm. He ordered one of his bodyguards to run to Murrough at once and tell him he must return to his troops immediately; it was imperative that he live to lead the army. The man ran faster than he ever had in his life. When he told Murrough that his father commanded him to withdraw, the prince looked as if he did not understand; he was like a man waking from a dream. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and returned to the Dalcassians.

  But the signal had been given. The battle began.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ATTACK!

  The first-century Greek geographer and historian Strabo had written of the Celts: ‘The whole race is madly fond of war, high-spirited and quick to battle, and on whatever pretext you stir them up you will find them ready to face danger, even if they have nothing on their side but their own strength and courage.’ A thousand years later this was equally applicable to their Irish descendants.

  The Gael and the Northmen had raw courage in common, and also their traditional method of attack. Warriors on both sides began by making menacing gestures and screaming insults at one another until their blood was sufficiently heated, then charged forward on a broad front, smashing their way into their opponents. The side that did the most damage and broke the other’s nerve usually won.

  Warfare would continue to be conducted in a more or less similar fashion until the twentieth century. The horrors of World War One, when hundreds of thousands of doomed soldiers were sent ‘over the top’ to certain death, had a profound effect on future combat.

  In 1014 tribalism determined the composition of the Irish divisions. The noble lords of the Gael commanded their personal armies of warriors within the ranks of their battalions. But once the battle began, another factor took over. Princes and kings on both sides were easily identified by their banners. The leaders of the two great armies began deliberately targeting one another, as if in a Combat of Champions. Military cohesion began to break down.

  Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh offers the following lurid impression of the opening moments of the Battle of Clontarf: ‘There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, furious, dark, frightful, voracious, merciless, combative, contentious, vulture-like screaming and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and the idiots, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and the goblins, and the ancient birds, and the destroying demons of the air and of the firmament, and the feeble demoniac phantom host; and they were screaming and comparing the valour and combat of both parties.’

  Beneath this wildly extravagant narrative lies a kernel of truth. The most epic of all Irish battles was horrendous in the extreme. Hand-to-hand combat with bladed weapons is physically exhausting. Cinema and television to the contrary, people do not automatically lie down and die when someone sticks a sword into them. The human hide is surprisingly tough. Considerable force is required to drive a blade into a person, and it is almost as difficult to pull it out. Even then your enemy may get to his feet and come at you again. The recently discovered skeleton of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, reveals that he suffered a score of incredibly savage wounds before finally succumbing to a fractured skull.

  Early in the day, the men of Connacht confronted the Danes of Dublin. A savage battle took place between them in which most of the combatants were killed. Of the Connachtmen, less than a hundred survived. With them died Murray, the Great Steward of Lennox. The Danes of Dublin lost all but twenty of their number. The valiant Dubhgall attempted to take the survivors to join another battalion, but his own survival would be brief. He was slain at the foot of the bridge which was afterwards given his name.

  Anrud and his battalion in chainmail smashed full force into the Dalcassians, hacking and slashing their way amongst them. In that terrible onrush Murrough’s men fell back at first, but their leader stood firm as the blood began to spray around him. Swinging a sword in either hand – apparently he was one of the few Gaels to possess equal dexterity, striking left or right – Murrough charged headlong into the armoured battalion. Iron met iron and steel met steel. His men followed him. The weapons of the Dalcassians came to life with a mighty clashing against the thrice-riveted armour of their adversaries.

  The observers watching from the battlements of Dublin claimed afterwards that they could see flashes of fire in the air all around the warriors.

  They were surging back and forth across the uneven ground, up and down the hillocks, through the thickets, around the boulders, fighting every step of the way. There would be no pauses to catch one’s breath and no stop for a rest. When a warrior fell a replacement did not always hurry forward to fight in his stead; and even if one did, he would have to step over his predecessor’s body. If a man grew desperately thirsty – and fighting was thirsty work – he might be lucky enough to come upon a brook, or a spring, or some farmer’s well where he might slake his thirst, but that moment of inattention could easily earn him a spear in the back.

  Whatever moments of glory the combatants originally had imagined soon turned into physical anguish and agonising pain. There was no one available to tend the wounded. Not even a priest to pray over them. Nothing but the imperative to kill.

  Murrough’s actions that morning were described by the chroniclers as ‘the fierce rushing of a bull, and the scorching path of a royal champion’. He was said to be the last man in Erin who was a match for a hundred. Against the odds, he and his Dalcassians finally hacked the armoured mercenaries to pieces. This unexpected turn of events so shocked Anrud that he ran amok across the fields, mindlessly dodging the spears thrown at him. The Irish annalists would call Brian Boru’s oldest son ‘the gate of battle, the hurdle of conflict, the sheltering tree and the impregnable tower’.

  Those annalists, who were so effusive in their praise of the Gael, were not stinting in their praise of the foreigners. It was the Irish tradition for a man to respect the foe he defeated, rather than denigrating him. There was no glory in defeating a mediocrity. Consider the following: ‘The terrible swords maimed and cut the comely, graceful bodies of noble, pleasant, courteous, affable, accomplished men on both sides. There was the clashing of two bodies of equal hardness, and of two bodies moving in contrary directions, in one place. And it is not easy to imagine what to liken it to; but to nothing small could be likened the firm, stern, sudden, thunder-motion; and the stout, haughty billow-roll of these people on both sides.’

  In literature there are two views of the Battle of Clontarf, one presented by the Irish annalists and the other by the Norse sagas. The Irish rely on spectacular overstatement for their effect. The Norse rely on tight-lipped understatement. There is one noteworthy exception to this. Old Norse poetry includes ‘The Song of the Valkyries’ which prophesies the carnage of Clontarf. Gleaming with a dark and terrible splendour, it describes a crimson dawn painted by the blood of warriors as the battle maidens with flying hair ride forth on their wild horses, eager to claim the fallen heroes.

  In the fields above the Irish Sea the warriors fought man to man and breast to breast, one grimacing face glaring into another. Those on one side who made a kill soon fell victim to someone from the other side. Battlecrazed warriors began taking trophy heads, in the style of the ancient Celts.

  The conflict took on a life of its own. Seen from above it would have resembled a giant sprawling multicoloured beast clawing its way over the rolling land, a creature with a broken back, perhaps, that twitched and spasmed, briefly revealing the dark gleam of metal scales along its sides.

  Yet all was not as chaotic as it appeared, not at first. Brian had studied classical warfare. Through the chain of command, the few trusted princes to whom the Árd Rí had confided the full details of his battle plan passed the necessary information on to the ranking officers below them. These men were responsible for organising the warriors in the field. The ordinary foot soldier did not need to know t
he whole picture. All that was required was that he obey the commands of his immediate leader.

  Sigurd the Stout had been wrong in his assessment of the battle. It was not quickly over. The Irish did not yield but they moved back slowly, one step at a time, giving away each foot of ground with the greatest reluctance. Forcing the foreigners to come after them.

  The tide of battle flowed first one way, then another, but always and ultimately towards Magh Dumha on the heights, where stood Tomar’s Wood.

  Although the main action took place on the battleground Brian had chosen, there was sporadic fighting elsewhere as well. In the rush to come ashore, several of the Viking ships had made landfall farther along the coast. Bones and remnants of weapons dated to this time have been found at Fairview, in an area of Marino known until recently as ‘the Bloody Fields’, and on the strand of Sandymount below the walls of Dublin. For several hours tardy foreigners rushed to join their comrades.

  Brian’s army had no reinforcements on the way. Every warrior the men of Erin could gather was already fully committed. Or should have been.

  Through what became an interminable day the inhabitants of Dublin, including Sitric Silkbeard and his wife and mother, watched the fighting from the palisades along the Liffey. They could not see all of the action, or even the climactic moments, but they witnessed a panorama of fighting and killing sufficient to satisfy the most bloodthirsty observer. A chronicler relates, ‘The men and women who were watching from the battlements of Áth Cliath saw flashes of fire’ – the sun glinting off helmets and blades.

  Swinging and slashing and cutting and chopping. Screams of fury; cries of agony. And still the battle went on.

  According to Sitric Silkbeard, ‘not more numerous would be the sheaves floating over a great company reaping a field of oats than was the hair flying with the wind, cut away by heavy gleaming axes and by bright flaming swords.’ He supposedly remarked to his wife, Brian Boru’s daughter, ‘Well do the foreigners reap the field; many is the sheaf they let go from them.’ Emer is said to have replied, ‘It will be at the end of the day that will be seen.’

  The fiercest fighting took place in the centre of the battlefield. In the only statement of his which survives, Malachy Mór is reputed to have said, ‘I never saw a battle like it, nor have I heard of its equal. There was a field and a ditch between us and them, and the sharp wind of the spring coming over them towards us. In not more than the time it would take to milk two cows, not one person could recognise another, though it might be his son or his brother that was nearest him, unless he should know his voice. We were so covered, as well our heads as our faces, with the drops of gory blood, carried by the force of the sharp cold wind which passed over them to us. And even if we attempted to perform any deed of valour we were unable to do it, because our spears over our heads had become clogged and bound with long locks of hair which the wind forced upon us, so it was half occupation with us to endeavour to disentangle and cast them off. And it is one of the problems of Erin, whether the valour of those who sustained that crushing assault was greater than ours who bore the sight of it without running distracted before the winds or fainting.’

  Again and again Brian Boru said to his attendant, ‘Your eyes are younger and sharper than mine, Laiten. Can you still see the standard of Prince Murrough?’ And Laiten replied, ‘I can indeed, lord; he is hewing his way across the battlefield with the enemy falling to the right and the left of him.’ Satisfied for a time, the old man knelt on his cushioned prayer stool and folded his hands.

  Laiten did not tell the Árd Rí when he saw Flann’s banner go down, nor when Conor’s banner disappeared beneath the trampling feet of the foreigners. Brian probably did not ask. He knew too well the nature of battle.

  Men died by the hundreds; then by the thousands. Maelmora, king of Leinster, was slain by Brian’s nephew Conaing, he of the ill-fated chess match at Kincora. The enmity between them lasted to the end; before he fell lifeless, Maelmora inflicted a fatal wound on Conaing.

  The sun passed its high point and began to slip towards the west. In the confusion of battle nothing seemed certain. Slowly Brian’s army continued to fall back. Inland, upland, away from the sea.

  Brodir was wading through the ranks of the Irish and wreaking havoc with his axe. Njal’s Saga, which was originally written in Old Norse, tells us what happened next from the Viking point of view. An Irish prince whom the Norse identify as ‘Ulf Hreda’ challenged Brodir and ‘thrust at him thrice, so hard that Brodir could hardly regain his feet.’ Obviously he was badly shaken. As soon as he succeeded in getting up he fled to the nearest patch of woods.

  The leaders of both sides were dying in large numbers now. Chieftains and kings, marked out by one another, lay on the ground in their own blood.

  Some time during this long day Murrough confronted Sigurd the Stout. He broke through the ranks of foreigners surrounding the earl of Orkney and ran up to the highly conspicuous raven banner. Murrough promptly killed the man carrying the banner. Sigurd ordered another man to take up his standard immediately. He did, and Murrough killed him too. A furious battle then ensued between Brian’s son and Sigurd’s followers, but they were reluctant to get close enough to kill him.

  According to Njal’s Saga, Earl Sigurd ordered Thorstein Hallsson to lift his banner from the ground. He was about to obey when Amundi the White called out, ‘Don’t take the banner, Thorstein! All who bear it will be slain!’

  Earl Sigurd cried, ‘Hrafn the Red, you carry my banner!’

  The intrepid Hrafn replied, ‘Carry it yourself.’

  Sigurd did not lack in courage. He reputedly remarked, ‘Likely it is most fitting that bag and beggar stay together.’ He tore the raven banner from its staff and tucked it into his belt. Then he turned to Murrough and attacked him, but the Irishman was quicker. He struck off Sigurd’s helmet with a single blow of the sword in his right hand, bursting both strap and buckles. With his left hand Murrough struck again. As he fell, the earl of Orkney wrapped the raven banner around himself. The raven became his winding sheet.

  It took half of the afternoon for the foreigners to force the Irish as far as Tomar’s Wood. There Brian’s army made its stand, refusing to be driven any farther. The foreigners pursued them with their axes. The Irish retaliated with theirs.

  Normal emotion was transformed into a boiling eruption of fear and hate, shared by both sides. What happened then was a living nightmare that would haunt the men who experienced it for the rest of their lives. They were afraid to close their eyes in sleep for fear they would see it again – see and hear and smell it all again.

  According to Malachy Mór’s poet and historian, Mac Coisse, ‘in Tomar’s Wood where the fiercest of the axe fighting took place, blood was still dripping from the trees three days later.’

  One historian claims that the Irish chopped down trees in Tomar’s Wood to use for building fires. This is implausible. Their enemies would never have granted them time out for lighting fires and cooking meals.

  Yet amidst all the horrors of the daylong battle there were individual moments of grace and mercy. Murrough or one of his men came across Thorstein trying to rebind the thongs that held his shoes to his feet. When the Irishman asked why he had paused for so mundane a task, Thorstein sadly replied, ‘Because I shall not get home to Iceland tonight.’ The Irishman sheathed his sword and let him live.

  Another of the Irish warriors who was forced by nature to empty his bowels was discovered by one of the Danes, who promptly crouched down and joined him. After sharing this moment of extreme vulnerability, the two went their separate ways.

  A small child wandered onto the outermost edge of the battlefield, searching for firewood. Men from both sides rushed forward to head him off and lead him to a place of safety.

  And still the killing went on.

  There is nothing to compare with the appalling, unmistakeable din of battle. The screams and curses and clash of metal on metal. No officer could shout loudly enough t
o be certain his order were heard. Veterans fought in savage silence, knowing that every breath was valuable and might be the last.

  In the crowded loneliness of battle, before the ultimate loneliness of dying, a man sought affirmation of his own life.

  Men who have died in battle are rarely good to look upon. No matter how splendid their appearance at the apex of heroism, when the soul has fled it takes all grace and beauty with it. Bowels empty, mouths gape, bellies swell, dead eyes gleam fishbelly white. Nothing visible remains of glory. In the tents of death all men belong to the same tribe.

  Late in the afternoon, perhaps around four o’clock, the last surviving Irish commanders issued what would be their final order to their men: Go back the way you came. Go down from the high ground at Magh Dumha towards the valley of the Tolka. And the sea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE END OF THE DAY

  Trampled mud and blood-soaked grass made the ground so slippery it was hard to keep one’s feet. The Irish warriors struggled to obey the commands they were given. Most of their princes and chieftains were dead or dying by now, but at least they still had Murrough’s standard to follow. What remained of Brian’s army turned and headed back down the battlefield. Exhausted men, covered with blood, their own and that of other men.

  The battle which had begun with the sunrise would last until sunset, but its nature changed. The Viking fury which had sustained the foreigners for so long was fading fast. They knew in their bones that they were defeated; they remembered the ancient axiom, ‘Men who never quit cannot lose.’

  Brian’s army would never quit. Following Murrough’s brilliant blue banner, the flag of the Dalcassians, they drove their enemies across the fields in the direction of the valley of the Tolka. Slashing, hacking, a snarl of men fighting every step of the way, without any order but with deadly determination. They too realised they were going to win.