Jeffrey James - Ireland: The Struggle for Power: From the Dark Ages to the Jacobites

For Una

First published 2017

Amberley Publishing
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Copyright Jeffrey James, 2017

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ISBN 9781445662466 (HARDBACK)
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Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men.

Daniel OConnell, Mallow, co. Cork, June 1843

Roman general Agricola may have contemplated invading Ireland toward the end of the first century AD. His companion, the historian Tacitus, wrote how he frequently heard the general assert that a single legion and a few auxiliaries would suffice to conquer Ireland and keep its people under subjugation. Tacitus accurately described Ireland as an island smaller than Britain but larger than the islands of the Mediterranean. He may have been drawing on information from the Britons, as well as from maps made by early travellers. Eratosthenes world map, c. 220 BC, shows the island of Ierne positioned above a larger Brettanie. Marcus Agrippas map of the world, c. AD 20, fails to name Ireland, but still shows it, this time lying below Britannia. Tacitus assessed the islands inhabitants as being little different from the Britons and claimed Agricola saw propaganda value in subjugating them to Roman rule. The general claimed that the conquest of Ireland would restrain the Britons by awing them with the prospect of Roman arms all around them, banishing liberty from their sight. Nothing in the end came of Agricolas deliberations. Later Irish chroniclers claimed the fame of their fighting men deterred the Roman warlord, but the Romans had not baulked when confronting similarly fierce opposition in Scotland namely a confederation of tribes collectively known as the Caledonii, ruddy-haired and large-limbed men, among them the fierce Vacomagi and Taexali tribes. Had Agricola reached Ireland he would have faced a similar enemy, adept at luring bodies of troops deeper and deeper into uncharted, marshy and heavily wooded territory. In the foothills of the Scottish Highlands, the Romans could rarely pin down such foes, who were capable of launching surprise attacks one moment and disappearing into the shadows the next. On one occasion only the fortuitous arrival of supporting cavalry prevented the destruction of Agricolas Spanish legionaries. Attacked under cover of night, they were for a time forced to fight back to back in the dark.

In AD 83, the Caledonii confronted their aggressors in the open. Trapped by a marauding Roman fleet and an advancing Roman army, starvation or enslavement beckoned eventualities feared by the Caledonii more than death in battle. A speech made by the Caledonian leader Calgacus to his warriors stressed that they yet remained free and untouched by servitude. He added that they must fight, warning that the only alternative to fighting was to accept the devastation which the Romans called peace: a cycle of enslavement, tribute and submission. He said of the Romans, To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they will call empire, and, where they make a desert, they will call it peace. At the battle which followed Mons Graupius, fought somewhere in north-east Scotland Roman auxiliaries carried the day, assisted by their cavalry. Agricola held his legions back in reserve. Tacitus alleged the Romans slaughtered thousands of the enemy for the loss of just 360 men. A description of the Celts as forming up openly, without forethought helps explain Calgacus crushing defeat, but of more import was the materiel and military superiority of the Romans: better weaponry, greater discipline and superior tactical awareness.

Sometime earlier than Mons Graupius, Agricolas army had crossed an unidentified stretch of water and defeated peoples unknown to the Romans until then. These were probably tribes hailing from Galloway and Ayrshire in the wilds of south-west Scotland, not the Irish as has sometimes been claimed. Agricola had with him at his side an Irish king named Tuathal Techtmar. Reflecting a theme that would reoccur throughout early Irish history, Tuathal had been temporarily exiled from Ireland by a rival. He sought Roman backing to regain his territories, not in the form of Roman soldiers or auxiliaries but in weaponry and supplies; this was in return for important trading rights, raw materials and Tuathals promise to work to prevent Irish attacks on Roman Britain. Roman and Romano-British artefacts found in Leinster, notably at a fortified site north of Dublin and on Lambay Island, confirm a brisk trade interaction.

Agricola actively looked for allies like Tuathal to act in Romes best interests in Ireland. According to Tacitus, it was the long-established practice of the Romans to make local kings the instrument of servitude. As to why the Roman military neglected to occupy Ireland, they probably had enough to do protecting Britain. As in the Highlands of Scotland and the lands east of the Rhine, payback for such a risky venture was unlikely. Rome could not hope to gather sufficient taxes from under-developed societies to make long-term occupation viable. Southern Britain and Gaul on the other hand had much larger, thriving communities. Irelands geographic remoteness and relative lack of sophistication therefore saved it from the attentions of Romes legions. There was no Roman pattern of military occupation, road building and urbanisation. The country remained a patchwork of rival tribes without centralised control.

Like their Continental and British cousins, the Irish were head-hunters. When one ruler triumphed in battle over another, he cut off his victims head and paraded it to prove his rival had been defeated and no longer lived. Greek geographer Strabo said, When the Celts depart from battle, they hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses, and when they bring them home they nail the spectacle to the entrance of their houses. Welsh and Scandinavian sagas from a later period also make reference to head-hunting. One bardic account tells of the Earl of Orkney dying from blood poisoning caused by an infected tooth from the jaw of a decapitated head hanging from his saddle. Open wounds on his leg must have brushed up against the mouth of his grim trophy. Other evidence of the practice comes from a Gallic carving showing a severed head dangling from a horses neck; another illustrates a rider trampling over five lopped-off heads. Strabo thought the Irish even more savage than other Celts. He claimed that as well as hunting for heads they practiced human sacrifice, ate their dead and practiced incest. Such scare stories may have been written to serve as titillating propaganda for a Roman audience, a demonising of the