CHAPTER VIII
Battle of Clontarf, A.D., 1014—Total Overthrow of the Danish Army and Power in Ireland
MANY of the princes of Leinster, more especially the MacMurroughs (MacMurro) were generally, in some measure, allied to the Danes, and fought with them against their own countrymen. After several years of warfare, a peace was, at length, patched up with the MacMurrough, and he became a guest of King Brian at Kinkora. In those days chess was the national game of the Irish princes and chiefs, and while engaged in it with the Leinster guest, Prince Murrough (Murro), Brian’s eldest son, in a fit of anger, hurled a taunt at the former in regard to his recent alliance with the invaders of his country. This action was, of course, rude, and even brutal, on the part of Prince Murrough, although MacMurrough had been guilty of treasonable offences. The Leinster potentate rose immediately from the table at which they were playing, pale from rage, and, in a loud voice, called for his horse and retainers. He was obeyed at once and left the palace. The wise King Brian, on learning of the quarrel and departure, sent messengers after the King of Leinster to bring him back, but his anger was so great that he would not listen to their representations, so that they went back without him to Kinkora. MacMurrough immediately re-allied himself with the Danes, and so the flames of war were rekindled with a vengeance. Many other princes and chiefs of Leinster made common cause with their king and his foreign allies. Reinforcements for the latter poured into Ireland from Scandinavia, from Britain, from the neighboring islands, from every spot of earth on which an invader could be mustered—all inflamed against Ireland, and all expecting to wipe King Brian and his army from the Irish soil. But Brian had his allies, too; the armies of Munster, Connaught, part of Ulster, and most of the heroic clans of Leinster flocked to his standard, the latter led by the ever-faithful Malachy and his tributary chiefs. All of the MacMurrough interest, as already stated, sided with the Danes. A majority of the Ulster princes, jealous of Brian’s fame and supreme power, held back from his support, but did not join the common enemy.
Brian was now an old man, and even his bold son, Murrough, the primary cause of the new trouble, was beyond middle age. The hostile armies hurried toward Dublin, the principal Danish stronghold, and on Good Friday morning, April 23, 1014, were face to face on the sands of Clontarf, which slope down to Dublin Bay. We have no correct account of the numbers engaged, but there were, probably, not less than thirty thousand men—large armies for those remote days—on each side. It was a long and a terrible battle, for each army appeared determined to conquer or die. Under King Brian commanded Prince Murrough and his five brothers: Malachy, Kian, Prince of Desmond, or South Munster; Davoren, of the same province; O’Kelly, Prince of Hy-Many, East Connaught; O’Heyne, the Prince of Dalaradia, and the Stewards of Mar and Lennox in Scotland.
The Danes and their allies were commanded by Brodar, the chief admiral of the Danish fleet; King Sitric, of Dublin;[[1]] the Danish captains, Sigurd and Duvgall, and the warrior Norwegian chiefs, Carlos and Anrud. The Lord of the Orkney Islands also led a contingent, in which Welsh and Cornish auxiliaries figured.
[1]. Sitric, according to some writers, was not in the battle.
Thus, it will seem, the cause was one of moment, as the fate of a country was to be decided, and the ablest captains of Ireland and Scandinavia led the van of the respective hosts. The struggle was long and murderous, for the armies fought hand to hand. Brian, too feeble to sit his war-horse and bear the weight of even his light armor, worn out, moreover, by the long march and the marshaling of his forces, was prevailed upon to retire to his pavilion and rest. He placed the active command of the Irish army in the hands of King Malachy and his son, Prince Murrough O’Brien. The conflict lasted from daylight until near the setting of the sun. Every leader of note on the Danish side, except Brodar, was killed—many by the strong hand of Prince Murrough and his brave young son, Turlough O’Brien, after his father the person most likely to be elected to the chief kingship of Ireland. On the Irish side there fell Prince Murrough, his gallant son, the Scottish chiefs of Mar and Lennox, who came, with their power, to fight for Ireland, and many other leaders of renown. King Brian himself, while at prayer in his tent, which stood apart and unguarded, was killed by Brodar, the flying Danish admiral, who was pursued and put to death by a party of Irish soldiers.
The slaughter of the minor officers and private men, on both sides, was immense, and the little river Tolka, on the banks of which the main battle was fought, was choked with dead bodies and ran red with blood. But the Danes and their allies were completely broken and routed, and the raven of Denmark never again soared to victory in the Irish sky. Many Danes remained in the Irish seaport towns, but they became Irish in dress, language, and feeling, and thousands of their descendants are among the best of Irishmen to-day.
Ireland, although so signally victorious at Clontarf, sustained what proved to be a deadly blow in the loss of her aged king and his two immediate heirs. Brian, himself, unwittingly opened the door of discord when he took the crown forcibly from the Hy-Niall family, which had worn it so long. His aim was to establish a supreme and perpetual Dalcassian dynasty in himself and his descendants—a wise idea for those times, but one balked by destiny. Now all the provincial Irish monarchs aspired to the supreme power, and this caused no end of jealousy and intrigue. Brian, in his day of pride, had been hard on the Ossorians, and their chief, Fitzpatrick, Prince of Ossory, basely visited his wrath, as an ally of the Danes, on the Dalcassian contingent of the Irish army returning from Clontarf encumbered by their wounded. But these dauntless warriors did not for a moment flinch. The hale stood gallantly to their arms, and the wounded, unable to stand upright, demanded to be tied to stakes placed in the ground, and thus supported they fought with magnificent desperation. The treacherous Ossorian prince was routed, as he deserved to be, and has left behind a name of infamy. Many noble patriots of the house of Fitzpatrick have since arisen and passed away, but that particular traitor ranks with Iscariot, MacMurrough, Monteith, and Arnold in the annals of treachery. Who that has read them has not been thrilled by the noble lines of Moore which describe the sacrifice of the wounded Dalcassians?
“Forget not our wounded companions who stood
In the day of distress by our side;
When the moss of the valley grew red with their blood
They stirred not, but conquered and died!
That sun which now blesses our arms with his light,—
Saw them fall upon Ossory’s plain,
O! let him not blush when he leaves us to-night
To find that they fell there in vain.”
The glorious King Malachy, although ever in the thickest of the battle, survived the carnage of Clontarf. Unable to agree upon a candidate from any of the provincial royal families because of their bitter rivalries, the various factions, having confidence in Malachy’s wisdom and patriotism, again elected him High King of Ireland, the last man who held that title without dispute. He reigned but eight years after his second elevation to the supreme throne of his country and died at a good old age about the middle of September, 1022, in the odor of sanctity, and sincerely lamented by the Irish nation, excepting a few ambitious princes who coveted the crown his acts had glorified. In the whole range of Irish history he was the noblest royal character, and his name deserves to be forever honored by the nation he sought to preserve.
After the good king’s death, a younger son of Brian Boru, Prince Donough (Dunna), made an attempt to be elected Ard-Righ, and, failing in that, sought to hold the crown by force. But the provincial monarchs refused to recognize his claims, as he did not appear to inherit either the military prowess or force of character of his great father. After some futile attempts to maintain his assumed authority, he was finally deposed by his abler nephew, Turlough O’Brien, who occupied the throne, not without violent opposition, for a period. Poor Donough proceeded to Rome and presented his father’s crown and harp to the Pope, probably because he had no other valuable offerings to bestow. This circumstance was afterward made use of by the Anglo-Normans to make it appear that the presentation made by the deposed and discredited Donough to the Pontiff carried with it the surrender of the sovereignty of Ireland to his Holiness. No argument could be more absurd, because, as has been shown, the crown of Ireland was elective, not hereditary, except with well understood limitations, which made the blood royal a necessity in any candidate. Donough, in any case, was never acknowledged as High King of Ireland, and could not transfer a title he did not possess. In fact all the Irish monarchs may be best described not as Kings of Ireland, but Kings of the Irish. They had no power to alienate, or transfer, the tribe lands from the people, and held them only in trust for their voluntary subjects. Modern Irish landlordism is founded on the feudal, not the tribal, system. Hence its unfitness to satisfy a people in whom lingers the heredity of the ancient Celtic custom. King Brian, the most absolute of all the Irish rulers, is described by some annalists as “Emperor of the Irish.”