All the Countries We've Ever Invaded

by Stuart Laycock

  That was not, of course, to be our last invasion of Iraq. During the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, British forces were part of a sweeping attack launched through Iraq to outflank Iraqi forces in Kuwait itself. And in 2003 we and the Americans were back again with some of the old names, like Basra and Fallujah, making a comeback on British news.

  Ireland

  It won’t come as any surprise to anybody that we’ve invaded Ireland. More people, by contrast, will be surprised that quite a lot of the invaders were coming in the opposite direction.

  Historical sources suggest there were raids across the sea from Ireland in the fourth century. There is also the famous instance of Patrick being abducted from Britain and taken back to Ireland by raiders. In the post-Roman period, historical and archaeological sources suggest Irish settlers arriving (perhaps to join cultures with existing strong links to Ireland) in a number of places in Britain, including in particular Dyfed and, in what is now Scotland, Dalriada.

  No doubt there was already a certain amount of two-way traffic even in this period, and soon the Anglo-Saxons would start taking a serious interest in Irish matters as well. The Annals of Tigernach for 629, for example, state that a Saxon prince, Osric, and his retinue were involved in a battle between two Irish forces. And there is a tradition that Saxons were present at the Battle of Mag Rath in County Down in 637. Then in 684, the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith sent an expedition to Ireland that seized slaves and booty.

  In 795, the Vikings first raided Ireland and for the next few centuries they were to be the main foreign force in the country.

  By the second half of the twelfth century, however, Brits were again a major factor. In 1166, King Dermot MacMurrough of Leinster was forced into exile and he wanted to get back his kingdom. He decided that the best way to do this was by recruiting some foreign help, in this case Norman and Welsh help. It is a classic case of unforeseen consequences. No doubt the English invasion would have come eventually, but that it came then is down to Dermot seeking external assistance in internal conflicts. It is strangely and ironically similar to the way in which Saxons are first supposed to have come to Britain itself, invited by the British King Vortigern to deal with other raiders.

  So into Ireland came people like Richard FitzStephen and Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, better known as Strongbow. Strongbow even married Dermot’s daughter, Aoife of Leinster, giving him the chance of becoming King of Leinster.

  At this point, King Henry II of England decided that things were getting out of hand, with the prospect of a new independent Norman kingdom in Ireland, and he himself now invaded Ireland with an army. This was on a much bigger scale than anything Strongbow had to offer and the result was that the kings of Ireland paid homage to Henry. He in turn made his younger son, John, Lord of Ireland. John unexpectedly then became king and continued to take an interest in Ireland, visiting it in 1185 and again in 1210.

  After that, the English kings lost interest in Ireland until Richard II in the fourteenth century.

  In the meantime, other assorted political and military developments were under way. For instance, the Norman forces of John Fitzgerald were defeated by the forces of Finghin MacCarthaigh at the Battle of Callann in 1261. And in 1315, Edward Bruce, brother of the rather more famous Robert, invaded with a Scots army, hoping to open a second front in the war against the English. Some Irish supported him, some opposed him. Eventually, he was killed at the Battle of Fochart in 1318 and the Scots went home. For a while.

  By the reign of Richard II, the position of the English in Ireland had become so weak that the Anglo-Irish lords pleaded for the king to intervene. So he took an army of more than 8,000 men to invade Ireland and did a bit of campaigning. It was a success in some sense, but had little long-term effect and the Wars of the Roses were soon to divert English attention elsewhere.

  By 1536 there was an open rebellion against Henry VIII and he decided on a policy of bringing Ireland under tight Crown control. Thus began the Tudor invasion of Ireland. The Desmond Rebellions of 1569–73 and 1579–83 in Munster saw tough resistance to the spread of English control, and in 1594 the Nine Years War broke out, with Hugh O’Neil leading resistance in Ulster. He even managed to get Spanish forces to arrive in Ireland in support of him, but the combined forces were defeated at Kinsale. In 1607, in what became known as ‘The Flight of the Earls’, O’Neil and other local leaders left Ireland, hoping to return with forces to pursue their cause. They never managed to.

  In some ways you could argue that the British invasion of Ireland was now complete, but perhaps it’s easiest to see some key events in the rest of the seventeenth century as a continuation of what had gone before.

  The arrival of Protestant settlers created tensions with locals, and events in Britain were about to have a dramatic impact on Ireland. In 1641 rebellion broke out, but with the English Civil War raging in England, it was not until 1649 that an English army, under Cromwell, was able to confront it. He did so ruthlessly, in a campaign that involved the atrocity of massacring the defenders of Drogheda, and that dragged on until 1653. More land confiscations followed.

  In 1688, James II was deposed and replaced by William III. A Jacobite army was raised in Ireland and James, with the support of French troops as well, arrived in Ireland. He met William III and his army at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. James lost and fled Ireland. By 1691 the Jacobites were defeated and the war was over.

  A number of rebellions were to follow. After the Easter Rising of 1916, and the War of Independence against Britain, the Irish Free State came into being in 1922. In 1949 Ireland officially became a republic and left the Commonwealth.

  Israel

  Brits were probably invading what is now Israel as early as the last years of the eleventh century with the arrival of the First Crusade in the Holy Land. English participation in the First Crusade is fairly minimal and rather controversial, but it does seem reasonable to accept that at least some armed Brits reached the Holy Land with the First Crusade.

  It was with the Third Crusade and Richard I that we really got going on invading the Holy Land. In 1190, Richard and his army set out for the region, and after brief stopovers (but violent ones, so not your average getting off the boat to stretch your legs and buy a few souvenirs) in Sicily and Cyprus, by the summer of 1191 he was getting stuck into the Siege of Acre on the coast of what is now northern Israel.

  Acre fell in July 1190, and Richard then managed to fall out with both his major allies, Philip of France and Leopold of Austria. It all turned into a diplomatic debacle, with Philip and Leopold deciding that frankly they had had enough and were going home. Richard then executed a large number of prisoners from Acre before moving south.

  From Acre he headed towards Jaffa, near present-day Tel Aviv. On the way, Saladin’s forces attacked his army at Arsuf in September 1191, and despite Saladin’s efforts to break up his forces, Richard managed to hang on and maintain enough cohesion and impetus eventually to secure a victory.

  Richard subsequently captured Jaffa and opened negotiations with Saladin. The talks broke down and Richard headed south towards Ashkelon, on the coast of what is now southern Israel, near Gaza and the Egyptian border. He took Ashkelon and set out to refortify it.

  In July 1192, though Saladin’s army had taken Jaffa back and amid political chaos and conflict on the Crusader side, Richard began to accept that realistically he could not take and hold Jerusalem. Eventually, in September 1192, he signed a peace deal with Saladin and went home. Eventually. We’ve all had journeys home that we would like to forget and this would definitely be in that category for Richard. He had made himself some very powerful enemies and it was pay-back time. Weather forced his ship into Corfu, which unfortunately was run by the Byzantine emperor, whom Richard had upset by taking Cyprus. He fled from there in disguise, only to end up being captured by Leopold of Austria (see above), who was keen to discuss assorted insults Richard had paid him. After being released by Leopold, he was captured by the Holy
Roman Emperor, Henry, who was keen to discuss assorted wrongs he reckoned Richard and the Plantagenets had done him. Richard only got back to his own lands after a huge ransom was paid. There’s nothing like a swift, easy journey home, and this indeed was nothing like a swift, easy journey home.

  There were assorted other Crusades with assorted British involvement. Take Richard of Cornwall, for example, who was already back in Ashkelon refortifying it in the 1240s, but for more major English involvement the Third Crusade was the main one.

  After the Crusades we took a break from invading the area, but with the arrival of the Napeolonic Wars we were back. After invading Egypt, Napoleon had decided to have a go at what is now Israel, advancing along the coast from Egypt and taking Gaza and Jaffa, in a sort of reverse move to what Richard I had been trying. In 1799, Napoleon laid siege to the now Ottoman-held city of Acre. And we went to help. To help the Ottoman defenders that is. A Royal Navy flotilla commanded by Commodore William Sidney Smith arrived and played a key role in combating the French forces. British guns and British sailors helped with the defence of Acre and we also attacked French supply lines both on land and sea. Eventually, Napoleon gave up and went back to Egypt, and shortly after that back to France. He had a somewhat easier journey than Richard.

  By 1840 we were back on the attack in the area again and, you guessed it, once again Acre was the location. We’ve done so much fighting there that it seems appropriate that it has such an apparently British name as Acre, though it’s not really named after a British Imperial unit of land measurement, since its local name has always been something like Akko or Akka.

  Anyway, all that aside, this time we were attacking Acre again. It was held by Egyptian troops who had come up the same way as Napoleon and we wanted it back in the hands of Ottoman troops to maintain the power balance in the Middle East. So an allied squadron containing British, Austrian and Turkish ships bombarded the defences of the city. Heavily. After two hours of firing, the defenders’ grand magazine blew up, and it is reported that every living creature within an area of 60,000 square yards (how many acres is that?) ceased to exist. Two regiments were apparently wiped out, along with fifty donkeys, thirty camels, twelve cows and some horses. The city fell and Sir Charles Smith took temporary command of the garrison. Eventually the Egyptians were pushed back into Egypt.

  In the First World War we returned, with some of the old sites reappearing. This time we were fighting the Ottomans instead of helping them. In 1915, the Turks attacked Egypt, but by 1917 British Empire troops had pushed the Turks back and we were attempting to move forward towards Israel. We were held up by fighting around Gaza in spring 1917, and a new commander was brought in, one General Allenby, given the mission of taking Jerusalem in time for Christmas. In October 1917, with a dramatic cavalry charge, Australian cavalry took Beersheva to the south and shortly afterwards Gaza fell. On 9 November 1917, Ashkelon fell to us, yet again, and on 16 November Jaffa fell. Jerusalem fell on 9 December 1917, and Allenby was able to visit Bethlehem itself on Christmas Day 1917. After a pause in early 1918, necessitated by some of Allenby’s forces being rushed to Europe to counter the German Spring Offensive, Allenby’s troops began to push further north through Israel. In autumn 1918, they won a decisive victory over the Turks at the Battle of Megiddo (sometimes known in English as the Battle of Armageddon, since the word Armageddon may come from the Hebrew for Har Megiddo, the Hill of Megiddo) and on 23 September 1918, just a few days before the Turks signed the Armistice of Mudros, Acre fell to us. Yet again.

  After the war we kept control of Israel as the Palestine Mandate. In 1948 we withdrew from the area and the current State of Israel was established.

  Italy

  Most Brits will know that the first invasion of Britain that we are aware of from a historical point of view came about because of a bunch of Italians (and others) led by one Julius Caesar. Caesar was fortunate in terms of his reputation in writing his own history. People’s idea of his invasion of Britain is largely based on what he himself wrote. Imagine if all history was like that, relying on the verdict of the generals and politicians involved. The fact is that he didn’t achieve that much over here, despite what he wrote, and eventually, after two stabs at us, he disappeared back over the Channel never to return (though the Romans did, almost 100 years later).

  Over the centuries we’ve got our own back on the Italians and, in fact, we started to do so even before the end of the Roman Empire. Constantine launched his bid for imperial power from Britain and in 312 was marching towards Rome. Ahead lay a sort of Northern Europe versus Mediterranean confrontation, which, on this occasion, Northern Europe was to win decisively. According to Zosimus, with a force drawn from Britain, plus assorted Germans, Celts and others, Constantine smashed Maxentius’ larger force consisting of Romans, Italians, Tuscans, Sicilians and Carthaginians, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and subsequently took Rome and transformed the empire and the world by making Christianity the official religion of the empire.

  Towards the end of the fourth century, Magnus Maximus tried the same thing. He wasn’t anything like as successful as Constantine, as it turned out, but he did set off from Britain and make it as far as northern Italy. He didn’t end up with happy memories of an Italian holiday, since he was defeated and executed. At least he’s remembered in Welsh legend as Macsen Wledig.

  Constantine III tried the same thing at the beginning of the fifth century. He had the same name as Constantine and made his bid almost exactly a century after the first Constantine, so he may have thought he was in for the same kind of success. He wasn’t. He made it to Liguria before withdrawing to Gaul. By 411 he was dead, and back in Britain we had rebelled and resigned from the Roman Empire permanently.

  After that we left Italy alone for a while. Well, we had quite a lot of other things to think about back home. In the late eleventh century the Normans took control of Sicily, but you couldn’t really call it a British invasion since it was more like a parallel invasion to the Norman invasion of England, just in a different direction.

  In September 1190, Richard the Lionheart turned up in Sicily with his army. He wasn’t in a good mood, since his sister Joanna was in prison there. She had been married to King William II of Sicily, but when he died, his cousin Tancred (not Tankard, even though he may have liked a drink or two) had taken over and imprisoned Joan. Tancred wasn’t very happy about Richard turning up and neither were the locals. In October there was trouble in Messina. Richard attacked Messina, captured it, did a bit of looting and burning, and established his base there. Finally, in March 1191, a deal was done with Tancred, and Richard could set off for the main event, for which he had ventured into the Mediterranean, the Third Crusade.

  British knights spent a fair amount of time fighting in Italy later in the Middle Ages as mercenaries. Some of the best-known mercenary units and commanders in medieval Italy were English, like, for instance, John Hawkwood and his company.

  As British sea power in the Mediterranean expanded through the eighteenth century, we found ourselves frequently in Italian waters and on Italian soil. In 1718, a British fleet under Sir George Byng attempted to force the Spanish out of Sicily and our victory at the Battle of Cape Passaro and subsequent blockade of Sicilian ports played a significant role in achieving that goal. At least temporarily. In 1742, Captain William Martin arrived off Naples with a squadron and demanded that Charles IV, king of the Two Sicilies (it’s a long story as to why there were Two Sicilies, to do with containing a bit of southern Italy as well as Sicily, and to do with at one stage there being two different kingdoms both claiming Sicily), get out of a war that we didn’t want him in, within half an hour. Charles found Martin’s arguments, or at least his guns, highly compelling and accordingly did so.

  By the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century, we were spending a lot of time in the area. Nelson himself was a regular there, and not just because our ambassador to the King of Naples, one William Hamilton,
had a rather attractive and very friendly wife called Emma. In the 1790s, Nelson and other Brits also spent a fair amount of time in the seas to the west of Italy. We won the Battle of Genoa in 1797. We were, however, unable to prevent the French advancing overland, and were reduced to doing things like blockading cities after the French had taken them. Something about stable doors, horses and bolting comes to mind

  Interestingly, considering we don’t normally think of Russians fighting in the Western Med, we did conduct a number of these operations in coordination with Russian forces. Nelson worked alongside Admiral Ushakov to reconquer Naples in 1799. And who could forget the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Naples in 1805?

  But all that wasn’t the end of operations in Italy by any means. In 1806, for example, we landed a force over 5,000 strong in Calabria under Major General John Stuart to help a local insurrection against the French and to protect our strategic interests in Sicily. On 4 July 1806, a similar-sized French force met them at Maida in Calabria. The French advanced, the British shot them and then bayoneted them, and it was pretty much all over in about a quarter of an hour. After that, Stuart marched around Calabria for a bit, mopping up French garrisons. The campaign didn’t have any long-term strategic consequences, but the victory at Maida was jolly popular in Britain, and if you’re thinking at this stage that the name sounds familiar, it does. The victory was so popular that a pub and then the Maida Vale area of London were named after it.