1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland

by Morgan Llywelyn

  The Magh Dumha location is preferred by those who believe Brian’s tent was placed directly in front of Tomar’s Wood. Before the day was over Tomar’s Wood would become infamous, which may be the reason it was vividly remembered. What happened there would long linger in the mind. However, it may not have involved Brian Boru.

  If the Árd Rí’s tent had been set up at Magh Dumha the opaque expanse of Tomar’s Wood would have blocked his line of sight in the direction of his encampment – and a possible retreat. As a wise general, Brian had always kept his retreats open. Tomar’s Wood was also the perfect place for an ambush, making the location far too dangerous for a non-combatant high king.

  A thorough topographical examination of the entire area reveals that in 1014 the only unimpeded view in all directions, including the critical Tolka valley, would have been from a plateau directly north of the city and closer to the bay. Since the late eighteenth century that plateau has been crowned by Mountjoy Square.

  On the high ground – it must always be the high ground – his men erected the tent of the Árd Rí, a small pavilion of leather and linen, furnished with sparse but kingly appointments. A wealth of cushions for an old man to rest upon, a carved prayer stool for his devotions. The tent was placed within a stand of saplings, and screens covered with the untanned hide of brindle cows were arranged to provide additional camouflage. Brian’s bodyguards were satisfied that the location was well concealed while meeting the high king’s requirements. Brian had demanded a vantage point from which he could see the entire field of battle once dawn came. From the shelter of the trees a few steps in any direction would offer an excellent view. The position would be far in advance of his lines but Brian had always gone ahead. He saw no reason to break the habit of a lifetime.

  We do not know if Laiten lit the king-candle in front of the Árd Rí’s tent, but it is unlikely. The light would have attracted too much attention. Brian probably did have a small bronze lamp which was safe to use inside the tent. A king must never be left in the dark.

  As he waited for the dawn, Brian envisioned the day to come. He had made it his business to learn this land; he knew the cattle tracks and boggy pools, knew where vision was hampered by a fold in the earth, where a stony outcropping offered the opportunity for an ambush, where a stretch of open ground made a frontal attack possible, where he … where Murrough … might need to deploy extra troops.

  While the last stars faded Brian watched the battle unfold in his mind. Step by step, like a chess game. A bad omen, he warned himself, that image of a chess game. Brian shrugged off the thought. He had lived a long life and used himself totally. There were scars on his body that only his personal servants saw, and scars on his soul that only his God saw.

  Brian Boru ordered Laiten to unfold his personal prayer stool and set it up in his tent. As was his lifelong habit, Brian then unsheathed his sword and placed it within easy reach.

  The Leinstermen and the Danes of Dublin were in motion too. Scouts reported that some of Brian’s troops had been observed taking up positions to the north. In eager anticipation, several thousand warriors speaking a variety of local dialects crowded around the walls of the city, spreading out along the tidal mud flats, elbowing one another in the dark. The sound of their shuffling feet was like the roar of a storm wind.

  Maelmora insisted on marching out of Dublin at the head of both armies, as if they and the city were his own. He was determined to be given credit for the victory to come. Let the northern auxiliaries plug the holes and chase down the deserters. This time the glory would go to Leinster!

  Maelmora’s claim of precedence was vigorously rejected by a Danish prince known as Dubhgall, who may have been another son of Olaf Cuaran and thus was a half-brother to Sitric Silkbeard. As the armies began to move the two men struck up a quarrel that would not end that day, not until both were dead.

  Sigurd and Brodir, who were more accustomed to fighting from the sea rather than on the land, gave little thought to the physical terrain of the battle, but they fully appreciated the importance of having an overwhelming number of warriors at their disposal. All that mattered was getting in first with the most savage offence. A terrifying beginning was what successful warfare required – frighten the other side so badly their senses deserted them and they could not think, only run. Then chase them down, kill them, and claim the spoils.

  The Vikings were ready. They bared their teeth at one another, practising their most savage grins.

  Meanwhile Brian’s warriors hastened to take up the positions assigned to them. It was not easy in the dark but they had no choice: the Árd Rí’s instructions to his commanders had been explicit. Moving as stealthily as possible, they had crossed the Liffey at several points during the night, including the old Hurdle Ford. So many trampling feet must have totally destroyed the hurdles.

  Upon reaching the north shore, the three Irish battalions and their Norse allies angled across what is now the Phoenix Park and moved out onto the fields north of the city, where they began to disperse in a broad front facing the bay. At this point Malachy Mór and his warriors may have come from their encampment and rejoined Brian’s men, but there has long been controversy over this issue.

  Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh states that Malachy had made a deal with the foreigners in advance to ‘put a ditch between him and the foreigners; and that if he would not attack the foreigners, they would not attack him.’ The claim cannot be proved or disproved, but this account had been commissioned by Brian Boru’s great-grandson and was undoubtedly partisan.

  Malachy’s partisans always claimed that the former high king took part in the battle and fought heroically. Yet his deeds on the battlefield of Clontarf are not recounted in any of the annals. More tellingly, no prince of Meath was named in the extensive lists of casualties. Malachy’s Meathmen had been invited to fight beside the warriors of Thomond, but their presence among the Dalcassians is not reported. If the battalion from Meath had joined in the battle from the beginning and managed to get through that terrible day unscathed, it was a miracle of biblical proportions.

  Possibly Malachy and his warriors waited on the high ground around Magh Dumha. They might have used the oak forest for cover until they decided which way the battle was going, then hurried forward to be on the winning side. The truth of the matter probably will never be known, but we can be reasonably confident that Malachy Mór was present that day. He was the only prince of the Gael who survived to leave an eyewitness account.

  Of Brian’s army, the annalists wrote: ‘They had with them an abundance of steel; strong, piercing, graceful, ornamental, smooth, sharp pointed, bright sided, keen, clean, glittering, flashing, well-tempered, quick, sharp swords, in the beautiful white hands of chiefs and royal knights, for hewing and for hacking, for maiming and mutilating skins and bodies and skulls.’

  Like the Norse, the Gael loved the drama of warfare and saw beauty in the tools of butchery. Unfortunately for them, their tools of butchery were, for the most part, inferior to those of the Northmen. Only one weapon made them equal. Brian had taught his men to use the Viking battle axe.

  His army was as prepared as it could possibly be. There was nothing left to be done now, but stand and fight.

  It would not be logical to assume that a man who had built his entire career upon strategic planning, clever tactics, and doing the unexpected, would, in the final great battle of his life, rely on the old reckless, headlong attack that left so much to chance. Brian left nothing to chance. An examination of the principal battleground, even today, tells the story.

  No modern observer can see the terrain which Brian saw. Today it comprises north Dublin and is covered with buildings and streets and people. The shape of the land itself has been altered; much of it has been eaten away by flood or piled high by bulldozers. Yet underneath remains the soil which was soaked with blood on that Good Friday. The main elements upon which Brian predicated victory are still there too.

  The Árd Rí had decided the
Irish should make their stand between the Liffey and the Tolka rivers, an area bounded on the north by impenetrable forest and on the south by the marshy lowlands of Clontarf, and the sea. Brian wanted his army to be clearly visible to the invaders as they came ashore. Luring them to fight on his selected battleground.

  Do any reliably accepted documents exist to prove this? No. But subsequent events bear it out.

  In the dark that preceded dawn, gooseflesh rose on the arms of brave men. It was not the cold that affected them, or the knowledge of possible death. In that brief space of time they were trapped as if in a bubble, aware of all the possibilities and yet untouched by them. The battle was still theirs to win.

  It is a thrilling experience to which a warrior may become addicted. If he survives.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BATTLE MORNING SUNRISE, 23 APRIL 1014

  The first golden rays pierced the ranks of dark cloud hanging over the Irish Sea.

  In the city of Dublin women awoke beside their snoring husbands and reluctantly left their beds to rake the coals on the hearth and relight the cooking fires. Twists of cloth were thrust into lamps filled with rancid fat and set alight. Buckets brimming with night soil were thrown out into the road. The morning meal would be the same as that of the night before: boiled pottage and black bread and pickled herrings. Perhaps, considering what the day might bring, a good wife might produce a bit of roast meat she had been saving and offer it to her man, along with a bowl of soured milk. He might be going out to die.

  Throughout the Irish countryside women awoke and left their beds to rake the coals and relight the fires. They had the same duties, the same worries, as their sisters in the city. The food they prepared was different, as was the language they spoke, but they all felt the cold of early morning. Those whose husbands had marched off to battle might be murmuring prayers for their safety.

  Christian women in Dublin might be praying too for God to protect their men that day.

  North of the River Liffey, the battalions of thrushes and warblers and blackbirds who serenaded the dawn to mark out their territories grew quiet. This was not a day for singing. The armies of gulls and terns and guillemots who fed greedily along the shore of the bay abandoned their breakfasts and fled into the sky. It was not yet time for screaming.

  But the time was coming. In the unnatural silence which descended, all were aware that something momentous was about to happen.

  The Vikings began landing at high tide. From his position Brian could see the foreigners climbing out of their longships and splashing through the shallows. Some of those vessels could carry from eighty to a hundred men, but Brian did not try to calculate the number of invaders. It did not matter. All that mattered was the courage of his own men and how well they followed orders.

  As the Vikings went ashore Maelmora of Leinster hurried forward to make his presence known to their leaders. If he had hoped to be put in charge of the foreign forces he was disappointed; Sigurd and Brodir had no intention of relinquishing any of their command, even to each other. Sigurd was wrong if he had thought Brian might not fight him. Maelmora pointed out that the Irish already were taking up positions. Over that way; see them? In plain sight! There was no time to waste; the Irish were forcing the battle. They must be attacked at once!

  For once, Sigurd and Brodir agreed with him. The Viking warriors prepared for what would prove to be a very long day. The ships that delivered them to the flooded foreshore between the Liffey and the Tolka hastily withdrew to a point well beyond Clontarf Island in order to avoid being trapped by the tide, which was already falling.

  The Irish battle line was widely spaced, stretching almost from river to river. They would begin the fight with their backs to the land, the foreigners with their backs to the sea. Over the intervening centuries a number of reconstructions of the deployment of troops on both sides have been offered. In the manner beloved by writers of antiquity these are replete with long lists of the combatants, some of whom could not possibly have been at Clontarf – nor even alive at the time. None of these creations can be accepted as accurate history.

  The consensus amongst scholars is that Murrough and his Dalcassians began the battle in the centre of the Irish line, or alternatively on the Irish left, near the valley of the Tolka. Supporting them were the rest of the men of Thomond under the command of Brian’s sons, Flann and Conor. Other officers in this division included the prince of Corca Bhaiscinn and a lord of the Déisi from Waterford.

  The second division of the Irish contained the warriors of south Munster, including the Owenachts and their allied tribes. The third division was built around the Connachtmen, led by Tadhg, king of the Uí Maine, and the princes of the west. This battalion was supported by the noble Scots – the ancestors of the royal Stewarts and the Gael of Alba would fight for Ireland that day.

  There is no trustworthy description of the disposition of the foreigners’ troops. After some arguing, no doubt, the command may have been a triumvirate consisting of Sigurd, Brodir and Maelmora. Like the Irish, their forces were composed of three divisions. One consisted of the Danes of Dublin, led by Dubhgall Olaffson and augmented by a band of foreign auxiliaries under the command of four Viking princes. The battalion containing the majority of the foreigners was commanded by the earl of Orkney. At Maelmora’s insistence, the third division was built around his Leinstermen and their Norse allies from southeast Ireland.

  The chroniclers are not clear about which group was awarded the presence of Brodir. But they agree on one point: led by Sigurd’s ally, the savage Norse warrior called Anrud, the thousand mercenaries in chainmail hauberks were at the very forefront when the battle began. These constituted the eleventh-century equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction, terrifying in their appearance and lethal in their capabilities.

  Responding to the line created by the Irish and their Norse allies, this army of the foreigners, with its strongly Irish component, stretched out across the open fields, facing their opponents. In some places their line was three men deep.

  Initially an empty no-man’s land yawned between the two armies. They could see each other, hate each other. But the moment was not yet upon them.

  Amongst the Irish there was one exception to the traditional style of warfare. In a sparsely populated land it was important to spare as many lives as possible, particularly those of healthy men of breeding age. Since the era of Cúchulainn, the Gael had observed the Combat of Champions. When opposing forces faced one another and before battle was joined, the leader of one side might ask for a Combat of Champions. If the other side agreed, the two best warriors were sent out to fight to the death. The man left still standing not only won the contest, but won the battle for his side. The two armies could then retire in honour from the field with only one casualty between them.

  This highly stylised custom depended on each side having a legitimate champion, a man whose individual fighting prowess was famous. To offer a lesser warrior was to insult the other side and would be rejected. As a result, the Combat of Champions was something of a rarity. In his day Brian Boru had participated in a number of them. It is claimed that when he was seventy-two years old he fought his last such combat and won it, perhaps with the discreet assistance of a trusted shield bearer.

  The Árd Rí would not take part in a Combat of Champions that morning. Above all else, Brian was a realist. He knew the effort was beyond him now, even if the other side were willing. They would not be; the purpose of the invasion was clear. Nothing would satisfy Sitric and Maelmora but the destruction of the high king’s armies and the death of Brian himself.

  In addition to his own son Murrough, Brian Boru had two outstanding champions following his banner: they were the Great Steward of Marr and the Great Steward of Lennox. According to one version of the battle, Donald of Marr came forward to the space between the lines and called for a champion from the other side to meet him. A Viking named Platt stepped forward to take up the challenge. As the story goes, they fought
in plain sight of the two armies until both men fell dead, each with his sword through the heart of the other.

  Whether this episode actually happened or not, nothing could prevent the battle which followed. It had its own impetus, propelled by anger and ambition in equal measure. The Irish line advanced. The foreigners marched forward to meet them. The very air between the two vast armies shivered with tension.

  There was enough light now for at least part of the battlefield to be visible to anyone watching from the city, and many were. Sitric Silkbeard and his entourage had ensconced themselves on the wooden walkway just inside the palisades. From this vantage point they could see some of Dublin Bay and some of the ground to the north of the Liffey. Confident of victory, at first Sitric may have played the role of a host at a sporting event, calling for goblets of beer for his guests and laying wagers as to how soon the Irish would surrender. But wagering was premature.

  To the onlookers on the palisades the event may have seemed very slow to start. There was a lot of shouting and a lot of manoeuvring. Much of what happened was not visible to the Dubliners at all, but for sheer excitement the possibilities would be hard to match.

  They were not able to see what Brian Boru saw as he stood outside his tent. Leaning, perhaps, on the strong shoulder of young Laiten, and impatiently ordering his bodyguards to step out of the way and not block his view. The captain of those bodyguards was Niall Ua Cuinn, a Dalcassian with an exceptional reputation as a warrior. His was the honour of being Brian’s personal protector, the man who would take any sword thrust meant for the Árd Rí. To his regret, the son of Quinn had never been called upon to give his life for his king. Neither had his father, the man who had held the post before him.

  As Niall watched with Brian and the others, Murrough suddenly strode forward alone except for the man who carried his blue banner. Facing the enemy, Brian’s son drew himself to his full height and brandished his sword in defiance.