The Price of the King's Peace bt-3

by Nigel Tranter

  So, as they went, Bruce was more concerned with collecting and transporting feeding-stuffs than with actual fighting, at this stage.

  The area was not actually famine-stricken, but the warnings were that it would get worse as they proceeded westwards. Wherever opposition developed, therefore, they made the people pay, not in blood and treasure but in cattle, horses, grain, meal and hay. And where there was no convenient opposition, supplies were bought from the local population at fair prices-for it was no part of the Scots’ intention to antagonise those disposed to be friendly. Herding cattle along with them would have delayed their advance greatly, so beasts were slaughtered, and evening camp-fires were as much for smoking and salting meat for the future as for cooking the day’s meal. It was only a very rough-and-ready curative process, but it would serve for men whose standards were not too nice. The season of the year helped, though not really cold as Scots knew cold. Long and ever-growing strings of packhorses followed the host, laden with food for man and beast. This supply-train was not allowed to straggle, and was carefully protected.

  From Naas, the seat of MacMurrough, King of Leinster, they went by

  Castledermot in Carlow to Callen in Kilkenny, de Clare country-where, however, the de Clares remained discreetly out of sight. And ever the face of the land changed. There was no great deal of tillage in the Irish countryside at best, and grain was correspondingly scarce.

  Gradually even what there was died away.

  But not only this. The rich grasslands and pastures for which this land was famous were now dwindling also, and moorland, bogs, peat-moss, rushes and outcropping stone became ever more dominant.

  There were green oases in it all, but the terrain was becoming ever barer. Yet it was not an empty country. There were people in plenty, living in miserable cabins and huts of turf and reeds. The castles and manors and abbeys grew fewer, the townships smaller, the churches less ambitious. Yet it was probably true to say that the population increased as the living conditions deteriorated. And everywhere hunger increased until it became the very taint on the air. From being a faint shadow it became a threat and then an all pervading aura, a condition of life.

  The Scots host’s supply-train began to shrink.

  There was no problem in recruiting the Irish for Edward’s cause, now. The difficulty, indeed, was to prevent thousands from joining Bruce’s own company, with immediately available food as added attraction. He had to struggle now to keep down his numbers. This was Munster, where the ancient O’Brien ruled, and he was known to support Edward. But only mounted men were of any use to Bruce-and horses seemed this year to be for eating, in Munster, rather than riding. He found it hard, nevertheless, to reject and drive off hungry men. And, willy-nilly, his train grew. And slowed in consequence.

  All this time Bruce saw nothing of the real enemy. But they heard of

  them, frequently. Sir Edmund Butler, the former commander in Ireland,

  who had superseded de Burgh, and then himself been superseded by the

  Lord Mortimer, was still in effective control in Kilkenny, with, it was

  said, 30,000 men. Hence Bruce’s drive in this direction. An

  interesting report said that the de Clare brothers had joined him

  there-and the de Clares, related to the English Earls of Gloucester, and therefore distantly to Bruce himself, were amongst the most powerful and influential of the Anglo Irish nobility known to be highly resentful over the present English demotion of their kind.

  Bruce pondered this circumstance not a little. Mortimer himself was said to be on the move, from the east, with a large English force, part of it no doubt de Burgh’s late army. De Burgh was said to be still languishing in prison in Dublin Castle; although how rigorous was his captivity would be hard to say, for it was rumoured that the city mob had broken into the castle and slain eleven members of the Earl’s staff-which indicated less than solitary confinement.

  Out of all this varied information Bruce made what plans he could. He conceived the disgruntled Butler to be the weakest link in the chain. He would concentrate on him, if possible before Mortimer could effect any linkup.

  Then, at Callan, only ten miles from Kilkenny, and Butler, chance took a hand. One of the Scots patrols captured an Anglo Irish knight named dc Largie, with a small escort, who turned out to be a courier from Mortimer to Butler. Brought to Bruce he was civilly treated, but his despatches carefully unsealed and perused.

  He proved to be carrying a peremptory message, in unflattering terms. The Englishman told the Anglo-Irish noble that he was coming southwest to take over his army when he had dealt with the presumptuous Scots rebel Edward Bruce and his Ulstermen;

  but meanwhile Butler was to hold his hand, do nothing without further orders, and to have no truck with de Clare, who was under suspicion.

  Reading this, Robert Bruce slapped his knee and barked a laugh.

  “The English!” he cried.

  “Will they never change? Never learn?

  The blind arrogance of them! This, from a newly appointed commander to the man he succeeds, a man of twice his own years and of prouder lineage!” He tossed the letter across to Moray.

  “Read it, Thomas-and then have Will Irvine to fasten this seal down as though it has never been tampered with. He has nimble fingers.

  Then give the letter back to de Largie, and let him go on his way to Kilkenny -with my regrets for having interfered between a courier and his duty!”

  “Aye, Sire-to be sure. This will gravely offend Sir Edmund Butler.

  And the Lord de Clare. Who is his friend, indeed his kinsman, I think.

  But-what then?”

  “Then, Thomas, I too shall write a letter. To Butler. At once. To follow this de Largie in, say, two hours. That should give Butler time to digest the one and be ready for the other! A much more civil letter.”

  “Saying, Sire?”

  “Saying that I regret an honourable man’s adherence to the wrong side.

  That I find him, and his people, an obstruction on my road to Limerick. That I suggest our differences would best be resolved, in true knightly fashion, before Kilkenny two days hence.

  Say, noon. In honest armed combat, knight to knight, host against

  host myself against himself. A challenge, Thomas-the gauntlet thrown down. From the King of Scots. How think you Butler will answer that?”

  Moray looked thoughtful.

  “I do not know.”

  “How would you yourself, man? In like case. After receiving that insolent letter from Mortimer?”

  “I think … I think that I would remove myself. Make shift to some other place. Quietly. If I had opportunity.”

  “Precisely. As would I! That is why I have given him two days We shall see. Aye-and Thomas, before you let de Largie go, set that he believes us to have more horse than we do. Say 10,000 …!”

  Butler and de Clare did, in fact, rather better than Moray’s suggested reaction, even though they did not commit themselves to pen and ink. The very next morning they disbanded their entire army, ordered its component parts to return to their homes, and then themselves quietly disappeared. Whichever way they went, they did not go to meet the Lord Mortimer.

  The Scots army was astonished-even if their liege lord was slightly less so. It was as good as a great victory, and bloodless. The fact that Butler had been having enormous difficulties in feeding his host no doubt contributed.

  The way clear before them, Bruce pressed on westwards.

  They came to famed Cashel, in Tipperary, with its cathedral, round tower and abbey, one of the most holy places in a holy land, a rock rising from an extensive plain. Here was also the palace of the Munster kings; but O’Brien was presumably with Edward, and no supplies were forthcoming from either his servants or the monks. The army moved on towards Limerick and the Shannon, with the Western Sea beginning to draw them.

  Now, with the elimination of Butler’s host, and Bruce’s fame spreading, everywhere the Irish rose in support, and in their thousands, t
heir tens of thousands. As day followed day, they came flocking to Bruce’s banner, and paid little heed to his instructions to head eastwards to join their own monarch at Tara and Dublin.

  Instead they attached themselves to the Scots, and came west with them or at least, travelled behind, an embarrassment and a delay. Yet it was their country and their cause, and Bruce was not the man ruthlessly to spurn and drive them away. Especially as they were almost all hungry and he was known to have food.

  Unfortunately he had far from enough food for all, and inevitably there was trouble. Moreover the Irish clans were even more quarrelsome than the Scots variety, and internecine battles of real violence were an almost daily occurrence. Worst of all, these unwanted cohorts raided and pillaged wherever they went, in typical clan-war fashion, not only in the names of their chiefs and sub kings but in the name of the King of Scots also.

  All this was outside Bruce’s calculations, and he blamed himself for not having foreseen it. But regrets and recriminations aside, this could not be allowed to go on. Most evidently it was possible to be bogged down in Ireland in more ways than one.

  It was, therefore, a vast and sprawling horde, quite unlike any army with which Robert Bruce had ever been connected, which at last reached the Shannon at Castleconnel, a few miles north of Limerick, on the 10th of March, the Feast of St. Bronach. Limerick was the greatest city of the West, the third largest in Ireland, and, with its port, had all along been the Scots objective. It was a fortress-town set on an island in the wide river, and was thought to be fairly strongly garrisoned-but by Anglo-Irish and pro-English Irish under O’Hanlon and MacMahon. Butler’s, and de Clare’s, disaffection might well have spread here. If it could be taken, the whole of the West ought to fall like a ripe plum.

  But a welter of reports reached Bruce concurrently with his arrival at Castleconnel. The most immediate informed that, only a few days earlier, a large English fleet had sailed up the Shannon to reinforce and stiffen the garrison of Limerick. And to feed it, which was more vital still. The second was from the east, from Angus Og, whom Bruce had left with Edward, declaring that Mortimer had trapped the Ulster host in a bend of the Liffey near Naas, with a vastly superior army, and though the position had its own strength, protected by river and marshes, the situation was serious. Edward would never bring himself to ask his brother for aid in it, but he, Angus Og, could and did. He urged King Robert to turn back from the West, and take Mortimer in the rear, to their mutual advantage.

  But quickly-for the Ulster force had insufficient supplies to hold out for long.

  The third report was from O’Connor, the studious King of Connaught, from Athlone, announcing that famine was making terrible inroads in the areas to the north and west, with plague in its wake, and advising Bruce strongly against making any advance meantime into those parts.

  These tidings set the King urgently to think.

  That same night he was given still further cause for cogitation.

  Early in the morning there was a great disturbance of shouts and screaming and the clash of arms, at the north part of the camp.

  The King rose immediately, to learn from the captain of the guard that

  it was not truly an attack or even one of the typical inter-Irish’

  affrays. It was an assault, yes-but with a difference. The Irish

  this time were not fighting amongst themselves. The assault was against the Scots lines-not the men, but the horses. They had been driving the beasts off and slaughtering them, there and then, for food.

  “How many?” the King rapped out.

  “How many gone?”

  “I fear, Sire, that they may have taken some 200. There were thousands of them, crazy with hunger. The Irish…”

  Bruce looked from the speaker to Moray and Gilbert Hay, who had joined him.

  “This, then, is the end of the road, my friends,” he said heavily.

  “Once this has started, it will continue. Starvation is the enemy we cannot fight, and win. Our horses are vital to us.

  Without them we are lost. I have misjudged. Tomorrow, we turn back.”

  They nodded, silent So next day, to the consternation, reproach, even fury of most of the Irish chieftains-though not all-the Scots disengaged themselves.

  It had to be ruthlessly done, in the end, and Bruce did not enjoy doing it. But he had made a mistake, and this was part of the price he had to pay. His first duty undoubtedly was to his own people. They rode away fast from Castleconnel, eastwards, leaving Limerick and its investment to the great, quarrelling Irish host They turned their backs on the enemy, and rode. Robert Bruce who had never done such a thing in his life, was not a man any dared speak to for some time thereafter. It was St. Patrick’s Day.

  They continued to ride fast, for day after day, eating up the miles for that was almost all there was to eat. No laggards needed to be reminded that it was a race against time, against growing hunger, especially against the failing strength of the horses-for forage for beasts was as scarce as food for their riders.

  There were two schools of thought about this-one said that they should not press the animals, use them lightly, so as to cherish their flagging powers; the other that they should drive on at their hardest while any strength remained. The King inclined to the second course, especially in present circumstances, with the Ulster army to relieve if at all possible.

  Avoiding all entanglements, fighting and delay, they were at Kells, halfway across the land, by the third night. But this pace could not be kept up, all knew. At least they were facing east-and by contrast with the famine-stricken West, in their hunger dominated minds they recollected the East as a land of plenty.

  Next day another courier caught up with them, about ten miles north of

  Kilkenny, from Angus of the Isles. He informed that the pressure was

  off the Ulster force. Mortimer, who appeared to be a quarrelsome man,

  had fallen out with Sir Robert Nottingham, Mayor of Dublin-and

  presumably with Nottingham’s superior, the Chancellor, Bishop Hotham

  * for he had now taken sides with de Burgh, and was demanding the earl’s release from Dublin Castle, Hotham’s headquarters. This having been refused, he had abandoned his assault on Edward’s force and marched on Dublin instead. None knew now what went on in the city, and who prevailed.

  “My brother scarce needs me to aid him in this Ireland! Or any other,” Bruce commented.

  “These Englishmen that Edward of Carnarvon sends over are all the aid he needs! What does His Grace of Ireland do now, then?”

  “He marches, Sire. Northwards. For Ulster. For Dundalk and

  Carrickfergus.”

  The King stared.

  “You mean that he retires? Not just changes position? Retires

  hot-foot for Ulster?”

  “Aye, Sire.”

  “But why? I sent word that we were returning to his aid. And what of his great host of Irish foot? The host that was marching south?”

  “It is said that they are dispersed, Your Grace.”

  “Dispersed! I’ faith-what mean you? Dispersed?”

  The messenger shrugged.

  “That is all that I know. My lord of the Isles said dispersed. The talk is that they quarrelled amongst themselves. The Irish kings. And so broke up. Before Drogheda.

  But I know not…”

  “Save us all-if this is how wars are fought in Ireland! It is beyond all belief. Are they all crazed in this island?”

  “When men are in doubt for what they fight, this could be the

  position,” Moray suggested.

  “We, in Scotland, knew for what we fought. Believed in it. Here it is otherwise. And in such case men tend to fight for their own hands. Or not fight at all.”

  “On my word, you are a sage, Thomas!” the King cried, ruefully but not really unkindly.

  “But no doubt you have the rights of it. As usual! But-what of us?

  For what, for whom are we to fight?

  Now? Tell me, you who are so often right, nep
hew! Tell me. On my soul, I think that we should go home to Scotland! And as fast as we may. What do we here, in the middle of Ireland?”

  The heartfelt acclaim of all who could hear the King’s voice was

  interrupted by the Earl of Moray.

  “You say that I am right-so often right. But I was not right that day

  in Annandale. When I came to you, with the Lord Edward I it was who

  urged Your Grace to lead this campaign in Ireland. In person. Lest the English win a swift and easy victory.

  Against your judgement. I believed it to be the wise course. I much blame myself now…”

  “We can all misjudge, Thomas. Ireland has confounded more hopes than yours. Or mine. It is a strange land, where no cause ever truly triumphs, I do believe. The English are finding it so, equally.

  I fear my brother is likely to discover the same. But that is his concern, not ours. Dear God-I could wish that Scotland seemed less far away…!” That was strange talk from Robert Bruce.

  In the days that followed, as March turned to April, that wish of the King’s became a litany with them all, a refrain often on their lips and never absent from their hearts, as the road home stretched out and seemed to grow the longer. They were forced to turn partly west again, in their travelling north, for the English had now partly reinforced the Pale, and mid-East Ireland was something of an armed camp. The point of fighting battles seemed highly debatable in the present circumstances; certainly the Scots were past the stage of looking for trouble-their empty bellies saw to that. The central counties of Leix, Offaly, Westmeath and Cavan which they were forced to cross, were good lands ruined, pastures neglected and covered with reeds and rushes, peat-bog spreading far and wide, lakes and tarns and swamps everywhere. These were the lands of the O’Farrells, O’Molloys, O’Regans, O’Mores and MacGeoghegans, and these tribes had been far too long fighting the English and each other to care for their land. All was in the fiercest grip of famine. Two nights after the Scots turned north-west from Kilkenny, they started to kill their starving horses. It was a grim but significant milestone on their way.