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.
Footnote 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.”
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