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Dublin, 1171Nor were these the Normans' only fighters. They had also good archers, skilled bowmen from the Welsh marches, the fore-runners of the famous longbowmen of England who, two centuries later, won the battles of Creey and Agincourt. The Normans were archers before their arrival in England, and they had improved their archery by contact with the native bowmen of Wales. In Ireland their archers gave them a fire-power which their opponents lacked. The Irish made little use of the bow in battle.These two qualities, the weight of mailed horsemen in a charge and the missile strength of bowmen, formed the basis of the Nor-man tactics. They sought consistently to exploit their advantage of material. Always they attacked, always they sought to fight in the open, where they could use their horses; to be outnumbered meant nothing to them. When the Waterfordmen closed in on Raymond Ie Gros in 1170 he sallied out to meet them; de Courcy came out to meet MacDonlevy at Down in 1177; Strongbow and de Cogan, as we shall see, came out to meet the Norsemen and the Irish at Dublin. Each of these was heavily outnumbered, but each was victorious. The Normans were swift in their movements, as they showed at Bannow Bay, at Wexford, at Dublin, and in Down. They were able to attack fortifications-and here their archery served them; but they avoided fighting behind walls. They had an eye for strategy, and so they made certain of possession of the towns. They had an eye for terrain: they were cautious on the forest paths, they avoided the bogs, and, in 1170, they chose the best way into Dublin behind the High King's back. They were infinitely crafty. They feigned retreats, they planted ambushes, they delivered flank attacks, they attacked at night. In contrast, the Irish were poorly equipped, dilatory, and too prone to the defensive. A few of their leaders may have had armour, but in general they had none. In general too they were infantry. They fought on foot with spears, javelins, battle axes, and swords; the only item of their missile armoury that their opponents found worthy of mention was the antediluvian hand stone. The attack of mailed horse could, on firm ground, overrun them and against a combination of horse and archers-of shock and fire-power-they were helpless. They behaved always as though they had plenty of time. When Strongbow seized Dublin in 1170 the High King went home: he would come back next year. Fortifications, then as for centuries afterwards, daunted them. At the date of the Dublin fighting there were not, it appears, more than 2,500 Normans in Ireland, that is, perhaps 250 knights, 500 other horsemen, and 1,750 infantry, including archers. Some of these had remained to hold Wexford and Waterford, so that the Norman strength at Dublin cannot in the early part of the year have greatly exceeded 2,000, or perhaps 200 knights, 400 other horsemen, and 1,500 or so archers and other infantry. The knights were not the chivalric figures of romantic fiction and of later admiration who 'swung their swords in wrong cause or in right'. They were fighting men whose service was the result of a system of landholding, the feudal system. Land was given in that age by kings and great lords to lesser lords, who held it on condition of providing knights, or fully armed, trained and mounted men, for service in the wars. These were the knights of the invasion: tough professionals, well equipped and, above all, well horsed. Such heavily armed horsemen were the tanks of the occasion; like the tanks of 1940, they were irresistible when they attacked on ground that suited them an enemy deficient in striking power. They were the elite troops. The other mounted men were less heavily armed and of a poorer quality. The foot included spearmen and men fighting with sword and shield, but were mostly archers, whose role was second in importance only to that of the knights. Unsupported by archers, horsemen could not face archers. Although the Irish made no great use of the bow in battle, and so gave the knights an easy victory over them, the Norman-Welsh archers nevertheless played a vital part in Strongbow's struggle against numerical odds. The history of the Battle of Dublin, 1171 continues here Taken from Irish Battles by G.A. Hayes-McCoy, published by Appletree Press. Further reading: A Little History of Ireland by Martin Wallace with illustrations by Ian McCullough. Click here for more information on the book. Battle of Dublin: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | |
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