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Dublin, 1171The Normans sallied suddenly from Dublin at one o'clock on a September afternoon and attacked the High King. They went out in three divisions, the ubiquitous formation that became right, left and centre in action. Raymond Ie Gros led with twenty knights; Miles de Cogan followed with thirty; Strongbow and Maurice FitzGerald led the third division-the main body, or centre-of forty knights. Each had other troops as well, horsemen and archers. Probably all were mounted; some of the archers-who of course fought on foot-may have been carried on the cruppers of the horsemen.As well as these Normans, we are told that those of the Leinster Irish who had remained faithful to them, and some of the citizens, went out with them; but Strongbow's force cannot have numbered much more than 2,000 in all. Some men must have been left behind to hold the town, and the fight with Haskulf and service during the summer had taken their toll of Strongbow's original strength. There is a suggestion that some of the Normans had returned to England from Dublin during the summer. The column crossed the Lilley bridge and moved north towards Finglas. Soon they turned to the left; whether they were beyond the Tolka or still south of it when they turned we do not know. Moving rapidly in the Tolka valley behind the present Phoenix Park, they came down heavily and unexpectedly on Rory's camp at Castleknock. It was their favourite tactic, and its result, as intended, was surprise. Time and place alike favoured them: the idle hour of early afternoon and the flank and rear of the invest-ment. The Irish must have been totally unprepared. In this situation numbers meant little. Raymond, Miles, Gerald and Alexander, the sons of Maurice FitzGerald - they vied with one another in the impetuosity of their attack. The details of the struggle are completely lost to us. How the Irish reacted we do not know, but we are told that there was great confusion, and there seems little doubt that the Irish casualties were very large. The High King was caught in his bath. The indignity of his situation seems heightened by every schoolboy's knowing of it; but he escaped. The slaughter of the fugitives continued until evening, by which time the Irish were routed. Here as elsewhere in these early years of the invasion the knight and the archer, fighting on their own ground, were invincible; when they could effect surprise they were invincible against any odds. The Normans came back to Dublin in the darkness of the autumn evening, laden with food and the spoils of battle and covered with glory. The other Irish armies which lay around Dublin disintegrated and the siege was soon raised. A shadowy and abortive attempt to engaged the Normans, led by Tiernan O'Rourke and mentioned by the Irish annalists, may have been made about this time. In it O'Rourke's son was killed and his men discomfited. On the other hand, O'Rourke's defeat may have preceded Rory's. Much is obscure. There is no doubt about the Norman victory, however; it was complete. Most of our information about the Dublin fighting, and indeed about the Norman invasion as a whole, is derived from a work written shortly after, Expugnatio Hibernica, by Gerald de Barry, or Giraldus Cambrensis. The Latin text of this work was edited by J. F. Dimock and published in the Rolls Series, London in 1867.
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 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | |
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