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Dysert O'Dea, 1318Both sides were reinforced as the fight progressed. Numbers of men from the other two companies of the Normans arrived, their plundering interrupted, and joined in. So, on the Irish side, did O'Connor's and O'Hehir's forces; they came up swiftly over Scool Hill, west of Dysert, descended to the battlefield and attacked the Normans.Conor O'Dea's men cut their way through their attackers to join these reinforcements outside the wood. The united force formed in the strongest position they could find and the battle became a melee. The Irish were engulfed in a surging, hacking mass as the Normans redoubled their efforts to overrun them, now that the fight could be waged away from the shelter of the trees. 'Both parties,' says the Irish chronicler, 'the Gall and the Gael, mowed down and mishandled each other, so that of either set many gentlemen and fine warriors were destroyed.' How long this continued we do not know. The struggle was severe, the casualties heavy. O'Dea and his allies were out-numbered, and as their ranks thinned they must have drawn closer together, gathering into a hard knot of combat on the little ridge or hill, or wherever it was that they made their stand. They were driven 'to form themselves into a fast, impenetrable phalanx that their enemies should not break through them'. Individual fighters stood out from the mass, and here the new armour of the Irish must have served them well. O'Connor of Corcomroe and young de Clare sought one another out and de Clare perished. Father and son had now been removed from the scene. If the fight had gone on in this way it is possible, despite the death of the de Clares, that the Normans might in the end have tightened their 'battle hedge', and shot down and cut down enough Irishmen to overcome their resistance. But the full force of the Irish was not yet engaged. The O'Deas and O'Connors and O'Hehirs had, by their determination, made ultimate victory possible; but they had not yet achieved it. Murtough O'Brien and his men still remained outside the combat. It was their intervention that was decisive. King Murtough came by Spancel Hill from north-east Clare, and as he crossed the river Fergus and approached the battlefield he must have seen the plundered countryside in flames before him. We are told that his men rushed forward so impetuously to join in the fray that they arrived in disorder, and that they were at first mistaken by the Irish for further reinforcements of their foes. That this could have happened is, incidentally, further evidence that by this date there was little difference in appearance between the warriors of the two nations; earlier, when one was armoured and the other not, they must have been quite distinct. The weight of the newcomers tipped the balance. The Normans, still fighting with the utmost ferocity, were pounded between the O'Briens and the O'Deas and completely overthrown; 'so dour the hand-to-hand work was, that neither noble nor commander of them left the ground, but the far greater part fell where they stood'. The history of the Battle of Dysert O'Dea, 1318 concludes 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. Previous instalments of 'the Battle of Dysert O'Dea': Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The final instalment of 'the Battle of Dysert O'Dea': Part 6 |
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