Gaelic irish warfare

[AJFitzpatrick]

I think you have to distinguish the tactics and the strategy here.  A single victory in battle means very little if there is no strategic value and so you lose the war. There was no unified national strategy for much of Ireland's history and lots of factional tribalism (Due to the lack of a national leader? : Brian Boru is a little bit mythological in my un fully educated opinion as compared to say the historical Robert the Bruce). Strongbow (Richard de Clare, not the cider ) was invited to Ireland after all by one chieftain so he could beat up on another one. One could argue when a "national strategy" was fully formed but I think we are getting beyond your defined period. But like the persistance of guerrilla tactics in modern Ireland so has factionalism persisted.

Check out the wild geese and multiple irish regiments in the British Empire Army and others; no lack of victories there. But again perhaps beyond your specific time period.


One additional point of connection here : the advanced military tactics that the travelling classes would have seen requires training which requires a commitment to an agreed upon strategy and so on rather than just showing up for the muster, painting up, shouting loudly and  running at the enemy.

 

[Michael OLeary]

I think your spelling is wrong.

JACK DANIELS  is the proper spelling for whisky

Being an Irishman of open mind, I don't care where it's been distilled or what's on the label, as long as there's enough for everyone.

 

[the 48th regulator]

@ Mr. Tess the date would be up until 1607 AD.

Why?

dileas

tess

 

[mariomike]

Why?

I hope this helps: "The flight into exile in 1607 of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell following their defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 and the suppression of their rebellion in Ulster in 1603 is seen as the watershed of Gaelic Ireland. It marked the destruction of Ireland's ancient Gaelic nobility following the Tudor conquest and cleared the way for the Plantation of Ulster. After this point, the English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the Gaelic lordships.":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_Ireland#Anglo-Norman_occupation

Other sources:
"The Flight abroad in 1607 of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell and their followers is generally reckoned to mark the end of Gaelic Ireland as a distinct political system.":
http://www.google.ca/#pq=gaelic+irish+1607&hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=14&gs_id=1g&xhr=t&q=gaelic+ireland+1607&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=gaelic+ireland+1607&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=cb1e10673fe52159&biw=1152&bih=662&bs=1

 

[vonGarvin]

All civilized people do agree on how to spell whisky. 

Yes.  It's C-R-O-W-N R-O-Y-A-L. 

 

[Michael OLeary]

Snakes. Why does it always have to be snakes?

 

[sean m]

@ Mr. AJFitzpatrick. What you say is very true, thank you for your input.  Do you think that if there was a unified strategy that Ireland would have been more stronger militarily.  It seems that this idea was of not having a unified strategy goes further back than the English invasion. Yet as for Brian Boru, the facts that our professor gives seem to have a lot of supporting facts. He seems to have created a more organized military, even a form of navy. He seemed to also have been the only true high king of Ireland, as the professor implies. Do you think had he not been killed he would have had a greater impact on irish warfare?

@Mr.MarioMike. Thank you very much for this piece of information, it is of great help indeed.

 

[sean m]

HAHA! nice pict :nod:ure!

 

[sean m]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQOt8eOPr4k

 

[AJFitzpatrick]

@ Mr. AJFitzpatrick. What you say is very true, thank you for your input.  Do you think that if there was a unified strategy that Ireland would have been more stronger militarily.  It seems that this idea was of not having a unified strategy goes further back than the English invasion. Yet as for Brian Boru, the facts that our professor gives seem to have a lot of supporting facts. He seems to have created a more organized military, even a form of navy. He seemed to also have been the only true high king of Ireland, as the professor implies. Do you think had he not been killed he would have had a greater impact on irish warfare?

You may want to be careful of whose opinions you take account of ... I'm neither an historian nor military ... that being said my opinion follows ... {based on reading a whole bunch of books for "fun"}.

1. Do you think that if there was a unified strategy that Ireland would have been more stronger militarily.
Absolutely

2. Do you think had he (Brian Boru) not been killed he would have had a greater impact on irish warfare?
... for this opinion  I'll accept for this case the historicity of Boru and the 'facts' as presented to you ... 
This is far too speculative ... it isn't so much what Boru did it is what his successors did , why wasn't there another High King in other words? Chieftainship in the Irish clans wasn't by lineal descent but partially by selection from relatives of the Chieftain on the somewhat nebulous concept of 'merit' and how many potatoes were involved so it isn't so much the lack of persistence 'greatest' through lineal descent by a misjudgement of merit . Why did the empire of Alexander the Great fall apart for instance after he died, a lack of unifying leader (Probably too much of the great man theory here).

and just so you know it is spelt LAGAVULIN.

 

[Kirkhill]

......
and just so you know it is spelt LAGAVULIN.

Auchentoshan  :nod:

 

[Edward Campbell]

While it is true that the Scotti were, indeed, Irish - like the Campbells - we need to be a bit careful with times.

There were counter migrations across the Irish Sea in about 300 - 500 CE (during the so called Great Migrations in Europe). "Irish" came and settled the West of Scotland and "Scots" went to Ireland - both, perhaps, under pressure from the migrating Celts about whom Technoviking wrote a few post back. Both Scotland and Ireland remained relatively uninteresting to Europe due to their geographic isolation (Ireland) and poverty (Scotland) until the time of the Vikings who overcame the barrier of the Irish Sea and who, under population pressure at home, settled the East of Scotland, putting further population pressure on that country.

Ireland and the highlands and island of Scotland remained relatively untouched by the English until circa 1170-1180 when Henry II invaded Ireland and won it easily and then, just a few years later, defeated an invading Scots army (killing King William the Lion)  at Alnwick (Northumberland).

There may have been a religious motive to Henry's invasion of Ireland. From earliest times the Irish Christian church was out of step, but some would day intellectually much superior to, the Roman Christian church. The pope who approved Henry's invasion plans was Adrian IV, an Englishman.

In any event, Henry set the whole "Irish question" thing in motion.

I'm afraid I don't know much about Irish (or Scots) tactics. My sense of the history of the times is that neither had a strategy worth the name because both were too occupied with internal political struggles to need, much less implement such a thing. From about 1328 (Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton) Scotland came increasingly under French sway - on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. From about 1500 Ireland was more and more influenced by Spain, for the same reasons.

The animosity between England and Scotland, on one hand, and Ireland, on the other, reached what I regard as its peak in 1939-45 when the Irish, usually tacitly, but too often actively, supported Nazi Germany. The depth of the Irish hatred for the English (and Scots) allowed (impelled?) the government of the day and the Irish people to ignore the manifestly evident evil of Nazi Germany and support and even aid it in the war against Britain.


__________

BTW, it's none of the above; it's

 

[Old Sweat]

A slight sidetrack which may give us a bit of background. In 1992 my wife and I spent ten days in Ireland via rented car and B&Bs. Towards the end of our trip we were making our way back towards Dublin when we spotted a stone tower just off the highway with an open sign by the side of the road. We went in and found the (English) owner, who gave us a guided tour and commentary.

The tower was a medieval keep complete with counter clockwise staircases to impede any attackers use of swords. It had been built after the first English takeover and remained in use as a fortification more or less continually well into the seventeenth century. When Cromwell's forces were marching west across Ireland, they bumped the defenders of this keep, who resisted. The English bombarded the place with cannon and eventually attacked and captured it. After putting the defenders to the sword, they left a small garrison in place and resumed their march.

And that, boys and girls, is the story of Ireland in a nutshell.

 

[irish]

Firstly gentlemen, I believe that if one is stuck on the spelling of whiskey, one is missing the point.  :nod:

Irish people ... ignore the manifestly evident evil of Nazi Germany and support and even aid it

I think this is an overt simplification and rather false in my opinion. Many, many thousands of Irish, as has long been tradition, served in the British army during WW2. Due to a nascent republican consciousness being nursed at the time, these men were occasionally shunned upon return - but we speak with great pride in Ireland of this. You must remember that Ireland was just moving through the aftermath of a civil war. de Valera, one might assume, declared Irish neutrality as a political gesture in opposition to Britain and to consolidate his tenuous hold on the deeply republican elements of the nation but many in the country remember it as a great embarrassment (it should be noted that Ireland wasn't the only country to declare neutrality). Many Irish have extensive family ties throughout the UK and as I alluded to earlier, drawing conclusive lines along the basis of nation state in regards to this discussion is fairly useless. To echo Kirkhill's point, the ferries between Ireland and Britain have long carried people both ways - duty free does kick in outside the 3 mile limit so sometimes people just stayed on board .
The IRA may have made some vain attempts to support Germany but the IRA have never, in recent times, represented the majority of the Irish people. If you look at the history books, I think you'll find that the Irish state offered all manner of support to Britain during the war, both informal (nurses, factory workers, enlistment, etc.) and, quietly, formal (access to and support within territorial waters, internment of German POWs, etc.).  My own grandfather spoke with pride of guarding German POWs in The Curragh K lines, while 'going for a smoke' when tommies breached the wire and headed for safe houses in Kildare and then on to the border.
As mentioned before, the shared histories of these peoples occupies so much of the grey area that I feel it becomes redundant to make sweeping statements about either side.
Now, all of this whiskey talk has left me with a shockin' dry throat .... cough, cough.

 

[OldSolduer]

I have to agree with Irish here. There was a small lot in Ireland that worked with the Nazis....but they were largely inept.

It has been a long tradition of Ireland's sons to seek their fortune elsewhere. My mum, a Scots/Irish lady, had two uncles or great uncles serve in the Union Army in the US Civil war...both Irishmen.

The character in the Sharpe's Rifles series - the Sergeant Major Patrick O'Toole  is an example of this, although fictional.

 

[Old Sweat]

The debate over the spelling of whisk(e)y may be seen as proof of the adage that, if it wasn't for drink, the Irish would be running the world.

:dunno:

 

[Edward Campbell]

Firstly gentlemen, I believe that if one is stuck on the spelling of whiskey, one is missing the point.  :nod:
I think this is an overt simplification and rather false in my opinion. Many, many thousands of Irish, as has long been tradition, served in the British army during WW2. Due to a nascent republican consciousness being nursed at the time, these men were occasionally shunned upon return - but we speak with great pride in Ireland of this. You must remember that Ireland was just moving through the aftermath of a civil war. de Valera, one might assume, declared Irish neutrality as a political gesture in opposition to Britain and to consolidate his tenuous hold on the deeply republican elements of the nation but many in the country remember it as a great embarrassment (it should be noted that Ireland wasn't the only country to declare neutrality). Many Irish have extensive family ties throughout the UK and as I alluded to earlier, drawing conclusive lines along the basis of nation state in regards to this discussion is fairly useless. To echo Kirkhill's point, the ferries between Ireland and Britain have long carried people both ways - duty free does kick in outside the 3 mile limit so sometimes people just stayed on board .
The IRA may have made some vain attempts to support Germany but the IRA have never, in recent times, represented the majority of the Irish people. If you look at the history books, I think you'll find that the Irish state offered all manner of support to Britain during the war, both informal (nurses, factory workers, enlistment, etc.) and, quietly, formal (access to and support within territorial waters, internment of German POWs, etc.).  My own grandfather spoke with pride of guarding German POWs in The Curragh K lines, while 'going for a smoke' when tommies breached the wire and headed for safe houses in Kildare and then on to the border.
As mentioned before, the shared histories of these peoples occupies so much of the grey area that I feel it becomes redundant to make sweeping statements about either side.
Now, all of this whiskey talk has left me with a shockin' dry throat .... cough, cough.

No question about the long, deep and, usually, loyal service of Irish men in the British fleet and army. But you might want to consider that the last man ever executed for mutiny in the British Army was an Irish soldier in the Connaught Rangers - an Irish Regiment that mutinied (in India) in 1920, demanding a British withdrawal from Ireland.

 

[irish]

I believe this to be true OS.
I think it went something like this ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECkA216RL4Y
I'm not sure if it's sad or not, but the Irish gaelic name for whisk(e)y, uisce beatha, does translate to water of life.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The debate over the spelling of whisk(e)y may be seen as proof of the adage that, if it wasn't for drink, the Irish would be running the world.

:dunno:

iper: Or that the Scots, perhaps with aid of strong drink, actually did run the world (for a wee while, anyway). 

 

 

  etc, etc, etc ...

 

[irish]

an Irish soldier in the Connaught Rangers

Indeed .. we have been known to pick a fight whilst in the middle of an ongoing agro, but hopefully this doesn't sully the name of the Irishmen who proudly served during WW2, knowing the bigger picture was worth laying down the tricolor for a moment.