1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland (15 page)

The sun passed its high point and began to slip towards the west. In the confusion of battle nothing seemed
certain
. Slowly Brian’s army continued to fall back. Inland, upland, away from the sea.

Brodir was wading through the ranks of the Irish and wreaking havoc with his axe.
Njal’s Saga
, which was
originally
written in Old Norse, tells us what happened next from the Viking point of view. An Irish prince whom the Norse identify as ‘Ulf Hreda’ challenged Brodir and
‘thrust at him thrice, so hard that Brodir could hardly regain his feet.’ Obviously he was badly shaken. As soon as he succeeded in getting up he fled to the nearest patch of woods.

The leaders of both sides were dying in large numbers now. Chieftains and kings, marked out by one another, lay on the ground in their own blood.

Some time during this long day Murrough confronted Sigurd the Stout. He broke through the ranks of
foreigners
surrounding the earl of Orkney and ran up to the highly conspicuous raven banner. Murrough promptly killed the man carrying the banner. Sigurd ordered another man to take up his standard immediately. He did, and Murrough killed him too. A furious battle then ensued between Brian’s son and Sigurd’s followers, but they were reluctant to get close enough to kill him.

According to
Njal’s Saga
, Earl Sigurd ordered
Thorstein
Hallsson to lift his banner from the ground. He was about to obey when Amundi the White called out, ‘Don’t take the banner, Thorstein! All who bear it will be slain!’

Earl Sigurd cried, ‘Hrafn the Red, you carry my banner!’

The intrepid Hrafn replied, ‘Carry it yourself.’

Sigurd did not lack in courage. He reputedly remarked, ‘Likely it is most fitting that bag and beggar stay together.’
He tore the raven banner from its staff and tucked it into his belt. Then he turned to Murrough and attacked him, but the Irishman was quicker. He struck off Sigurd’s helmet with a single blow of the sword in his right hand, bursting both strap and buckles. With his left hand
Murrough
struck again. As he fell, the earl of Orkney wrapped the raven banner around himself. The raven became his winding sheet.

It took half of the afternoon for the foreigners to force the Irish as far as Tomar’s Wood. There Brian’s army made its stand, refusing to be driven any farther. The foreigners pursued them with their axes. The Irish retaliated with theirs.

Normal emotion was transformed into a boiling
eruption
of fear and hate, shared by both sides. What
happened
then was a living nightmare that would haunt the men who experienced it for the rest of their lives. They were afraid to close their eyes in sleep for fear they would see it again – see and hear and smell it all again.

According to Malachy Mór’s poet and historian, Mac Coisse, ‘in Tomar’s Wood where the fiercest of the axe fighting took place, blood was still dripping from the trees three days later.’

One historian claims that the Irish chopped down trees in Tomar’s Wood to use for building fires. This is
implausible. Their enemies would never have granted them time out for lighting fires and cooking meals.

Yet amidst all the horrors of the daylong battle there were individual moments of grace and mercy. Murrough or one of his men came across Thorstein trying to rebind the thongs that held his shoes to his feet. When the
Irishman
asked why he had paused for so mundane a task, Thorstein sadly replied, ‘Because I shall not get home to Iceland tonight.’ The Irishman sheathed his sword and let him live.

Another of the Irish warriors who was forced by nature to empty his bowels was discovered by one of the Danes, who promptly crouched down and joined him. After sharing this moment of extreme vulnerability, the two went their separate ways.

A small child wandered onto the outermost edge of the battlefield, searching for firewood. Men from both sides rushed forward to head him off and lead him to a place of safety.

And still the killing went on.

There is nothing to compare with the appalling, unmistakeable din of battle. The screams and curses and clash of metal on metal. No officer could shout loudly enough to be certain his order were heard. Veterans fought in savage silence, knowing that every breath was
valuable and might be the last.

In the crowded loneliness of battle, before the ultimate loneliness of dying, a man sought affirmation of his own life.

Men who have died in battle are rarely good to look upon. No matter how splendid their appearance at the apex of heroism, when the soul has fled it takes all grace and beauty with it. Bowels empty, mouths gape, bellies swell, dead eyes gleam fishbelly white. Nothing visible remains of glory. In the tents of death all men belong to the same tribe.

Late in the afternoon, perhaps around four o’clock, the last surviving Irish commanders issued what would be their final order to their men: Go back the way you came. Go down from the high ground at Magh Dumha towards the valley of the Tolka. And the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HE
E
ND OF THE
D
AY

T
rampled mud and blood-soaked grass made the ground so slippery it was hard to keep one’s feet. The Irish warriors struggled to obey the commands they were given. Most of their princes and chieftains were dead or dying by now, but at least they still had Murrough’s standard to follow. What remained of Brian’s army turned and headed back down the battlefield. Exhausted men, covered with blood, their own and that of other men.

The battle which had begun with the sunrise would last until sunset, but its nature changed. The Viking fury which had sustained the foreigners for so long was fading fast. They knew in their bones that they were defeated; they remembered the ancient axiom, ‘Men who never quit cannot lose.’

Brian’s army would never quit. Following Murrough’s brilliant blue banner, the flag of the Dalcassians, they drove their enemies across the fields in the direction of the valley of the Tolka. Slashing, hacking, a snarl of men fighting every step of the way, without any order but with deadly determination. They too realised they were going to win.

Perhaps this was the moment when Malachy Mór decided to join the battle. He unquestionably entered the fray at some point, because he was there at the end.
Malachy
has always had his partisans. In his book
The History of Ireland to the Coming of Henry the II
, Arthur Ua Clerigh even gives Malachy credit for the victory of Clontarf.

The Irish accounts of the battle which have come down to us through the annals had been related by the survivors to their children and grandchildren. The
survivors
were ordinary foot soldiers, who went where they were told without asking why. Every high-ranking
commander
who executed the orders personally given by Brian Boru in that final meeting died on Good Friday. This is a crucial point that has long been ignored. What those men knew about Brian’s specific battle plans would never be told.

A telling passage in
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh
states, ‘The full events of that battle and its deeds God alone
knows, because every one who could have knowledge of it fell there on either side.’

Hand-to-hand battles are chaotic. They seem to have no plan and follow no design, other than kill or be killed. A warrior must trust his leader to know what is going on. For the man in the midst of it all and fighting for his life, there is nothing but noise and confusion. Therefore this was the scene the survivors of Clontarf described. For a thousand years, people studying the battle have accepted this as the complete story and overlooked the one factor that made all the difference. The mind of Brian Boru.

On different occasions Brian had spent considerable time in and around Dublin; at the end of 999 he was there for months. Obviously he had explored the locale in detail, as was his habit. Following his orders, his men had dismantled fortresses and cleared strategic passes in a wide area around the city and its approaches. The
chronicles
agree on this point. With a keen eye for observation and an intuitive sense of tactical possibilities, Brian would have, consciously or subconsciously, rehearsed for what was to come.

Like many another great general, including Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn, Brian Boru chose the terrain at Clontarf and dictated the terms by which the battle would be fought. He may have hoped to
forestall
events until after Easter, but if he waited any longer the invaders would come much farther inland. His army would have faced the enemy on different ground, and that would have spoiled everything.

Brian knew more than the lie of the land; during an earlier reconnoitring he must have taken time to study the effect of the tides. The high spring tide that delivered the foreigners in the morning had fallen back by midday. The ships which brought them had withdrawn so they would not be trapped by the receding waters. The few men left aboard may not have realised what was
happening
to their forces on land until it was too late.

The Árd Rí’s chosen battleground was relatively narrow, uneven, and bounded by tidal rivers on both sides, with an impenetrable forest at the top and the sea at the bottom. In flood tide the pleasant little fishing-river of the Tolka became something else entirely. Until very recent times it was a source of major flooding in north Dublin, finally tamed at considerable expense by cement walls and determined engineers.

By late afternoon the weir of Clontarf was completely under water. Darkly roiling, seething, foam-crested
seawater
that carried all before it. The valley of the Tolka was flooded almost as far as where the Botanic Gardens bloom today. The appalled Vikings in the forefront of
the retreat must have realised they could not hope to reach their ships. A vast expanse of turbulent water from Dublin Bay lay between them and safety.

The Irish were upon them now. When they realised the foreigners were trying to get away, Brian’s army attacked the enemy with all the savagery they themselves had received.

On the twenty-third of April, 1014, the valley of the Tolka became a killing field.

Caught by the surging water, the foreigners fought for their lives. As soon as a man crawled out of the flood he was cut down by sword and axe – or even bashed in the head with a mace. The warriors of the Irish army stalked the edge of the water like predators seeking their prey. The Tolka River ran red.

After the tide receded the body of Brian’s grandson Turlough, would be found in the riverbed. His two strong young hands were still clutching the yellow hair of a dead invader. (According to ambulance drivers in north Dublin today, one remaining deep pool of the Tolka below Ballybough Bridge has an irresistible
attraction
to would-be suicides.)

A few surviving Danes who were unwilling or unable to flee fought for their lives in the open fields. The Irish pursued them there too. When the shadows grew long
with the approach of evening, Murrough’s arms were so weary he could barely lift them. His faithful shield bearer had long since fallen. He could no longer manage both his shield and his sword, so he let the shield go. Moments later he was attacked by the crazed chieftain, Anrud.

Murrough reportedly closed with him, seizing the Norseman with his left hand and pulling off the man’s hauberk with his right. With an effort he flung his foe to the ground. He drove his sword into Anrud’s
prostrate
body by pressing on it with all his weight. But he was too tired; his reflexes had become too slow. When Anrud reached up with a dying effort and pulled
Murrough
’s dagger from its scabbard he did not even notice. The dagger sank deep into Murrough’s side. It would be a mortal wound.

This time when Brian asked if Laiten could see
Murrough
’s banner, the young man closed his eyes and shook his head.

Suddenly the Árd Rí’s tent must have seemed very dark. And very cold.

Murrough would live until the following morning, long enough to make his confession and receive the
Sacrament
. Then Brian’s heir, the man who best knew his father’s plans and shared his vision, died.

Before darkness fell on that grim Good Friday, the
remaining Leinstermen made the mistake of fleeing to the city for safety. They made for Dubhgall’s Bridge, where they were met by the Liffey in full flood. By now a few of the Viking longships, aware of their plight, were moving towards the city, but they could not be reached by the terrified warriors because the whole area around Dubhgall’s Bridge was under water.

Once again the tide was flowing over the sands of Dublin Bay, but not in the bright light of dawn. The light was lurid now – ghastly. The setting sun turned the sky to crimson. The blood of the invaders turned the water to crimson.

The watchers on the palisades of Dublin were aghast – except for Emer, Brian Boru’s daughter. According to the chronicles, she could not resist crowing: ‘It appears to me that the foreigners have gained their inheritance.’ When Sitric Silkbeard asked what she meant, she replied, ‘The foreigners are going into the sea, their natural
inheritance
.’ Sitric was so angry he hit her in the mouth with his fist.

The last of the fighting was the most bitter. Men who knew they had nothing to lose but their life, and no longer cared about that, demonstrated the savagery that could lurk beneath supposedly civilised skin. When there was no hope left, there was only death and they embraced it
with fury. The Christians who had followed the banners of the Dalcassians into battle slaughtered other Christians who had followed the raven banner of Sigurd in hopes of plunder, and no one was thinking of God at all.

The end of the day witnessed a total victory for the Irish.

No little birds sang their sleepy twilight songs in the splintered and trampled pockets of woodland that dotted the battleground. Birdsong could not compete with the pitiful cries of the dying.

When the first shouts of triumph reached the Árd Rí in his tent, he knew his army had won. It was over, then. Everything was over. Brian dismissed his bodyguards to join the celebration. They did not want to leave him, but he insisted. He needed to be left alone with his thoughts.

Accompanied only by his faithful servant, Brian Boru knelt and bowed his head over his folded hands.