Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

The Scots army was astonished-even if their liege lord was slightly less so. It was as good as a great victory, and bloodless. The fact that Butler had been having enormous difficulties in feeding his host no doubt contributed.

The way clear before them, Bruce pressed on westwards.

They came to famed Cashel, in Tipperary, with its cathedral, round tower and abbey, one of the most holy places in a holy land, a rock rising from an extensive plain. Here was also the palace of the Munster kings; but O’Brien was presumably with Edward, and no supplies were forthcoming from either his servants or the monks. The army moved on towards Limerick and the Shannon, with the Western Sea beginning to draw them.

Now, with the elimination of Butler’s host, and Bruce’s fame spreading, everywhere the Irish rose in support, and in their thousands, their tens of thousands. As day followed day, they came flocking to Bruce’s banner, and paid little heed to his instructions to head eastwards to join their own monarch at Tara and Dublin.

Instead they attached themselves to the Scots, and came west with them or at least, travelled behind, an embarrassment and a delay. Yet it was their country and their cause, and Bruce was not the man ruthlessly to spurn and drive them away. Especially as they were almost all hungry and he was known to have food.

Unfortunately he had far from enough food for all, and inevitably there was trouble. Moreover the Irish clans were even more quarrelsome than the Scots variety, and internecine battles of real violence were an almost daily occurrence. Worst of all, these unwanted cohorts raided and pillaged wherever they went, in typical clan-war fashion, not only in the names of their chiefs and sub kings but in the name of the King of Scots also.

All this was outside Bruce’s calculations, and he blamed himself for not having foreseen it. But regrets and recriminations aside, this could not be allowed to go on. Most evidently it was possible to be bogged down in Ireland in more ways than one.

It was, therefore, a vast and sprawling horde, quite unlike any army with which Robert Bruce had ever been connected, which at last reached the Shannon at Castleconnel, a few miles north of Limerick, on the 10th of March, the Feast of St. Bronach. Limerick was the greatest city of the West, the third largest in Ireland, and, with its port, had all along been the Scots objective. It was a fortress-town set on an island in the wide river, and was thought to be fairly strongly garrisoned-but by Anglo-Irish and pro-English Irish under O’Hanlon and MacMahon. Butler’s, and de Clare’s, disaffection might well have spread here. If it could be taken, the whole of the West ought to fall like a ripe plum.

But a welter of reports reached Bruce concurrently with his arrival at Castleconnel. The most immediate informed that, only a few days earlier, a large English fleet had sailed up the Shannon to reinforce and stiffen the garrison of Limerick. And to feed it, which was more vital still. The second was from the east, from Angus Og, whom Bruce had left with Edward, declaring that Mortimer had trapped the Ulster host in a bend of the Liffey near Naas, with a vastly superior army, and though the position had its own strength, protected by river and marshes, the situation was serious. Edward would never bring himself to ask his brother for aid in it, but he, Angus Og, could and did. He urged King Robert to turn back from the West, and take Mortimer in the rear, to their mutual advantage.

But quickly-for the Ulster force had insufficient supplies to hold out for long.

The third report was from O’Connor, the studious King of Connaught, from Athlone, announcing that famine was making terrible inroads in the areas to the north and west, with plague in its wake, and advising Bruce strongly against making any advance meantime into those parts.

These tidings set the King urgently to think.

That same night he was given still further cause for cogitation.

Early in the morning there was a great disturbance of shouts and screaming and the clash of arms, at the north part of the camp.

The King rose immediately, to learn from the captain of the guard that

it was not truly an attack or even one of the typical inter-Irish’

affrays. It was an assault, yes-but with a difference. The Irish

this time were not fighting amongst themselves. The assault was against the Scots lines-not the men, but the horses. They had been driving the beasts off and slaughtering them, there and then, for food.

“How many?” the King rapped out.

“How many gone?”

“I fear, Sire, that they may have taken some 200. There were thousands of them, crazy with hunger. The Irish…”

Bruce looked from the speaker to Moray and Gilbert Hay, who had joined him.

“This, then, is the end of the road, my friends,” he said heavily.

“Once this has started, it will continue. Starvation is the enemy we cannot fight, and win. Our horses are vital to us.

Without them we are lost. I have misjudged. Tomorrow, we turn back.”

They nodded, silent So next day, to the consternation, reproach, even fury of most of the Irish chieftains-though not all-the Scots disengaged themselves.

It had to be ruthlessly done, in the end, and Bruce did not enjoy doing it. But he had made a mistake, and this was part of the price he had to pay. His first duty undoubtedly was to his own people. They rode away fast from Castleconnel, eastwards, leaving Limerick and its investment to the great, quarrelling Irish host They turned their backs on the enemy, and rode. Robert Bruce who had never done such a thing in his life, was not a man any dared speak to for some time thereafter. It was St. Patrick’s Day.

They continued to ride fast, for day after day, eating up the miles for that was almost all there was to eat. No laggards needed to be reminded that it was a race against time, against growing hunger, especially against the failing strength of the horses-for forage for beasts was as scarce as food for their riders.

There were two schools of thought about this-one said that they should not press the animals, use them lightly, so as to cherish their flagging powers; the other that they should drive on at their hardest while any strength remained. The King inclined to the second course, especially in present circumstances, with the Ulster army to relieve if at all possible.

Avoiding all entanglements, fighting and delay, they were at Kells, halfway across the land, by the third night. But this pace could not be kept up, all knew. At least they were facing east-and by contrast with the famine-stricken West, in their hunger dominated minds they recollected the East as a land of plenty.

Next day another courier caught up with them, about ten miles north of

Kilkenny, from Angus of the Isles. He informed that the pressure was

off the Ulster force. Mortimer, who appeared to be a quarrelsome man,

had fallen out with Sir Robert Nottingham, Mayor of Dublin-and

presumably with Nottingham’s superior, the Chancellor, Bishop Hotham

* for he had now taken sides with de Burgh, and was demanding the earl’s release from Dublin Castle, Hotham’s headquarters. This having been refused, he had abandoned his assault on Edward’s force and marched on Dublin instead. None knew now what went on in the city, and who prevailed.

“My brother scarce needs me to aid him in this Ireland! Or any other,” Bruce commented.

“These Englishmen that Edward of Carnarvon sends over are all the aid he needs! What does His Grace of Ireland do now, then?”

“He marches, Sire. Northwards. For Ulster. For Dundalk and

Carrickfergus.”

The King stared.

“You mean that he retires? Not just changes position? Retires

hot-foot for Ulster?”

“Aye, Sire.”