MILITARY SERVICE, GAELIC
Mac Murchada of Leinster (d. 1171) famously did
between 1167 and 1170. Other Irish kings were not slow
in following Mac Murchada’s example, Domnall Mac
Gille Pátraic (d. 1185) hired Maurice de Prendergast
in 1169, while Cathal Crobderg Ua Conchobair in 1195
employed the services of Gilbert de Angulo. Hiring
mercenaries, however, could be a risky business. In
1310, Áed Breifnech Ua Conchobair (sl. 1310), king
of Connacht, was killed by his own mercenary captain,
Johnock Mac Uigilin (Mac Quillan). Ideally, the pre-
ferred option of Irish kings of Ulster and Connacht was
to hire directly from the Western Isles of Scotland. In
1259, Áed son of Feidlim Ua Conchobair (d. 1274),
prince of Connacht, formed an alliance with these
Hebridean-Norse communities. That year he married
the daughter of King Dubgall mac Ruaidrí of the
Hebrides, gaining as part of his bride’s dowry 160
fighting men known as galloglass. Domnall Óc Ua
Domnaill of Tír Conaill (sl. 1281) followed Áed’s
example—marrying two brides drawn from the great
galloglass families of Mac Domnaill of the Western
Isles and Mac Suibne of Argyll. These galloglass, led
by their own nobility, were traditionally huge men and
fearless—preferring often to fight to the end rather then
surrender. These forces were to play a dominant role
in the Irish wars of raid and counter raid. Often the
galloglass formations were employed as defensive
shields to protect the retreating horsemen from their
pursuers. A galloglass wore a helmet and was clad from
head to toe in a mail coat. His arms were the tuagh
(“axe”), broad swords, and daggers, and he employed
a manservant to tend to the care of his armor and
weapons. The “cess” or quartering of galloglass on a
country was called the buannacht (“bonaght”), while
the Irish kings levied the tuarastal(“wages”) and pro-
visions due to these elite soldiers from the people of
their countries. This Irish practice of billeting gallo-
glass upon the peasantry was later copied by English
magnates of Ireland such as the de Burgh earls of Ulster
in the fourteenth century and later by the earls of
Ormond, Kildare, and Desmond a century later.
The role of mercenaries in Irish warfare was to
develop in importance as a feature of Gaelic military
service. But the widespread use of foreign mercenary
forces by Irish kings only became commonplace in the
fifteenth century, heralding the rapid intensification
and scale of Irish warfare. In 1428, Niall Garbh Ua
Domnaill (d. 1439) imported a great force of Scots to
besiege Carrickfergus Castle. This was the first
recorded use of seasonal Scottish soldiers, or “red-
shanks” as they became more commonly known. Unlike
the galloglass, these redshanks did not engage in long-
term contracts, but were imported directly from the
Western Isles in greater numbers for shorter periods. As
this custom became more widespread—particularly in
the latter half of the sixteenth century—it greatly
increased the destructive scale of Irish warfare. In com-
parison to Ulster and Connacht, the Irish of Leinster had
traditionally always hired native born soldiers of fortune
from either Connacht or Ulster. But the rising power of
the earls of Kildare in Leinster from the 1450s may have
denied the Leinster Irish access to their traditional
sources of mercenaries, forcing them to look elsewhere.
Moreover, the Kildares were also importing large forces
of Mac Domnaill galloglass from the Western Isles into
Leinster from the 1460s, forcing the Leinster Irish to
maintain themselves by recruiting galloglass forces of
their own. As a document dated to about 1483 illustrates,
there was a huge influx of galloglass into Leinster
during the 1470s and the 1480s—recording that Mac
Murchada, Ua Broin, Mac Gille Pátraic, Ua Conchobair
Failge, and Ua Mórda each employed a “battle” of gal-
loglass. And such was the hybrid nature of Irish warfare
that by the 1500s the earls of Kildare were billeting their
Mac Domnaill galloglass upon the Pale—levying
“coyne and livery” upon Englishmen for the mainte-
nance of these troops.
The introduction of firearms into Ireland in the 1470s
further speeded Irish warfare along its increasingly
destructive path. The later widespread usage of firearms
among the Irish brought major innovations in warfare—
including a raise in the status of the woodkerne. Tradi-
tionally, the kerne was a lightly armed and nimble foot-
man, armed with a set of three javelins, a small shield,
and a sword. In 1399, the kerne of Mac Murchada and
Ua Broin displayed how effective they could be fighting
in a naturally protecting environment of mountain and
forest—harrying mercilessly the beleaguered army of
Richard II of England (d. 1400). In the sixteenth century,
many of these kerne became extremely proficient in the
use of firearms, wounding three chief governors
between 1510 and 1534. Toward the end of the sixteenth
century, a series of Irish leaders such as Áed Ua Néill
(d. 1616), second earl of Tyrone, and Fiach Ua Broin
(sl. 1597) emerged to revolutionize Irish warfare by
adopting foreign ideas, tactics, training, and forma-
tions—adapting them to suit the Irish landscape. Tyrone,
a far-seeing and ruthless man, trained a red coated Ulster
army to fight in the Spanish formation of the terico,
using both pike and musket. With this army at his back,
Tyrone won great victories at Clontribret in 1595 and
at Yellow Ford three years later—but his defeat at
Kinsale in 1601 and subsequent submission in 1603
effectively ended the Irish military establishment.
EMMETTO’BYRNEReferences and Further Reading
Barry, Terry, Robin Frame, and Katharine Simms, ed. Colony and
Frontier in Medieval Ireland. London: Hambleton Press, 1995.