North King said:
But... my nation is like four times your size...
Touche
The Birth of a Nation
An excerpt from the overview of the last chapter (The Birth of a Nation)
ofA History of Ancient Eire
While officially the
Kingdom of Eire ceased exist in 1388 BC,
High King Domnall I had said much, but accomplished little in the way of making a truly new kingdom. Yes, Ireland was united under one King, but that King was at the mercy of his legions. The Galloglach, as discussed in chapter 2, were fiercely loyal, but also expected their God King to act in a godly (and therefore aggressive) manner. The result was that the High Kings were essentially bound to the wishes of the Galloglach and had to feed their insatiable desire for conquest, or else be devoured themselves.
After years of distracting the Galloglach with putting down rebellion after rebellion of recently conquered peoples, allowing them to temporarily sate their bloodlust in widespread acts of slaughter, the High Kings led them across fields, valleys, streams, and seas to destroy the last vestiges of Irish enemies. Their whipping boys dead, the Kings were forced to act.
As it happened, when the hammer of the High Kings finally fell on the Galloglach, it missed the mark. The attempt to destroy the Galloglach in one fell swoop proved too eager. Confidence was too high and instead of covert destruction,
Crown Prince Aedric (who was actually High King at the time, due to his father's death on campaign, though he did not know it) attempted a show of strength. The foolish decision led to approximately 300 years of warfare between the Galloglach and the Kingdom.
A series of sufficient, but not salient, High Kings provided enough leadership to weaken, but not destroy, the Galloglach. Meanwhile, progress stagnated somewhat at home, although this is less of an issue than it might seem. While things did not progress, they certainly did not worsen either. Essentially, the people of Eire Proper went about their lives the same way for 300 years.
Finally, in 1106 BC,
High King Flaithemon IV rose to the throne after the somewhat suspicious death-by-indigestion of his father, the ineffective
Niall VI the Gouty. He rallied the people, scaring them into military service through tales of the brutal Galloglach and an all out offensive was launched against the dwindling territory of the Galloglach. The campaign was not a brilliant one. It employed neither fancy tactics, nor inspired strategy. In fact, the only thing that sets the war apart (aside, of course, from its result), was the use of the
Druids of the Claw (See Chapter 2 for more on these warriors). Flaithemon simply had more men and a terrible, yet inspiring, will. He pushed the Galloglach back all the way to the beach, where a last stand was made that was eerily reminiscent of the old barbarian stand before they fled into the sea. [1]
This time, however, there was to be no escape. Flaithemon's predecessors had been chipping away at the Galloglach navy for some time by now, and an alliance with the Britannia peoples sealed the fate of the Galloglach navy. The battle was bloody, but in the end superior numbers, along with a deep-seeded terror of what would happen to them should they lose, won the day for the people of Eire.
The people returned to Eire Proper. Soldiers were given the choice to continue service with a promised pension or return home to their families. The Druids of the Claw melded back into civilian society, save for a few who remained as elite scouts. Eirehann, as it could now be called, began to rebuild. This, though, is a discussion for another book, for the entity of Ancient Eire had largely ceased to be, surpassed now by the new idea of a unified
Kingdom of Eirehann, or Ireland. [2]
[1] Some scholars make the point that, in many ways, the battle was even more similar the first attack on the Galloglach by the Crown Prince, Aedric. Both times the Galloglach met a citizen army who were less trained, but more numerous., both times the Galloglach were trapped on a beachhead. This is the less referenced version for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost being the fact that, as hated as the Galloglach were, they were being stabbed in the back at this point. Other reasons include the very light fighting that occured during that encounter before the Galloglach simply fled, as well as the fact that the locations of the last stand of the Galloglach and the barbarians hundreds of years earlier were geographically almost identical.
[2] The choice to include the Era of Two Irelands in a textbook about ancient Eire is one of scholarly preference. However, it should be noted that very little changed until the Galloglach were eliminated. They were a remnant of the Old Ways, monsters with no place in the world they had helped to create. It was only after they were defeated that change could truly be enacted. The overtures towards citizenship, the beginnings of a codified system of laws, these were present during the Era of Two Irelands, but their impact was only felt after the kingdom was reunified.
Thus it is largely accepted that the Kingdom of Eirehann and the title of King of All Ireland is really only applicable from 1100 BC onwards.
(OOC: I'll be honest... the story was only to save this post from being spam...

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