Battles Fought on Irish Soil: A Complete Account

Bottles Fought ort Irish Soil is the first popular and comprehensive account of battles fought in Ireland from pre-history to the twentieth century. The first battle described in this book is the mythological Moytura, in which the Tuatha De Danann were victorious; the last is the modern-day Battle of the Bogside, in August 1969, which brought British soldiers on to the streets of Derry, where they stayed for nearly forty years. No battle is without significance but some are surely more significant than others: Clontarf in loi4; Hugh O'Neill's Yellow (Blackwater) Ford in i598, the sheer efficiency and slaughter of which shook Tudor rule in Ireland to its foundations; Kinsale in 1601 and Aughrim in 1691, lamented by generations of Irish poets as the death-knell of Gaelic Ireland. It will be clear to the most casual observer that from the Irish viewpoint far more battles were lost than won, but the heroism of doomed rebellions such as those of Henry Joy McCracken, Emmet and Pearse go some way to compensate for this. Battles Fought on Irish Soil gives a clear, lively, non-partisan account of all the affrays, mostly between the Irish and the English, from the Normans in 1169 to the Black and Tans in 1920-1, but also between Irish and Irish in the Civil War of 1922-3.