By Conor Kostick
In May 2025, the Irish cabinet approved a cross-government engagement with Europe’s 2027 The Year of the Normans—People of Europe. Should they have aligned Ireland with the celebration of Norman culture that is being planned in France, the UK, Italy, Norway and Denmark?
The invasion of Ireland by Anglo-Normans is often seen as the start of an era, the beginning of British imperial conquest and control of the country. If you see the Normans in this light, then you are definitely in the ‘no’ camp. On balance, I’m in the ‘no’ camp too, but I prefer to understand the events of 1169–71 as the ending of an era: Strongbow’s invasion of Ireland was the final instance of a Norman adventurer attempting to seize a realm by military might.
For c. 250 years before the invasion of Ireland the Normans had been a danger to lords, kings, emirs and even emperors. Innovators and experts in new forms of warfare, unafraid of dangerous amphibious expeditions, relatively small numbers of Norman knights proved capable of defeating much stronger opponents and dominating the landscape they had conquered.
Normandy was founded in 910 when King Charles ‘the Simple’ (for his modesty rather than stupidity) of France accepted that he could no longer protect the north of his country from Viking raids. Meeting with one of the most notorious leaders of a Viking band, Hrólfr, Charles granted Normandy to the Viking leader in return for fealty. The story goes that Charles insisted on a public display of the subservience of the Vikings, demanding that they kiss the royal foot. With a shrug, Hrólfr gestured to one of his men to perform the act of obeisance. Much to the delight of the northern onlookers, the Viking warrior picked Charles up by the ankle and, dangling the monarch upside down, kissed the foot. The story is no doubt apocryphal but it does sum up the relationship of Normandy to France for the next two centuries; nominally vassals of the French king, effectively the Normans were autonomous.
The new dukedom had a lot going for it. Unlike their neighbours, the Normans were not in awe of the glory that had belonged to Rome. Whereas everyone else was trying to emulate the Romans, including adopting their farming method of using large numbers of slaves in chain-gangs on plantations, the Normans were themselves both warriors and free farmers. Not for them the aristocratic disdain for doing slaves’ work. And they had an innovative technology, being able to apply a plough developed in the north to heavy French soils that had refused to turn under the light wooden plough of southern Europe. Wealth from grain—yields were as high as 14:1 in Normandy (3:1 was the norm elsewhere; only three seeds were harvested from one planted)—was the foundation of Norman military might, for with it they could breed the most powerful warhorses in Europe, equip themselves with full suits of chain-mail at a time when iron was especially precious, and develop the ‘nuclear weapon’ of the era—the castle.
A castle differed from the forts of earlier epochs in that it was a residence of a lord and a manorial centre, not simply a garrisoned outpost. By constructing castles all over a landscape, each within sight of the next, the Normans created effective networks for gathering the lion’s share of the crops of the local farmers and for defending themselves from invading armies. With just 30 knights, for example, but with several castles, Robert Guiscard conquered and secured huge tracts of land in southern Italy and forced the pope to recognise him as the legitimate authority: Duke of Apulia and Calabria. Duke William I of Normandy conquered England and immediately consolidated his position there by granting land to his knights, who constructed castles all over the kingdom.
Pre-eminent in warfare—nearly unstoppable, in fact—the Normans were often hired as mercenaries. And every time, the ruler who thought that he could safely invite a few Normans in to help him regretted it. The Normans inherited Hrólfr’s contempt for existing authority and invariably tried to seize power and wealth for themselves. They conquered Sicily, for example, after an exiled emir came looking for their help in getting his lands back from a rival.
Which brings us to Ireland. By 1169 the era of Norman conquests was almost over. Most of their neighbours had caught up in terms of military technique. The kings of England and France were far more powerful in the late twelfth century than they had been in the tenth. Now they could raise enormous armies and check the ambitions of their vassals. Nevertheless, there was one final opportunity for a lord of Norman descent to make a significant conquest and that was in Ireland.
Early medieval Ireland was a predominantly pastoral society; wealth consisted of herds of cattle. One consequence of this for the country’s rulers was that there was no reason for them to build castles. Apart from a royal fort here and there on river crossings, there was no point in investing a fortune in static fortifications when it was not the conquest of land that mattered but the driving away of cattle. No castles and no equipment for the capture of castles: Ireland was vulnerable.
That vulnerability might never have become manifest but for the decision of Diarmait Mac Murchada and his immediate family to get help from the Norman descendants on the other side of the Irish Sea after their fall from power. In 1166 Diarmait had lost the kingdom of Leinster to his local rivals allied with Ruaidrí Ua Chonchobair, the high king, and Tigernán Ua Ruairc, lord of Bréifne and Diarmait’s bitter enemy. As far as Ruaidrí Ua Chonchobair was concerned, there was no need to insist on the complete destruction of Diarmait and his followers. They could be left with their ancestral Uí Chennselaig lands in return for acknowledging Ruaidrí as high king and surrendering hostages. Tigernán Ua Ruairc disagreed. He had been humiliated in 1152 when, after he had lost in battle, his wife Derbforgaill had left him to join Diarmait. Still burning with the desire for vengeance fourteen years later, as soon as Ruaidrí Ua Chonchobair had returned to his Connacht base Ua Ruairc attacked Leinster again, this time destroying Diarmait’s Ferns residence and very nearly capturing his enemy. Even Diarmait’s own people were considering handing him over in return for peace.
Down and nearly out, Diarmait fled to Bristol and then sought out King Henry II of England, promising fealty in return for troops that could restore him to the kingdom of Leinster. Henry had other concerns but he did—tentatively, as was his manner—allow that Diarmait could approach Henry’s vassals.
In 1167 Diarmait found an adventurer willing to risk everything on an invasion of Ireland: Strongbow. The lord of Chepstow had lost a fortune and the promise of fame when, at the age of eighteen, he had backed the losing side in an English civil war. Barely tolerated by Henry, Strongbow’s lands were diminished; he was refused the right to marry, and he was deeply in debt. As far as Strongbow was concerned, the chance to become an Irish prince via marriage to Diarmait’s daughter Aífe and ruler of Leinster (and perhaps of all Ireland?) was an extraordinary opportunity. He sent his officers to Ireland in 1169 and they reported back on Ireland’s vulnerability: Strongbow’s army, modest though it was (about 200 knights and 1,300 other troops), could be successful in an invasion.
On 23 August 1170 Strongbow was embarking his troops onto ships in the port of Milford Haven when a herald arrived from King Henry insisting that the expedition be stopped. Having found out that it was the hated Strongbow whom Diarmait had recruited, King Henry changed his mind. Having a Norman lord as ruler in Ireland meant that the country could become a major threat to his own rule. Risking his own life and those of his vassals to the consequences of defying the wrathful king, Strongbow took the tide for Ireland.
The resulting conquest of the east of Ireland justified the risk, though Strongbow had to surrender the cities he had taken to Henry, who hurried over to Ireland, landing on 17 October 1171. The king of England may have felt entitled to rule Ireland (despite repeated claims to the contrary, I’m confident that Laudabiliter is a fake; see HI 13.3, May/June 2005, pp 7–8), but he had undertaken the expedition because he had to stop the formation of a dangerous Hiberno-Norman breakaway kingdom under a powerful high king.
From an Irish perspective, should we celebrate these events or use them to condemn British imperialism? My view is that there’s not much to celebrate. Fascinating though the story is, ultimately it’s a story of the robbery of Irish aristocrats by Anglo-Norman aristocrats. The emancipation of Irish slaves in the wake of the Norman conquest is worth cheering, but that was an unintended consequence of Strongbow’s ambition. So I’m in the ‘no’ camp.
On the other hand, there’s even less opportunity here to condemn the very real harm that Britain did to Ireland in later years. The Anglo-Normans very quickly became integrated into Irish society and culture, and often their descendants are to be found in rebellion against the tightening of imperial control over Ireland. It was really with the plantations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that British rule over Ireland was firmly established. To blame Strongbow for the later way in which Ireland’s people and resources became subordinated to the demands of a growing imperial power is like blaming the passengers of the Mayflower for Donald Trump.
Conor Kostick is author of Strongbow: the Norman Invasion of Ireland (O’Brien Press, 2013).