Ireland's Crazy Horse

 

Ireland’s Crazy Horse   No 24

Art MacMorrough

Crazy Horse was the chieftain that killed General Custard at the battle of Little Big Horn, another guy fighting for his homelands.

Art kept the English out of his territory and like Crazy Horse at the Battle of little big Horn he out foxed his enemy the invading English.The native Irish began to regain some of their former territories from the English in the 14^th century this was primarily due to Art Mac Morrough Kavanagh(1357-1417), who became King of Leinster in 1377.  Art claimed to be a direct descendent of Diarmaid Mac Morrough(Who brought the Normans into Ireland) through some illegitimate son and therefore his right  to the kinship of  the Leinster .No DNA then.!

Art was credited as the man that gave most trouble during the reign of Richard II (from 1377 to 1399) . He married the daughter of Maurice Fitzgerald fourth Earl of Kildare; where- upon the English authorities seized the lady’s vast estates, in as much as she had violated the Statute of Kilkenny by marrying a Mere Irishman. In addition to this, his black rent-eighty marks a year-was for some reason stopped, soon after the accession of Richard II. (Black rent, rent paid by the English to the local King for land they occupied) Exasperated by these proceedings, he devastated and burned many districts in the counties of Wexford, Kilkenny, Carlow, and Kildare; till the Dublin council were at last forced to pay him his Black rent, no messing with this lad.

Meantime Ireland had been going from bad to worse; the Irish kicking back all over the place and at last the king Richard II resolved to come over himself with an overwhelming- force, hoping thereby to overawe the whole country into submission. He made great preparations for this expedition; and on the 2nd of October, 1394, attended by many of the English nobles, he landed at Waterford with an army of 34,000 men, the largest force ever yet brought to the shores of Ireland this guy wasn’t taking any chances with the mad Irish.

As soon as Mac Morrough heard of this, far from showing any signs of fear, he swept down on New Ross, then a flourishing English settlement strongly walled, burned the town, and brought away a vast quantity of booty.  When the king and his army marched north from Waterford to Dublin, he harassed them on the way after his usual fashion, attacking them from the woods and bogs killing the poor auld Kings soldiers in great numbers.

The Irish chiefs however saw that submission was inevitable as they did not have the armies of the English and they were not a united force. At a place called Ballygorry, near Carlow, Mowbray Earl of Nottingham received the submission of several of the southern chiefs amongst them MacMorrough, (The most dreaded of all)

In a letter to the Duke of York, the English Regent King Richard II describes the Irish people as of three classes-Irish savages or enemies; Irish rebels (Colonists in rebellion); and English subjects;

But this magnificent and expensive expedition produced no useful result whatever. As for the sub- mission and reconciliation of the Irish Chiefs, it was all pure sham. They did not look upon King Richard as their lawful sovereign he was another chancer king from across the water and as to the promises, since they had been extorted by force, they did not consider themselves bound to keep them.

Art was poisoned 1417 at New Ross. He was buried at St. Mullins, South County Carlow; you can visit his tombstone at the rear of the Abbeys

Author Martin O’Brien