[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

I've been researching a few things about the subject but I didn't find anything very detailed on the military society of the Welshmen and the Irishmen.

The geopolitical isolation of them may have contributed to a 'delay' in terms of evolution of weapons and armor? There was even some chivalric culture in these regions? If they have changed little in relation to their Celtic ancestors, why the normans and the english didn't conquered these kingdoms earlier?

From the few references I found on equipment, information seem to induce that Ireland possessed little or no supply of armor in their island, with most of the heavy infantry is composed of scottish mercenaries wearning mail hauberks or camails with gambersons. Is there any reason for this? If they had knights and noblemen in Ireland, what kind of armor they would use, for example, at 1200, 1300 and 1400 years?

What were the specializations of the Irish and Welsh armies? There was some kind of "elite"?

[Stephen Curtin]

Hi Pedro. I don't know much about medieval Wales, but you might find this link of interest.

http://warfare.altervista.org/WRG/Feudal-48-Welsh_Uchelwyr.htm

As for Ireland. During the centuries that you have asked about, Irish nobles fought as light cavalry, and were known as hobilars. Typically they rode ponies, without the use of stirrups, or proper saddle. Their arms and armour consisted of conical helms, mail, aketons, shields, spears, javelins, swords, and knives.

As to why the Irish continued using this "old fashioned" style of arms and armour even up to the late 16th century. I think it had a lot to do with the terrain. Ireland was not well suited to large pitched battles in the open field, so small hit and run style skermishes was the preferred method of war. When the Normans came to Ireland they brought both heavy cavalry, and large numbers of longbowmen. These two types of troops proofed very effective against the Irish during larger pitched battles. The trouble was that, as I said, Ireland's terrain is not well suited for this kind of warfare, so these battles were few and far between.

Irish cavalrymen didn't need to adopt new advancements in armour because they never intended to face the weapons that these advancements were designed to defend against. For example, the coat of plates original purpose was probably to better protect against the couched lance, Irish ponies were much faster over rough boggy ground than Norman war horses, and so the Irish would simply retreat from a heavy cavalry charge.  Another example is the houndskull visored bascinet.  This type of helm is well designed to protect the wearer while charging into a volley of arrows.  As I said above though Ireland doesn't have very good terrain for heavy cavalry charges, so the Irish were unlikely to need this kind of helm.

[Kevin P Molloy]

Because Ireland was Vietnam and Afghanistan before Vietnam and Afghanistan but the Irish were superior fighters to them since it took 400 years to overcome the Gaels (Remember the Normans were the most advanced military machine in Europe at that time) and then it took another 400 years to get it back, they were never pacified. Those two wars and even the American revolution are lauded as military and tactically superior victories yet they all used tactics perfected by the Irish hundreds of years before (Think costly Quagmire). The Irish also defeated the Vikings more than any other people or nation in Europe. But the Irish get no credit for any of this that I can see. The Irish elite were superbly outfitted to fight in the bogs and woods of the country at that time, that's also why the English and Europeans copied there light cavalry style. So the question should be why is this? I have my opinion but I will not get into that here but I will say I strongly believe many clear cut Irish victories were suppressed pre 15h century since the winner writes the history and you can win many battles and still lose the war (ie Kinsale). I also believe that they destroyed all the native Irish weapons and armor they could in order to pacify the population that is why we only find them in bogs and rivers now.

Now that I got that out of my system you can find much of what you are looking for by using the search program on here. I will add some later since I don't have time tonight to get into details.

[Kevin P Molloy]

Thank you Stephen I could not have said it better myself. You have learned much padawan! LOL

[Pieter B.]

[Stephen Curtin]

Another thing worth mentioning is that Ireland was not a single kingdom, but many smaller kingdoms. This meant that the Normans never got to face the "king of Ireland" and his army, in one great battle, like what happened to the Anglo Saxons at Hastings.

The native Irish lived in small farming communities, in simply built wood houses. When an invading army marched through the area they would burn the homes and crops of the Irish, but the Irish would have disappeared into the woods and bogs with their cattle, only to come home later and rebuild. This was infuriating to the Normans, who thought this behavior to be sneaky and cowardly, but it makes perfect sense. Why would you openly fight an enemy who is better equipped than you to fight in the open, when you could ambush him during his march through the woods, where you are better equipped to fight than him.

[Stephen Curtin]

Also the Normans quickly conquered the Norse settlements in Ireland, I.e. Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford etc. These areas were controlled by the English Crown, but the Norman Earls who took lands for themselves outside of these town had more autonomy, and eventually started to take on Gaelic Irish customs and methods of war. One writer said these Earls, and their people, had become "more Irish than the Irish themselves".. So these Earls must have had to adapt to the local terrain and found that the Irish hit and run tactics were often more useful to them than the tactics which their ancestors used. Of course some of these Hiberno-Norman Lords retained some of their old customs and methods of war, and so became a kind of hybrid.

[Neal Matheson]

It's just as Stephen said, Anglo Normans largely adapted to the Irish way of doing things, which strongly suggests that the Gaelic way of war was best suited to local conditions rather than a super conservative culture. There was change over time in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland and in both areas there was plenty of contact with mainstream European culture.

[Pieter B.]

Probably worth noting that Ireland used to have large swaths of temperate rainforest (think North west pacific coast of Canada). As a result of the rather damp conditions people walked bare feet well into the 17th century if not longer for practical reasons. Not poverty or culture but practicality.

[Stephen Curtin]

One more thing that I'd like to say is that often people think that the Gaels used inferior/outdated arms and armour because they think of the Gaels as a poor people.
This is untrue. Even John the last of the Lords of the Isles is recorded as being equipped with an aketon, mail shirt, pisane, helm, sword, and axe. The lords of the Isles were one of the most powerful men in Britain and Ireland, and all that distinguishes John's equipment from that of a gallowglass, is it's quality and decoration. For example, his aketon was of silk and richly embroidered, his mail and his helm were said to be the highest quality steel, the mail with golden links at the hems, and all his gear was said to be set with precious stones.

[Graham T. W.]

In addition to what has been stated above, the majority of military histories on the subject are written from a very Anglocentric perspective, often depending on rather biased sources (such as Gerald of Wales, and other later commentators in the same tradition) that have a pretty clear rhetorical purpose in their description of the Irish as inferior to the English in matters of war. Even within that tradition, the English writers (or Anglo-Norman/Cambro-Norman if you really wish to be specific), there was a general trend that emphasized the difficulty of fighting the Irish in Ireland, and the different conditions that necessitated a different sort of warfare: Gerald of Wales, who is generally incredibly derogatory toward the Irish, notes that armor is more of a hindrance in Ireland than it is an aid, and that the key to victory would essentially involve using a lot lightly armed and armored cavalry (i.e. the Irish way of war) and lots of archers. In many ways, that is in and of itself a rhetorical statement meant to argue for the primacy of his relatives in Irish affairs--Gerald was a close relative of many of the first Norman mercenaries in Ireland, and many of them either died fighting the Irish or were displaced by later Norman nobles more amenable to the King--and he wished to emphasize that their unique skill set honed on the Welsh Marches was more appropriate to an Irish context than the more conventional "French" method of war involving heavy cavalry charges over relatively stable terrain.

It's also worth noting that the Irish enjoyed quite a bit of military success against the English, and many of the early English successes were probably not influenced overly much by military differences between the two nations, and more due to the political situation of the time: Irish regional kings, seeing the advantage to be gained by hiring English mercenaries and appealing to the English Crown (who was more French than English at this point), often collaborated with Anglo-Norman mercenaries, who took advantage of dynastic struggles to ingratiate themselves into the political landscape. Certain kingdoms of the Irish remained more or less unthreatened by English encroachment, or after some initial misfortune, soon regained their authority to the extent that they remained unconquerable until the Tudor era.

It's also worth remembering that the Irish military system was not really all that different from its contemporaries in other nations. Regional kings, later styled chiefs of their name, maintained a household of warriors on their own land. They in turn held the fealty of other, smaller chiefs with their own retinues. They would generally be equipped as mail-clad light horsemen, but for pitched battle would also frequently dismount and fight on foot in ranks. Mercenaries, both domestic and foreign, were common, and became more common over time. Essentially, lords retained professional warriors, and were given military service by lesser lords who in turn retained professional warriors of their own; as time went on, many nobles became itinerant mercenaries. Skirmishing tactics were common, but they were common in other regions of Europe as well: Spain, the Baltic, the Balkans, etc. So Ireland wasn't really that much of an outlier, but rather consistent with certain other trends in European history, Just not the Anglocentric ones typically privileged in the historiographical tradition.

One last thing to consider: almost all military battles in post-Norman invasion Ireland (calling it the Norman conquest is an outmoded misnomer, since they did not conquer Ireland by any stretch of the term) would involve Normans and Irishman on both sides of the battle. Nearly every Irish king went to war with some Norman allies at his side, and nearly every Norman noble went to war with Irish allies. These alliances were often tenuous, and it can be hard to tell who was the "senior partner" so to speak in many cases, but the lines between Gael and Gall were at once ironclad and extremely fluid. Ironclad in the sense that even if a Burke or a FitzGerald spoke Irish fluently, adopted Irish manners of dress and warfare and such, they still considered themselves English/Norman (and were considered as such by the Irish); but fluid in the sense that it was local and regional conditions that often dictated one's political allegiance in practical terms, even if in theoretical terms ultimate fealty was owed to the English Crown and its representatives in Dublin.

EDIT: I should cite sources. "Irish and Anglo-Norman Warfare in the Twelfth Century" by Marie Therese Flanagan and "Gaelic Warfare in the Middle Ages" by Katharine Simms, both from A Military History of Ireland, ed. by Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey. Both good secondary resources. "Images of Warfare in Bardic Warfare" by Katharine Simms also provides some valuable information on how the Irish portrayed themselves in war.

For primary sources, I recommend "The Triumphs of Turlough", and Viscount de Perellos account of his visit to the O Neill Mor here.

[Stephen Curtin]

Very well said Graham.

[Graham T. W.]

Thank you Stephen. For reference, here are some descriptors from contemporary Irish sources of the equipment of an Irish nobleman:

From the Chase of Sid na mBan and the Death of Finn: this scene, though obviously fantastical to some extent (it describes a mythological hero, Finn mac Cumail, who here is imagined as a mighty warrior king) does provide a useful description of the kind of armor a medieval Irishman might expect a nobleman or king to wear. The manuscript survives from the sixteenth century, but like many Irish texts, is based upon earlier legends and texts. It is difficult to know to what extent such a description reflects earlier realities, and to what extent it reflects the sixteenth century, and to what extent it reflects the fantastical imagination of its author. Still, I think it provides a tantalizing image of the sort of harness an Irishman might conceivably employ

[Stephen Curtin]

Again excellent post Graham. IMO Fionn mac Cumhaill's armour is a mix of contemporary armour, fantasy, and bardic tradition. The cotún, mail shirt, pisane (i agree that breastplate is a misinterpretation), and helm were all contemporary with the time of writing. The "stout corset" reminds me of Cu Chulainn's "cathchriss", so it could be an earlier piece of equipment which lived on in the bardic tradition. The fantasy element is someone wearing all of this gear at once. A cotún made of 24 layers of linen is substantial enough to be worn as a stand alone piece of armour. Such a cotún would be too thick, and too stiff to be worm under other layers of armour. A cotún made to be worn under armour would have been made of far fewer layers.

[Pieter B.]

Welcome to the forum Graham and thanks for your incredible reply.

[Stephen Curtin]

For those here who aren't aware of the CELT project (linked below), it's a great resource for those interested in reading translated versions of Irish texts, and text related to Ireland.

https://www.ucc.ie/celt/publishd.html

[Graham T. W.]

[Pieter B.]

Thanks for the great reply again.

The quote you provided is indeed something I was looking for. The saddle with a small cantle and pommel makes sense when dismounting often is necessary and light armor could indeed be more favorable in bogs, woods and narrow passes. What actually happened to the large and dense forests of Ireland? Did those disappear shortly after Tudor conquest or later?

As for the Sword motif, I believe the same symbolism is used when dealing with crusaders and the Saracen.

[Stephen Curtin]

[Pieter B.]