battles and final defeat were in Ireland.  From the end of the eighth century to the beginning of the eleventh the four shores of Erin were attacked in turn, and sometimes all together, by successive fleets of the Norsemen.  The waters that had been Ireland’s protection now became the high roads of the invaders.  By the river Shannon they pushed their conquests into the heart of the country.  Dublin Bay, Waterford Harbor, Belfast Lough, and the Cove of Cork offered shelter to their vessels.  They established themselves in Dublin and raided the country around.  Churches and monasteries were sacked and burned.  To the end these Norsemen were robbers rather than settlers.  To these onslaughts by the myriad wasps of the northern seas, again and again renewed, the Irish responded manfully.  In 812 they drove off the invaders with great slaughter, only to find fresh hordes descending a year or two later.  In the tenth century, Turgesius, the Danish leader, called himself monarch of Ireland, but he was driven out by the Irish king, Malachi.  The great effort which really broke the Danish power forever in Ireland was at the battle of Clontarf, on Dublin Bay, Good Friday, 1014, when King Brian Boru, at the head of 30,000 men, utterly defeated the Danes of Dublin and the Danes of oversea.  Fragments of the Northmen remained all over Ireland, but henceforth they gradually merged with the Irish people, adding a notable element to it’s blood.  One of the most grievous chapters of Irish history, the period of Norse invasion, literally shines with Irish valor and tenacity, undimmed through six fighting generations.  As Plowden says: 

“Ireland stands conspicuous among the nations of the universe, a solitary instance in which neither the destructive hand of time, nor the devastating arm of oppression, nor the widest variety of changes in the political system of government could alter or subdue, much less wholly extinguish, the national genius, spirit, and character of its inhabitants.”  This is true not only of the Danish wars which ended nine hundred years ago, but of many a dreadful century since and to this very day.

Now followed a troubled period, Ireland weakened by loss of blood and treasure, its government failing of authority through the defects of its virtues.  It was inevitable, sooner or later, that England, as it became consolidated after its conquest by William the Norman, should turn greedy eyes on the fair land across the Irish sea.  It was in 1169 that “Strongbow”—­Richard, earl of Pembroke—­came from England at the invitation of a discontented Irish chieftain and began the conquest of Ireland.  Three years later came Henry II. with more troops and a Papal bull.  After a campaign in Leinster, he set himself up as overlord of Ireland, and then returned to London.  It was the beginning only.  An English Lord Deputy ruled the “Pale”, or portion of Ireland that England held more or less securely, and from that vantage ground made spasmodic war upon the rest of Ireland, and was forever warred on, in large attacks and small, by Irish chieftains.