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00:00Castles are our most dramatic landmarks from the Middle Ages, built as monuments to domination
00:09and power. Scattered all over the Irish landscape, these ancient buildings with their soaring
00:16walls and great towers leave you with no doubt about their military and defensive purpose.
00:20I just hope we brought a ladder. The Anglo-Norman aristocrats who invaded Ireland in the 12th
00:27century built their castles to control and intimidate the unruly Irish. As English rule
00:35was consolidated, the castles served as administrative centres, garrisons and jails, as well as lavish
00:42homes for the English lords. In this series, I'll be telling you stories about dramatic
00:50sieges, bloody battles, lavish lifestyles, ghostly presences, warring families and feudal lords.
00:59After all, the history of Irish castles is the history of Ireland itself.
01:05Since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland, Britannia had struggled to keep control of
01:19its unruly and belligerent colony.
01:21Ireland was just very, very difficult to capture as a whole unit. I mean, the Anglo-Normans had
01:29failed to do it. The Romans didn't come to Ireland because I think the Romans looked at the place and
01:34said, nah, we wouldn't be able to take it all. The 15th and 16th centuries had been
01:39characterised by power struggles culminating in the Hugh O'Neill Rebellion, the arrival of the
01:43Spanish and the defeat of the Irish at the Battle of Kinsale. When the leaders fled with the
01:48Flight of the Earls, English forces, it seemed, had finally gained the upper hand.
01:53The Flight of the Earls is a pivotal event in Irish history. By fleeing, their lands are
01:58liable to be confiscated. They have left native society leaderless.
02:03For a time, life in Ireland settled down and cities thrived, the natives happy to live
02:08alongside the English administrators, protected by their troops within their walled castles.
02:13Limerick was the largest garrison town outside Dublin, and the castle, built by King John
02:20around 1210, to dominate the bridge and watch towards Thalmond, was one of the finest specimens
02:25of fortified Norman architecture in the country. By the late medieval period, Limerick had a
02:31population of almost 4,000, townspeople who lived within a system of English laws, all centred
02:38around the imposing fortress, secure on its island in the Shannon.
02:43In the 15th and 16th centuries, Limerick underwent a revival, as did the rest of Ireland, and
02:53the city became known as the City of Castles, because a lot of very large, impressive stone
02:58residents were built on the main street of Limerick. The people of Limerick regarded themselves
03:03as being loyal supporters of the English crown. They had no talk with rebels, or with Gaelic
03:09troublemakers, or indeed Anglo-Irish troublemakers.
03:13By the middle of the 16th century, Limerick's a very, very important town, isn't it?
03:19Yes, it is. This is a really superbly detailed model of the city as it would have looked in
03:25the middle of the 16th century. In many instances, they're two or three storeys high, so these
03:31are occupied by the wealthier citizens. Oh yes, you want to be fronting onto the High Street,
03:39onto Mary Street, and this was the prime property.
03:42Right. So what about the harbour? I mean, it's an amazing looking set-up down there. I mean,
03:45that's obviously a busy part down there.
03:47When the Vikings established themselves here in the 10th century, they made their money
03:52from trade, and obviously when the Normans came along then, start of the 13th century,
03:57it's all about trade, and the town becomes very, very prosperous, and it was one of the
04:02major port towns of Ireland, without a shadow of a doubt.
04:05And you can clearly see the money along the main street.
04:07Yeah, yeah. In the properties.
04:09Yeah, there's a lot of very well-heeled folk.
04:13You would have had Normans, you would have had Vikings, you would have had French,
04:16Flemings, Germans, Spaniards. People didn't drink the water in any part of Europe at the
04:22time, because it was not safe to drink. So they drank a great deal of wine, and the wine
04:27was brought in from Bordeaux to Limerick. So there was probably more binge drinking going
04:31on in medieval Limerick than in modern Ireland.
04:34In many ways, the native Irish were more free in the cities than in the countryside,
04:39where ruling lords maintained a rigid feudal system.
04:43If you lived in a town, you were free. You could trade, carry out your craft or whatever,
04:51without too much interruption. Your status was so much better than the serfs in the countryside.
05:00However, peace never lasted long in Ireland, and the second half of the 17th century would
05:05bring chaos and destruction on a scale never seen before. The 17th century was the bloodiest
05:10period in Irish history. One hundred years where three wars all but decimated the population,
05:16and all but destroyed the Irish Catholic elite. And at all stages throughout these bloodgy campaigns,
05:22Irish castles were at the forefront of the action. This is where history unfolded, and the fate of the nation
05:28often hinged on what happened, sometimes in a matter of a few hours.
05:34The flight of the earls had been a pivotal event, allowing the Crown claim the rebels' lands in Ulster,
05:40and begin the divisive policy of plantation. Land was parceled out to loyal English and Scots subjects,
05:46ex-soldiers, all happy to swear allegiance to the Crown. By 1640, the policy had spread south,
05:53and the lands of Leish and Offaly were granted to the new Protestant and loyal families.
05:58Did this result in a massive piece of social engineering and the transfer of land ownership
06:05out of native Catholic hands into the new settler predominantly Protestant class?
06:12The Irish rebellion of 1641 was one of the most significant events of Irish history.
06:17The plantations, along with tough economic times, saw bloody uprising erupt in Ulster,
06:23and thousands of the new Protestant settlers slaughtered. The rebellion quickly spread as old Catholic leaders
06:29in the south joined in a confederacy. By the time civil war broke out in England a year later,
06:35Ireland was in near total rebellion as parliamentarians, royalists and the Irish rebels fought for control.
06:42When we speak about Protestant and Catholic in Ireland, in the 17th and 18th centuries,
06:47one is talking about Catholic versus Protestant, native versus newcomer, Irish versus English or British.
06:55So, ethnicity, identity, political allegiances are all tightly wound together.
07:02The Confederacy army moved south and west, taking Kilkenny and establishing a rebel parliament there.
07:08Next in its sights was Limerick.
07:11The rebellion in 1641 was an attempted coup d'etat by the Irish Catholic lords,
07:16who were trying to seize control of the English administration in Ireland,
07:20in order to try and force concessions for the Catholics who were living under English rule.
07:25So when the Catholic army marched on Limerick in 1641,
07:29it was the first time that the Irish lords marched against the English administration,
07:34who were holed up in their walled garrisons.
07:37When General Barry arrived at the city, the Catholic citizens welcomed the rebel army by opening the gates,
07:43while the Protestants took refuge inside the castle walls.
07:46However, without any cannons, Barry decided to fall back on an old siege tactic known as undermining.
07:52Excavations in 1990 uncovered the remains of the tunnels that ended the five-week siege,
07:57and saw the castle fall for the first time in its history.
08:00In 1919 when you were excavating here, and it's pretty early into the excavation,
08:04you discovered, did you know what you'd found?
08:07Because this has got to be extremely rare, finding something like this.
08:10We started to find rows of rotten or burnt timber props poking up out of the ground.
08:17And you only knew what the hell is this what they're finding?
08:20One of the principal means of attack and defence involved the construction of these mines and countermines with timber props.
08:28And we knew, gosh, we've got the remains of these very structures that were used when the castle was under siege.
08:35They were impervious to attack other than attack developed by undermining.
08:42And we use the term undermine as a sort of a metaphor nowadays.
08:45But in those days it literally meant something.
08:47You drive a tunnel under the walls, and you collapse the tunnel under the wall itself,
08:53thereby bringing down the wall above ground and opening up a gap in the walls.
08:59You can start a fire under the castle walls.
09:02You also can use fire pots, which are effectively grenades, and start a small explosion.
09:10You can put in more and more gunpowder.
09:12So while you might have a cannon to do the job, what you're trying to do is bring down that castle wall in one fell swoop.
09:18The Irish opened this mine, and of course then the garrison in here get wind of it in terms of how did they know that they were doing it?
09:25The garrison were aware from the noise that was being made in the building.
09:30So they, in this instance, had to initiate what was called a countermine.
09:35They were just trying to get down and stop the fellows that were coming in.
09:38They specifically wanted to intercept the incoming mines.
09:41The damage was so extensive that the garrison had really no choice but to start waving the white flag and say,
09:50OK, we're ready to talk now and we are prepared to hand over the castle.
09:55It was inevitable at that stage.
10:00The castle was surrendered, but not before 280 had died of starvation, many of them women and children,
10:07and were buried in mass graves in the castle yard.
10:10The analysis from the osteoarchaeologists told us that the children were all aged below five, except one possibly aged six.
10:20So it's terrible to think of children of that age being caught up in this horrible struggle.
10:28They didn't die because of gunfire or any kind of violence.
10:32These people would have starved to death during the course of the siege.
10:38When you find something like that, you find the remains of particular children, that must be incredibly emotional.
10:44To end up in a pit, just with loads of other people, I mean, this is profoundly tragic.
10:52We should think about it with respect.
10:54Absolutely.
10:55And appreciate the loss of life that was part and parcel of the siege.
10:59Civil war was now raging in England, with the Irish taking the side of King Charles, preferable to the Protestant fervour of Cromwell and his parliamentarians.
11:11Planter families in the south were targeted and forced off their lands.
11:15Some families, however, dug in their heels and tried to hang on in.
11:18Burr was a planter castle associated with William Parsons, hence the name Parsons Town.
11:30And in the King's County and Queen's County are awfully a leash area, are a number of such strongholds.
11:37And these, in the first year of the Great Revolt of October 1641, that first year, these places find themselves under siege.
11:47The Parsons family at Burr Castle had developed the pretty Midlands town, boosting industry and employment and integrating well with the locals.
11:56I think the Parsons family made sure that they got on well with their neighbours.
12:07When they came at the beginning of the century, things were working out to be quite peaceful.
12:13And we have accounts in the archives of Lawrence Parsons' expenses.
12:19And I noticed that, over the years, the expense on whisky, or as he wrote in the translation of the Irish,
12:28Ishqaba, went up and up every year.
12:32And so he was obviously entertaining.
12:37But then politics intervened, unfortunately.
12:42When the Irish rebel forces first marched on Burr Castle, Captain William Parsons refused to surrender.
12:48As in any civil war, many of the protagonists were neighbours.
12:51So despite the politics of the time, communications were respectful.
12:55Captain William's mother, they obviously very much respected her.
12:59And there's one really very moving letter from Captain O'Moore saying,
13:05How sad it is that good friends now find each other on different sides, which is the awful thing about civil wars.
13:14He asks her if she should leave.
13:17But in fact, she doesn't.
13:19She doesn't.
13:20They hang on in for a bit longer anyway.
13:23Burr Castle repelled the first onslaught.
13:26But two years later, the army came back.
13:28And by this time, the tables had turned.
13:30That long standoff is ended quite quickly in January of 1643.
13:37This time, the attackers were a portion of the Leinster Confederate Army, commanded by their general, General Preston, who was a veteran from the continent, a professional soldier.
13:49And he was particularly adept at siege warfare.
13:54The defenders are beginning to suffer, not from privation.
13:58They've still got food.
13:59But the conditions in there, in an overcrowded castle, there's mud up to their knees.
14:04They're demoralised.
14:06They don't see any way out of this.
14:08What he does is he spots a weak point at the base of the walls.
14:13So he starts digging a tunnel underground, a mine it's called, towards that weak spot.
14:20And the people within, a man named Chidley Coote, who was in charge of the castle, realises what's happening.
14:26Coote is at this stage prepared to talk about terms, and the castle surrenders, or commitulates, within just over a week of Preston's arrival.
14:37We have a very interesting account of the terms that were negotiated when the siege ended.
14:43Preston obviously respected the family.
14:46He says,
14:47No common soldiers shall dare to come within the doors to frighten the ladies until they and their carriages be gone out.
14:55And they shall freely have two draught of oxen to draw the carriage.
15:01And all other of their people shall carry away with them and their wearing apparel, both linen and woolen, and their swords by their sides.
15:12So that's how they had to leave after the siege.
15:17The Confederacy War saw many of our castles change hands for the first time since the arrival of the invaders 450 years earlier.
15:24All across the country the English garrisons were driven out as the rebels took control, and an alternative government was established in Kilkenny.
15:31The capture of Limerick Castle was a major turning point in the rebellion, and it was to begin Limerick's nine years of independence from British rule.
15:39It was tumultuous times, and when civil war was declared in England that August, loyalties became even more convoluted.
15:46Once in power, it was to be 1649 before Cromwell was ready to turn his attention to Ireland.
15:54Full of religious fervour and fuelled by stories in the English press about the massacres of the Protestant settlers in Ulster, Cromwell had scores to settle.
16:03When Cromwell arrived in Ireland, he's very committed, he's a very religious man, an outstanding general, in many ways changed the way the military fought in England.
16:14But it is his strong religious convictions that lead him, and that's why he becomes famous for his retaliations against the Irish when he comes over.
16:24Cromwell heartily dislikes papists, and Irish papists in particular. He's also fired up with the desire for vengeance and retribution.
16:37Thought he was heard and read about, in grossly exaggerated form, the Catholic and Protestant massacres of 1641-42.
16:45When he finally invaded, there was no army to match him, and his new model army moved through the country like a knife through butter.
16:59After taking Drogheda, Wexford, Carrick on shore, and Waterford, Cromwell and his army arrived here at the city gates in Kilkenny in March 1650.
17:08Now, inside the city, things were pretty bad, because the plague had hit. In fact, that plague took the numbers of the garrison down from 1200 to 400.
17:16So naturally, Mr Cromwell thought that he was going to have it all his own way. But boy, was he wrong.
17:25Kilkenny was the nearest the Confederate Catholics had to a capital city. They controlled about two-thirds of Ireland, headed by the Duke of Armand, James Butler, whose home base was Kilkenny, of course.
17:37And the Armand Castle in Kilkenny.
17:42Well, the castle was his prime target. And of course, the thing about it is, apart from having great strategic importance in the castle, it also had symbolic importance.
17:50Because Kilkenny was the centre of the Confederacy, where Ireland had more or less partial independence for the previous eight years.
17:57And Kilkenny's parliament was more or less here in Kilkenny. So it had great symbolic significance as well as strategic value.
18:04Cromwell could have been forgiven for thinking that God was an Englishman, because the winter that followed was exceptionally short and mild.
18:13So even before the end of January, his army was up and marching. And he was able to approach Kilkenny from the southwest early, in March 1650 at this stage.
18:23And another army is coming from Dublin, converging on Kilkenny. So that he's in the field early.
18:32His enemies, the Irish, are caught off balance. And moreover, they're plague-ridden.
18:37Eubonic plague had come to Galway the previous year, and it had spread throughout the Irish quarters.
18:45So the garrison and townspeople of Kilkenny are, by all accounts, riddled with epidemic disease.
18:52But on arriving in Kilkenny on that day, he sent a message to the governor of the castle and to the governor of the city, demanding the immediate surrender of the garrison.
19:02And he was presented with a very prompt refusal.
19:07The atmosphere in the city, they must have been petrified.
19:11They were absolutely petrified, and they had good reason to be, because this was really, literally, the enemy at the gates.
19:16And when the bombardment started, the cannonballs flew in and not only punched breaches in the wall, but also overshot the wall and hit people's houses and literally decapitated people walking down the streets.
19:27He discovered a weak point in the city's defences at a place called Irishtown.
19:33A thousand soldiers entered this weak point. Unfortunately, that was the beginning of the end of the Kilkenny garrison, and the governor of the city offered his surrender, and Cromwell's troops moved in, took over, and ransacked the churches and perpetrated massacres and rounded up prisoners and the whole lot of it.
19:54How many lives were lost, would you say?
19:57Something in the region of two or three hundred Cromwellian soldiers died, and about two-thirds of that on the defence side.
20:08The reason being was, of course, the defenders had the advantage.
20:11There's no estimate as to how many citizens were killed, but there could be a few thousand.
20:19And many wounded, and then, of course, people were dying of the plague within the city, even during the siege, so it's very difficult to put an exact figure on casualties.
20:28But the Cromwellians paid dearly for the capture of Kilkenny.
20:32Kilkenny was devastated by the bombardments. Most of the important buildings were destroyed, and homes were gutted.
20:41And Cromwell's troops continued the destruction, the clergy were banished, and many of the townspeople were executed.
20:47Eventually, a law was passed to clear the city of the citizens.
20:51And with Cromwell's admonishment to hell or to Connacht ringing in their ears, many of them went out west and into exile.
21:00With Kilkenny taken, Cromwell left his son-in-law, Ireton, in charge of the move on Limerick, the last city still in the hands of the Confederation of Catholics and Royalists.
21:09The taking of Limerick was a bloody and brutal campaign, and Ireton's first attempt that October had to be abandoned as winter set in.
21:18We often think of the Cromwellian campaign as being this lightning-quick passing through the land. Far from it.
21:241649, Cromwell lands. 1650, we're into 1651.
21:29Throughout that spring, summer and autumn of 1651, Ireton is literally sitting down. He's dug in around Limerick.
21:38His army is suffering through sickness. By this stage, the bubonic plague is not just affecting the Irish, but it is affecting the English as well.
21:47So, he waits and waits and waits, hoping that the Irish will capitulate before the winter months, in which case he's going to have to withdraw.
21:58The castle had a garrison of about 2,000 men, secure on the island, with the only way in over Thoman Bridge, while Ireton had 8,000 men, as well as 28 siege guns and mortars.
22:10Ireton secured all the approaches to the city, cutting off supplies and began a relentless bombardment of the townspeople and the castle.
22:18With Ireton's forces breaching the walls and on the brink of an all-out assault, O'Neill, with 700 of his soldiers dead, ran out of options and surrendered.
22:27But not before an estimated 5,000 civilians were killed.
22:32However, Cromwell's army paid dearly for the taking of Limerick. They lost 2,000 soldiers and Ireton himself never made it home.
22:39A month after the city fell, the plague got him too. But not before he punished the city leaders who he saw as traitors.
22:47Many were hung and the mayor was drawn and quartered, his head mounted on St John's Gate.
22:53The old order is swept to one side and you get lots of new settlers coming in. The Irish names more or less disappear.
23:02They are no longer running the town, they become the lower classes.
23:09Another settlement sprung up and it was walled itself and it's referred to as the Irish town.
23:17It became a sort of ghetto area into which the Irish were pushed.
23:23I suppose you could call it a concentration camp if you liked.
23:26The houses aren't as good doing everything. You know what I mean?
23:29That's right, yeah. It's very, very fancy.
23:31It's very posh this town.
23:32Fancy properties between the cathedral and the castle. The structures are definitely a bit more humble.
23:38Yeah, well that's a very polite way of putting it.
23:44When Cromwell died in 1658 and England decided to reinstate a monarchy, Ireland breathed a sigh of relief.
23:50Peace reigned for a time, but when James II came to the throne almost 30 years later, family politics intervened.
23:59James had remained Catholic, but his daughter Mary had married the Dutch and very Protestant William of Orange.
24:06When the leading English Protestants invited William to take over the throne, James was forced to flee across the Bristol Channel, hoping Catholic Ireland would help him regain his kingdom.
24:18From a British perspective, James was a Catholic.
24:21They didn't like the idea of having a Catholic king and the possible reintroduction of Catholicism into Britain, and so they invited William III over.
24:33And he drove out James II, who retreated to Ireland.
24:37There's a number of contexts. There's a European context.
24:42This is a war in which Ireland is a theatre of a gigantic conflict between William of Orange leading an international coalition, and on the other hand, the Great King, the Sun King, Louis XIV.
24:56So it's part of that package. It's also part of an invasion of Britain, which is almost succeeded completely by William of Orange.
25:08In March 1689, James, along with 6,000 French soldiers, landed in Kinsale.
25:15Now, they received a rapturous welcome in Dublin before marching north to lay siege to Derry, which was one of the few garrison towns that wasn't loyal to the king.
25:24The siege lasted three months, but was eventually saved by the arrival of the Williamite warships in July.
25:30James was forced back south, and he was on the defensive.
25:38So for the campaigning season in 1690, we have the extraordinary, unprecedented scene.
25:43Two kings of England contending, an uncle and a nephew, father-in-law, son-in-law.
25:49Both of them meeting at the boyne on the banks of that river, contending for the thrones of three kingdoms.
25:56So it's a very dramatic scene in which Ireland is centre stage in a British and Irish and a Western European event.
26:07William is coming from Holland, and with his generals like Ginkle, they have more experience in fighting big battles.
26:14Again, King James is not a fighting king. He's more into the royal court, and that's probably the difference.
26:22The William of Orange and people like that, they're fighting princes. They actually know what it's like to fight.
26:30They have fought in battles before, and that's the knowledge that they have.
26:35And essentially, James commits too much of his troops to what he feels is going to be the full attack.
26:43William holds back most of his army, and once James has committed his army to what he thinks is a full-on attack,
26:51William very quickly just gets across the boyne, and the battle's over very, very quickly.
26:56And James is forced to run.
26:58Very serious blow, particularly to James' prestige. After all, he fled the country. And by doing so, he in effect said, I've lost the war.
27:09Yet it wasn't the end of the war. Why? Because the Irish army was more or less intact, and William overplayed his hand.
27:18Had he given or offered reasonable peace terms, with security of property and perhaps some guarantees as regards religion, the war would have been over. That would have been it.
27:28King William left also, leaving his troops under the Dutch General Ginkle.
27:34However, winter was coming in, and after a failed attempt to cross the Shannon at Athlone, the two armies settled in to wait for spring.
27:41The soldiers died in battles, but that wasn't what killed them. It was the ancillary things that killed them. It was the diseases.
27:54It's when you get large numbers of people together, you get diseases like typhoid.
27:59So when you get encampments, they're the killers. It's going to be hunger also, and then you end up with troops that are malnourished.
28:06So that when you do come back in the springtime to get ready, that your army can be depleted with large numbers of people who have just died through disease.
28:14And then the remaining of your troops are hungry and depleted, and not at their physical best.
28:21In Burr, the Parsons family had regained their lands, and the castle was now a garrison for Williamite troops.
28:27The winter saw many skirmishes between the two armies, and the castle was besieged for a second time, this time by the forces of the Jacobite commander Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan.
28:38This is Sir Lawrence Parsons. He was the third generation of the Parsons family to be here.
28:46He was involved in Sarsfield's siege and had very difficult times.
28:53Patrick Sarsfield is the folk hero of the Williamite wars. He was, according to his enemies, very brave, but not much brains.
29:06I think that's probably unfair. He was a good cavalry commander, dashing, understood the importance of seizing the initiative, and above all, he was inspirational.
29:15He was somebody who could inspire optimism, and inspire self-belief, and inspire pride.
29:22It shows a very human side of Sarsfield, according to the account.
29:28Sarsfield said,
29:30The house had cost Sir Lawrence a great deal of money, and since it would do them no good, it was a pity to destroy the gentleman's castle.
29:40Which is nice, and makes me feel that maybe Sarsfield had known Sir Lawrence in better times, when they might have been friends.
29:48What's interesting is, you see the marks of the cannonballs from Sarsfield's siege. Some of them went through the window, but others took great chunks out of the wall here.
30:06Williamite's army had now become aware of what was taking place at Burr, and so they dispatched a large relief force from Ross Grey.
30:16And this obliged the Jacobites to draw off again, and recross the Shannon at Bannehill into Connacht.
30:23Winter was extremely tough. It was tough for both armies, but the Jacobite army barely survived.
30:31But it did survive, and it was able to carry on its campaign in 1691.
30:42As spring turned to summer, Ginkle amassed a huge army around Mullingar.
30:47The plan was to cross the Shannon at Athlone, a key and strategic garrison town still in Jacobite hands, and then march on to Limerick.
30:56But first, they had to take Athlone.
30:58Here we're looking at a matchlock musket. Now the Jacobites, when they had them, when they're looking at the had muskets, this is the kind they had.
31:08It's slow to reload, it's got a very high misfire rate, and it's not very accurate.
31:17Three things you really look for in a gun when you buy them on, don't you?
31:20Something that's difficult to load, and of course, even if you go through the process of loading it then, it might necessarily fire.
31:26Apart from that, it worked perfectly.
31:27It worked perfectly.
31:28Yeah, yeah.
31:29You needed lots of them.
31:30That's the way you get it.
31:31At the end of the day, you'd hit somebody with it.
31:32You'd hit somebody with it.
31:33At 50 yards.
31:34Yeah.
31:35Beyond 50 yards, as one man put it, you might as well be aiming at the moon.
31:38I'm presuming, but these aren't after dinner mints, by the way.
31:41Given the medical conditions of the day, if that hits you in the leg or the arm, you have a goodish chance of surviving.
31:49You know, you'll probably get sepsis, but they'll chop off the arm or leg.
31:53You're grand.
31:54However, if it hits you in the trunk, you're a gunner.
31:56Here we're looking at a siege piece.
31:59Mmm, 24 pounder perhaps, 32 pounder.
32:03There you go.
32:04Josephine.
32:05And here we're looking at bombs.
32:09It's hollow inside.
32:10It's got, you can see the little fuse hole on top.
32:13So it goes over barriers and lands behind.
32:16It's a terror weapon.
32:17It's not designed to knock down walls, but rather to kill the guys behind the wall.
32:22I think this is probably a fragment of a hand grenade.
32:25So the grenadier is your best troops.
32:28They're big guys.
32:30They would lob these things from over their shoulder with the fuse on.
32:35And they're your men for close quarter works.
32:39An initial attempt to take the bridge failed.
32:41And so Ginkle brought in his heavy artillery.
32:44The 10 day bombardment saw 60,000 shots fired on the town.
32:48Eyewitnesses wrote that it was hell on earth.
32:51When Ginkle's men finally forwarded the river, the Jacobites were forced back.
32:58But the war wasn't over yet.
33:01The two armies met again in July 1691.
33:04This time in Ockram County Galway.
33:07The stage was set for the fiercest battle ever on Irish soil.
33:11Well, this was the largest and the bloodiest battle that ever occurred in Irish history.
33:17I mean, more soldiers fought and died here than in Gettysburg.
33:21And Gettysburg is so well renowned in America.
33:24But they call this the forgotten battle in Irish history as it was almost written out of the history books.
33:30It was sort of seen as a, I suppose, a defeat to the Irish, you know, if you like.
33:36So this one, it was easier to forget.
33:39It was just, it was too gruesome.
33:41How are you, Damien?
33:51Hey, Simon. Nice to meet you.
33:53Nice to meet you too.
33:54How's it going? Welcome to Alpin Castle.
33:55Really?
33:56Where is it?
33:57Not much.
33:58We've one wall left with some ruins here.
34:00You can just see it in the high ground beside the cross.
34:02Now, how do we do this, Damien?
34:05Well, we can hop. We can do that, you see.
34:08And then do that, can't we?
34:10And we're in.
34:12Right. I'm not doing that again, Damien. Come on.
34:18We know it was ruinous at the time of the battle itself.
34:21Right.
34:22And you've got to imagine hundreds of Jacobite soldiers.
34:24There was a couple of hundred men garrisoning here with infantry support.
34:28So they were attempting to block the Williamites from coming down this area here.
34:33So just to get my geography right, so the Williamites are coming from this direction?
34:36That's right, yeah.
34:37And the Jacobites are holding this position?
34:39The Jacobites are holding this line, trying to cover this very narrow pass through the bog.
34:44So in terms of the Williamites, why are they coming this way? Where are they heading to?
34:47They want to go to Galway and ultimately onto Limerick. That's their plan.
34:51So the key was then get through here and onto Galway?
34:54Yeah.
34:55And win the war. That's what they hoped.
34:58Well the soldiers, when they came to Akram, well they had just survived three years of war.
35:04By the time they got to Akram, actually they had recruited an awful lot of just farmers,
35:09recruited en route, just to make up numbers.
35:11So basically the Williamites would have had more trained professional armies,
35:17people who had come from countries like Holland and there were Dutch and Danish, there were French Huguenots.
35:24So it's really only when you get up here and you look out at it you can literally see the battlefield in front of you.
35:33Yeah, Akram is almost unique in Ireland because the landscape here is just so incredible that you can come to a vantage point like this and see the entire battlefield and how it would have unfolded.
35:43We have Ginkel's view, we have the Williamite view and he was looking at Akram over here on the right and the pass that was there that they could access.
35:50He was looking at a sea of Jacobite infantry on the ridge in front of us.
35:54And in between him and them.
35:56Bog.
35:57Bog. Deep bog.
35:58Especially some of it, as we were mentioning earlier, it comes up to your chest.
36:01So these guys who had to come straight off this hill and down over that bog into the teeth of Jacobite fire were brave men.
36:08Well, Akram is a simple battle. It's got two armies in what's called parallel order. They're facing each other in two lines running north to south.
36:21The Williamites are the larger army in manpower, certainly in cavalry and certainly in firepower.
36:28They attack the southern part of the Jacobite line, they're beaten back. They attack the middle part of the Jacobite line, they're beaten back.
36:38Towards the end of the day, Ginkel rallied his men for a third attack.
36:42The northern attack was the least attractive on the face of it.
36:47It involved a large army having to squeeze across a narrow pathway.
36:54Three horses could cross it abreast.
36:57So, unnecessarily, an army is going to get bunched up. It's a slow progress.
37:01And if the other end of the pass is held in force, it's going to be the devil's own job to push on.
37:09Luckily for the Williamites, by this stage, we're looking at maybe six, seven o'clock in the evening,
37:14the Irish have pulled troops from the northern part of their line to shuttle them down towards the middle and the southern parts of their line.
37:23So that a pass around Ockram, the village and castle of Ockram, is undermanned.
37:31Reflecting the international character of the war and of the armies on both sides,
37:36the generals on either side were foreigners.
37:40On the Jacobite side, we have the Marquis de San Root, Frenchman.
37:44And on the Williamite side, we have Goddard van Ried, Baron de Ginkel, a Dutchman.
37:50San Root is inspirational. He is liked by the Irish in the short time that he's there with them.
38:00And the position he chooses at Ockram, it's a good defensive position.
38:05And so long as he remains alive, he keeps tight control of what happens.
38:12But at the crucial moment, when the enemy troops, when the Williamite troops are tricking across at Ockram pass,
38:20he sees this as the decisive moment of the battlefield.
38:24And he says to his troops,
38:27The Jours are new, my enfants.
38:29Boys, the day is ours.
38:31Ram the pitch!
38:33And he sets about organising it. A counter-attack, and boom. Game over.
38:39Cannonball hits him in the head, decapitates him, and there is no, literally, the army is headless at that point.
39:01And very quickly, with San Root's death, the demoralisation percolates down the ranks.
39:12And it's at this stage that things fall apart with frightening food.
39:17At this point, myth has it that the villain of the day was Henry Luttrell, from Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin.
39:27Folkloric version would have it that the pass was sold.
39:33Henry Luttrell, who was in charge of the forward element of the cavalry, who were guarding that pass,
39:39supposedly sold the pass beforehand, and the area is known to this day as Luttrell's Pass.
39:48What happens at Ockram is more mundane. There just aren't enough troops left to cover the pass.
39:58We have these men running for their lives. They're being cut down as they're trying to make it to safety.
40:06And one of the main Williamite chroniclers of the battle, the Reverend Storey, he speaks in the days following the battle,
40:14of the Jacobite dead looking like a great flock of sheep spread across the battlefield.
40:19And that's because in this period it was common for the bodies to be stripped.
40:22You didn't leave anything of value. So the victorious party would take the clothes, they would look for valuables, everything like that.
40:28And a number of the items that they found during the metal detection survey were coins.
40:33And we're quite fortunate from this period in that there's a very specific type of coin that a lot of the Jacobites would have had,
40:39and that's Jacobite gun money. And this is one example of it.
40:42Jacobite gun money?
40:43Gun money, yeah. It was base coinage because the Jacobites didn't have access to a lot of silver.
40:50So they made base coinage to kind of sustain themselves during the war, which was supposed to be redeemable afterwards.
40:56Of course, they didn't win the war. But this is one of them.
40:59This coin certainly belonged to a Jacobite soldier who fought in the battle, and may well be the coin of a man who died in it.
41:09It personalises it, doesn't it? It's 322 years old.
41:13Yeah, yeah. And only a year old when it was dropped as part of the battle.
41:19So...
41:21After only five hours, and a loss of about 7,000 men, the Jacobites were defeated.
41:26The surviving troops, under the leadership of Patrick Sarsfield, retreated to the only remaining Jacobite stronghold,
41:32King John's Castle in Nimerick. Once again, the city found itself under siege.
41:37But morale was low, and surrender was on the cards.
41:40On the 22nd of September, a large contingent of Sarsfield's troops were here defending Thaumann Bridge,
41:46when suddenly they were attacked by the Williamite forces.
41:49Sarsfield's men decided to retreat, but the French commander who was in charge of the drawbridge,
41:54he panicked, and he razed the drawbridge too soon.
41:57He left all the 800 soldiers stranded out here in the bridge.
42:00All 800 subsequently were butchered or drowned in the River Shannon.
42:05Henry Luttrell, inside the castle, again was the villain of the day.
42:09Caught sending letters out to the besieging army, he was court-martial for treachery and sentenced to death.
42:14However, he was saved from execution by the treaty negotiations, which saw him join the winning Williamite side.
42:20The Treaty of Limerick was a good deal in that it offered, or seemed to offer, promises of religious toleration,
42:30and it made certain guarantees as regards property ownership.
42:35The property guarantees were more or less observed. However, the religious guarantees or promises were not observed.
42:44So hence, in Irish, if you like, thinking in popular history, Limerick is the city of the broken treaty.
42:53The older Luttrell brother, Simon, still loyal to James, fled to France along with Sarsfield and the other leaders in what became known as the Flight of the Wild Geese.
43:02Henry Luttrell, meanwhile, was rewarded with his brother's castle, near Dublin.
43:06However, his reputation for treachery at the Battle of Ockram, and later at the siege, only grew, and he was soon to meet a violent end.
43:15Good old Henry Luttrell's chickens finally came home to roost in 1717.
43:22He'd been in Lucas's coffee house in Dublin, and was being carried home in a sedan chair, as you do, when he was met by a tall, dark man wielding a pistol, who shot him in the face.
43:33Now, even though the government at the time offered a reward of £1,000 for any information on the killer, nobody came forward.
43:40There was so much hatred for Luttrell at the time, that an epigram written in his memory says,
43:46If heaven be pleased when mortals cease to sin, and hell be pleased when villains enter in, if earth be pleased when it entombs a knave, all must be pleased now Luttrell's in his grave.
44:01The 17th century had seen the country ravaged by divided loyalties to God, the king and country.
44:10Neighbour pitted against neighbour, brother against brother.
44:13The next 80 years would be a period of relative peace, and the medieval castle with its defensive walls would lose its charm.
44:20They would either be abandoned or updated, as a new era of neo-gothic castle building took off around the country.
44:50teal****
44:57TAT
44:59TAT
45:03MRS
45:10I