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158 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
of an army twenty thousand strong, invaded the midlands and attacked Dublin. The broth- ers had no siege-train, however, and the strong stout walls and the fierce resolution of the citizens of that city were, it is said, ‘proof against their attacks.’
Having failed to take Dublin, they then marched south to Munster. Edward’s success was, however, on the decline. To date, the war had been conducted by him in a reckless and destructive manner with much burning and slaughtering, and partly owing to bad harvests, but equally so to the wanton destruction of crops by his soldiery, famine, and famine’s con- stant companion, dreadful pestilence, were raging throughout the blighted and ravaged land of Ireland. As a result, Munster did not respond to the Bruce’s presence and other regions followed suit, and with the Irish rapidly losing confidence in their scorched earth policy and their sullying of soldiery honour, the Bruce brothers returned to their stronghold in Ulster. Early in 1317 affairs in Scotland called Robert home with his army
Now while Edward Bruce was engaged in his otiose circuit of the country, the Normans had been busy, painstakingly mobilizing their forces, and in 1318, a powerful army com- manded by John de Birmingham marched northwards from Dublin against him and his bedraggled, half-starved army. Owing to Robert’s departure for Scotland, Edward’s forces were by then much depleted and much inferior in number to that of his opponent, ‘the flot- sam of the formerly invincible force’, it was said. Because of this he was advised by Donal O’Neill to fall back in strategic retreat to the north, thereby avoiding a pitched battle, that is until help would arrive from his brother in Scotland. Against all the entreaties, on 14 October, 1318, Bruce rashly attacked the great Norman force at Faughart, near Dundalk. Despite the rashness, his stubborn fighters might again have met with success, but during the battle, John de Bermingham rushed into the fray, sought out Bruce and killed him. (One account claims that it was an English knight named Maupas who killed Edward).
The consequences of Edward’s death were catastrophic; his soldiers were now panic- stricken and easily overcome by the enemy, and before the remnants of his army scattered, two thousand of them lay dead upon the field. Bruce’s head was cut off and sent to the king, after which Bermingham was rewarded with the earldom of Louth and the Barony of Ardee.
Thus ended the Bruce campaign in Ireland, a campaign which the Irish themselves regarded with mixed feelings. Many of them were opposed to the “Scottish Foreigners” as the Bruces were known, added to which the vivid ruthlessness and ravages of their soldiers throughout the country was also bitterly resented, so much so that some chroniclers say,
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