army

army. The medieval lordship of Ireland was never at peace behind stable borders. Its governors had frequently to summon forces to deal with local challenges, which became more common in the later Middle Ages as the colony stood increasingly on the defensive (see gaelic recovery). From time to time they might also be required to raise troops to participate in the king's wars in France or (particularly in the period 1296–1335) in the Anglo‐Scottish wars: in 1296, for instance, John de Wogan led a paid force of 3,157 men to Edward l's first Scottish campaign.

Since frontier conditions prevailed in much of Ireland, a well of experienced manpower existed in the country. Direct tenants of the crown owed knight service within Ireland in respect of their lands; they were periodically expected to fulfil their obligations either in person or (more often) by paying scutage. In addition, all able‐bodied males aged between 16 and 60 were expected to possess arms and horses in proportion to their wealth, graded according to a schedule definitively set out in the Statute of Winchester (1285), which was extended to Ireland in 1308. Their personal service could be called upon in an emergency, though this general levy too might take the form of taxation, designed to hire substitutes. It is likely that unpaid levies formed an occasional supplement to paid forces.

Exchequer records surviving from the late 13th and 14th centuries show that justiciars mustered paid armies almost every year. Such armies included some ‘men‐at‐arms’ (knights and other heavily armed cavalry), but consisted mostly of hobelars and infantry. Apart from the justiciar's own household (based around 20 men‐at‐arms whom he was obliged to retain from his annual fee of £500), they were made up primarily of contingents led by settler nobles and gentry; but they might also include Gaelic chiefs who took the king's wages and semi‐professional captains of kerns or (mostly in the 15th century) gallowglasses. Many of the elements in royal armies were thus little different from the forces to which they were opposed. Armies rarely stayed in the field for more than a few weeks or contained more than 1,000 men, reflecting the spasmodic, small‐scale character of warfare in Ireland.

Medieval states rarely maintained standing armies. Before the mid‐14th century virtually the only forces in that category in Ireland were the small garrisons kept in certain royal castles. The sense of crisis in the late Middle Ages, however, sometimes led the king to provide governors, especially those coming from England, with retinues of English men‐at‐arms and archers which would be kept in pay for a fixed term of months or years; from 1361 their wages tended to be paid by the English exchequer. In 1361 Lionel of Clarence brought around 800 English troops to Ireland, but such retinues were commonly less than half that size. As well as forming a core for armies raised locally, they might serve in ‘wards’ or garrisons at key points in Leinster and Munster. From the 1420s English help was available only occasionally. Anglo‐Irish governors adopted various expedients in order to keep some standing forces. In 1474 the 7th earl of Kildare inaugurated a brotherhood of 13 lords, who were to supply 40 horse and 120 archers to be maintained from the customs revenues (see brotherhood of st george). But usually such troops were supported through a combination of parliamentary subsidies and the unpopular measure of imposing coyne and livery on the Pale counties. Despite these standing forces, most military activity continued to depend on a governor's ability to raise armies from scratch for particular objectives.

After the Kildare rebellion, the royal army became a permanent force of English troops, although gallowglasses and kerns continued as auxiliaries for some time, and loyal subjects were occasionally called up to ‘hostings’. For the remainder of Henry VIII's reign a minimum garrison of 500 was required and for the rest of the century at least 1,500. Numbers rose to peaks of 3,000 to fight Shane O'Neill, 6,000 during the second Desmond War, and possibly 20,000 in 1601–2. Costs escalated accordingly, putting an increasing burden on English taxpayers. Delayed arrival of treasure meant Dublin officials had to use their own funds or raise short‐term loans to prevent mutinies by unpaid soldiers.

Most recruits were from the west country, Wales, and northern England, levied on a county basis after commissions were sent down by the privy council. Enlistment, theoretically voluntary, became particularly unpopular during the Nine Years War. The county provided ‘coat money’ and the state ‘conduct money’ covering expenses to the ports of departure, usually Chester, Bristol, or Holyhead. Importing victuals from England became a necessary alternative to cess when large numbers of troops were deployed during wartime, but ‘contrary winds’ on the Irish Sea often delayed delivery. Housing conditions were generally poor for men who were themselves often poorly shod and clothed. Training was limited and weapons—increasingly firearms—were sometimes unserviceable. The army was a far more motley crew than that depicted in John Derrick's Image of Ireland.

Diseases such as dysentery, typhus, and Irish ague were rampant, killing up to a third of servicemen. At the height of the Nine Years War there were only six surgeons, even though each company was supposed to have one. Hospitals were eventually established at Derry, Dublin, and Cork. Desertion was rife and captains willingly took Irish replacements on less pay. Cavalrymen, assisted by their horseboys, fared better than infantrymen.

The lord deputy was the commander‐in‐chief, the Irish treasurer doubling as the treasurer‐at‐wars. The marshal headed the army on a day‐to‐day basis. During the Tudor conquest this office became a sinecure for the Bagenals, with other posts showing similar tendencies towards nepotism, corruption, and inefficiency. The captains, in charge of the companies (usually 100 strong), were responsible for paying, feeding, and clothing their men. They commonly cheated the state, the cess‐payers, and their own companies, even though they already had the benefit of ten ‘dead pays’.

Under James I numbers fell to 1,000 foot and 300 horse until the outbreak of war with Spain and France in the late 1620s. In 1640 Wentworth, anticipating conflict between king and parliament in England, created a mostly Catholic Irish army of 8,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which was disbanded after his fall.

The subsequent Confederate War, involving upwards of 60,000 combatants, replicated the problems of the Tudor conquest on a vast scale. With finance short, all parties resorted to demanding contributions on a county basis. Problems of billeting, feeding, and pay made mutinies commonplace. Only Oliver Cromwell's army was well supplied and financed, though it met the familiar problems of disease.

After the Restoration Charles II's government reduced the army to just below 7,000 men, less than half its size in 1655 but still well above pre‐1641 peacetime numbers. As a safeguard against the political and religious radicalism of the force inherited from Cromwell, the new establishment included a Royal Regiment of Footguards, consisting of 1,200 men freshly raised in England. Later, following Blood's plot, there were further dismissals throughout the army, the resulting vacancies being filled by new recruits. Army organization improved with the establishment by 1683 of a regimental structure, and the opening in 1684 of the Royal hospital at Kilmainham to provide for veterans. But government continued to be unwilling or unable to provide adequate funding, and arrears of pay led to a serious mutiny at Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, in May 1666.

Following the accession of James II the character of the Irish army was transformed, first by the introduction of Catholic officers like Justin MacCarthy, then by a series of purges designed to replace Protestants with Catholics at all levels. After the Williamite War the army regained its exclusively Protestant character, but in other respects there were radical changes. Irish Protestants as well as Catholics were now excluded, on the grounds that recruitment might weaken the Protestant interest within the kingdom. Instead the Irish army, though paid for out of Irish revenues and with senior appointments in the gift of the lord lieutenant, was in practice a part of the English regular army, with regiments serving tours of duty in Ireland on a rotating basis. An English act of 1699 fixed the Irish peacetime military establishment at 12,000 men (as compared to 7,000 in England). In practice a section of this force was always deployed outside the kingdom: Ireland, in other words, became the base for a proportion of Britain's strategic reserves, and bore a share of the overall cost of imperial defence. In 1769 the Irish establishment was increased to 15,000, the ‘augmentation’ that provided the occasion for Townshend's confrontation with the undertakers.

The part of the establishment stationed in Ireland was expected to repel invasion and prevent insurrection. It also frequently acted in support of the civil powers in enforcing the law. However, the Irish military establishment quickly became notorious for its incompetence, corruption, and indiscipline, while service abroad, absenteeism, desertion, and the large number of pensioners and invalids included on the establishment ensured that its effective strength probably never exceeded 6,000 men. By mid‐century the army's role was more clearly one of national defence, while also providing a strategic reserve of troops. Further changes were to follow. The enlisting of Irish Protestants began in 1745, while the surreptitious recruiting of Catholics was apparently commonplace by the 1780s. The Catholic Relief Act of 1793 officially permitted Catholics to be enlisted in the ranks and to hold commissions.

The Act of Union amalgamated the Irish and British military establishments. However, assimilation was not complete until 1822 when the Irish barrack boards were finally abolished. Prior to this a number of other difficulties had arisen, not least the status of Irish Catholic officers, who held their commissions under the Irish act of 1793 and had to wait for the Army Indemnity Act (1817) to confirm that these could legally be exercised in Great Britain.

The availability of barracks and cheap land led to the maintenance during the 19th century of an Irish garrison force of around 26,000 troops, about 14 per cent of total army strength. These troops continued to be employed as a strategic reserve for the empire, while being used both for internal security duties and for national defence. Throughout the century soldiers were used in aid of the civil power, though their role was not always a suppressive one. Soldiers were employed both in the Ordnance Survey and in organizing poor relief during the Great Famine. In garrison towns, such as Fermoy, as well as in Dublin, the army became important in economic and social life. However, relations between the army and the resident population were not always cordial, and local conflicts did occur.

An estimated 130,000 Irishmen served during the Napoleonic wars, and throughout the 19th century a sizeable proportion of the British army was Irish. In 1830 the figure exceeded 40 per cent, and although this steadily fell away to 13 per cent in 1899, it was still more than the Irish share of the United Kingdom population (9 per cent). Although the Irish gained a reputation for military fervour, there is little evidence that in fighting terms Irishmen were actually very different from Scottish, Welsh, or English troops. Lack of alternative employment opportunities at home contributed more to the high levels of Irish enlistments than any alleged fighting spirit.

Within the army tensions also arose between Catholic and Protestant soldiers, while in the 1860s attempts were made by Fenian agitators to recruit serving soldiers. These proved to be passing threats, and the army in Ireland continued to be loyal to the crown. There is some evidence that the rising tide of Irish nationalism in the early 20th century depressed recruitment. Yet during the First World War more Irishmen than ever before or since—over 200,000—served in the British army. Most of the British army units initially deployed during the rising of 1916 were composed of Irishmen. Many Irishmen also served in the crown forces during what is somewhat misleadingly called the Anglo‐Irish War, though it was decided in 1919 not to station Irish infantry battalions in Ireland. There is evidence of nationalist feeling in some of the British army's Irish units during these years, and there was an actual mutiny in the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers in India in June 1920. For the regular army in Ireland the strains of ‘counter‐insurgency warfare’ were considerable, and the commander‐in‐chief in Ireland, General Sir Nevil Macready, reported in the early summer of 1921 that the great bulk of his forces would need to be relieved by the end of the year. There were problems, too, of co‐ordination with the increasingly militarized Royal Irish Constabulary and its explicitly paramilitary Auxiliary Division.

After partition, when six of the eight Irish infantry regiments were disbanded, Irish enlistments fell off sharply, although significant numbers from both north and south joined up during the Second World War. In the years since 1945 Northern Ireland has proved proportionately to be a good recruiting area, and even in the late 1980s up to 20 per cent of Irish recruits for the British army still came from independent Ireland.

After the establishment of Northern Ireland the regular British army garrison in the province quickly fell away to no more than five battalions (including by the 1930s Irish regiments). For much of the province's history, up to the late 1960s, the army played no active part in maintaining the security of the state, which was left to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Special Constabulary. The only time soldiers wre used for riot control duties between 1922 and 1969 was for eleven days in July 1935 when sectarian violence broke out in Belfast. In the 1950s, however, army barracks provided targets for IRA attacks and arms raids.

Regular soldiers were deployed in Northern Ireland ‘in aid of the civil power’ in August 1969, when the police proved unable to contain rioting in Belfast and Derry. Although the British government viewed this move merely as a temporary measure, for some five years the army effectively took the leading security role in the province. At the end of 1969 there were some 8,000 troops in Northern Ireland. Numbers reached a peak of 21,800 in July 1972 for ‘Operation Motorman’, when the security forces entered nationalist no‐go areas. After this the numbers of regular troops fell back to below 10,000. A political consequence of army deployment was that control of security policy gradually shifted from Belfast to London, culminating in 1972 with ‘direct rule’ from London. In the mid‐1970s, however, a policy of ‘Ulsterization’ was adopted, by which the leading role in security policy passed back to the civilian RUC, albeit with the army continuing in a supporting role, and supplemented by the Ulster Defence Regiment (later subsumed within the Royal Irish Regiment).

In independent Ireland, by contrast, the army had from the start and important though anomalous role in national affairs. Formally constituted and organized for external defence, its main military function has always been an internal security one.

The army was established in January 1922, and was soon involved in civil war against anti‐treaty forces. By 1923 its strength stood at over 50,000 men. Victory, the need for economy, and civilian unease at its disruptive potential saw its rapid reduction. At the time of officers' demobilization crisis or army mutiny in March 1924, it had fewer than 20,000 men. By 1932 it had under 6,000, and virtually no fighting equipment other than rifles. There was also no worthwhile system of reserves. The army was allowed no say in defence policy, which consisted simply of statements that Ireland would abjure military alliances and would stay out of any war unless attacked. It was obliged to maintain large numbers of former British barracks and posts for purely internal security purposes, and government habitually used it both to assist in all manner of civil emergencies, and to act as both judge and jailer of persons charged with crimes against the state. (See Internment; Special Courts.)

In 1934 a ‘volunteer force’ was set up. Intended largely to siphon off potential recruits from the IRA, it proved the mainstay of expansion in 1939/40, when the army found itself in a desperate position as it reorganized into two mobile divisions to defend Irish neutrality. Entirely reliant on Britain for equipment and supplies, it had no worthwhile air or sea defences, and was incapable of land operations above company strength. Its operational capacity gradually grew, while military intelligence performed vital counterespionage and security tasks. After the war the army, cut to under 10,000 men, reverted initially to its dispiriting pre‐war condition, confirmed by Ireland's refusal to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1958, however, Ireland made its first military contribution to United Nations operations. These became a mainstay of army life: at any one time up to 10 per cent of strength may be serving abroad on peacekeeping, observer, and humanitarian duties. After 1969 the Northern Ireland conflict caused a revitalization. Numbers doubled to about 14,000, and modern infantry equipment and patrol vehicles were provided for border security. Other signs of modernization include the enlistment of women, and the recognition of representative associations for officers and men. External defence policy, however, remains rooted in neutralist rhetoric. Political exigencies make it unlikely that the army will ever be able to close many of the barracks it needlessly occupies, or to eschew the debilitating secondary tasks routinely thrust upon it by government. Despite the commitment and professionalism of its members, the army in independent Ireland remains what it always has been, an under‐equipped infantry force just large enough to meet any likely internal security threat and to perpeuate the public illusion that the state is seriously committed to independent external defence.

See also Foreign Armies, Irish in; Militia; Warfare; Yeomanry.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Thomas, and Jeffery, Keith (eds.), A military History of Ireland (1996)
Falls, Cyril , Elizabeth's Irish Wars (1950)

RFF,/HM,/SC,/NG,/KJ,/EO,/ and Robin Frame