All language subtitles for the.story.of.ireland.1e02.dvdrip.x264-HI

FERGAL KEANE: The Irish are a people
forged from many migrations.

From earliest times, the sea has
carried waves of newcomers to Ireland -

Stone-Age hunter-gatherers,
Christian missionaries, Viking warriors.

Each has been successfully absorbed.

But in the middle of the 12th century,

Ireland will face an invasion
unlike anything seen before.

It will set in motion one of
the longest conflicts in human history...

...in which land and faith
will divide the nations.

The destinies of Ireland and Britain will
be changed by what begins 800 years ago.

Ireland stands on the verge
of the age of conquest.

Ripped By mstoll

"Kings fought and the ground trembled."

So did the Annals Of The Four Masters

describe the Ireland of
the early 12th century.

It was a land of farmers
ruled by clan chieftains

who in turn paid homage
to five provincial kings.

There was a High King of Ireland,

but he had only limited power.

But in the hands of
a man ruthless and cunning enough

to crush his political enemies,

this High Kingship could mean
something unprecedented in Irish history -

a land ruled from the centre
by one powerful figure,

the beginnings
of a united political entity.

It takes a ruthless man
for ruthless times.

Dermot MacMurrough was King of Leinster,
an area of fertile land

strategically close to the country's
great urban settlement at Dublin.

It was said of Dermot that he preferred
to be feared rather than loved,

and he probably would have agreed.

Those who stood in his way were either
killed or they were ritually blinded

and castrated
so they wouldn't produce any heirs.

Here on the site of a 12th-century abbey,

Dermot displayed
his characteristic ruthlessness.

The abbeys were important symbols
of kingly power,

so in 1132, when a rival dynasty appointed
their woman as Abbess of Kildare,

Dermot was furious.

MAN: He, as King of Leinster, wanted
control of this very important office.

So he attacked and plundered Kildare

and, as the Annals say,

he had the Abbess of Kildare,

the most important female
in the entire Irish Church,

put into a soldier's bed and raped to
disqualify her from the office she held.

Ireland found that shocking.

Certainly, the annalists' report indicate

a certain degree of shock
at this kind of thing.

By the middle of the 12th century,

Dermot had managed to make enemies
of most of the provincial kings

and when he abducted the wife of
one of them, they united against him.

Dermot knew his likely fate.

As a child, he'd seen his father
murdered and buried with a dead dog,

a humiliating mark of disrespect.

Dermot lost his throne and his lands,
but he fled in time to save his life.

And that fleetness of foot would
alter the course of Irish history.

Irish kings had often made alliances with
warriors on the west coast of Britain,

but none of these could offer
the kind of help

Dermot now sought to reclaim his throne.

The fugitive king sailed boldly further,

to the heart of Western Europe's
mightiest empire.

In the traditional
telling of the Irish story,

Dermot is seen as the father figure
for generations of traitors,

the man who callously sold out
his country to the English,

but it simply wasn't like that.
In reality, Dermot was doing

what any desperate or ambitious chieftain
would have done -

seeking the help of somebody
more powerful.

The crucial difference was
that the people he went to

were the most organised
military power in the medieval West.

These were the lands of the Normans.

By 1160, the Norman empire extended
from the Mediterranean to Britain.

Here they'd imposed
a rigid system - feudalism -

where power flowed
from the King to his nobles.

MAN: The Normans are driven by wealth,

honour, reputation, prestige
and the acquisition of land.

FERGAL: And military prowess
is key to their identity.

It's key to identity
and, of course, also to success.

The Normans were superior
in that they possessed cavalry

and were capable of large-scale,
co-ordinated military operations.

The Norman King Henry II would now
be wooed by Dermot MacMurrough.

Henry was the great-grandson
of William the Conqueror.

Although he often kept his court at
Anjou in France, he was King of England.

Henry had contemplated attacking Ireland

long before Dermot came
to his French court in 1166.

Henry II was more than a match
in political cunning

for the Irishman
who now came seeking his help.

In what history might call
the first ever Anglo-Irish summit,

the rough king from the western fringes of
Christendom met Henry at his court.

A Norman poem described
the explicitly feudal nature

of the contract between the two.

Dermot addresses Henry -

"Henceforth, all the days of my life

"On condition that you be my helper
So that I do not lose everything

"You I shall acknowledge
as Sire and Lord."

What Dermot means is, "I will give
you land, if you give me an army."

This suits a king with
restless, land-hungry knights

and who cleaves
to that great alibi of conquerors -

the belief that he has a
civilising mission. This will become

an enduring theme
of England's actions in Ireland.

(BELL TOLLS)

A decade earlier, when he'd first
thought about invading Ireland,

Henry had sought the support
of a higher power.

Ireland is linked to Europe
not only by trade,

but by that most central
of medieval realities, religion.

The Pope isn't just spiritual
master of Christendom.

He's a temporal power broker as well.

If he lends his support to an invasion,

then Irish chiefs are obliged
to offer their allegiance

to the man who carries his blessing.

Pope Adrian IVhad his own agenda.

The Irish Church had become
worryingly independent.

Granting permission for an invasion,
the Pope told King Henry

that in order to enlarge
the borders of the Church

and set bounds to
the progress of wickedness,

he should take possession of that island.

Henry promised to levy an annual tax
of a penny per hearth in Ireland.

The money would be sent to Rome.

This is a period of spectacular
upheaval across Europe.

Indeed. This is the time of the Crusades,
it is the time of the wars against Islam,

but it is also the time of the expansion

of Western Christendom
into what we call Eastern Europe,

into other parts of the British Isles,
into the Iberian Peninsula.

So the Irish are just one of
a number of people

- seen as barbaric and ripe for conquest?
- Absolutely.

With Henry's backing, Dermot now recruited
an Anglo-Norman baron from Wales

to lead the invasion -

Richard de Clare, known to friends
and enemies as Strongbow.

Strongbow was a man
of restless energy and ambition.

And in front of this knight,
Dermot dangled a tantalising prospect -

lush acres of Irish land
and his daughter's hand in marriage.

On 23rd of August 1170, an Anglo-Norman
force led by a friend of Strongbow's

arrived here in County Wexford.

They were used to raiders
along this coast,

so when the Irish looked out
and saw the Norman vessel,

they could have been forgiven for thinking
this was just another passing incursion.

But a new history was about
to come bearing in from the sea.

The contemporary accounts tell us
the Irish ran naked into battle

against the English. They lacked armour.

They were literally

throwing stones at these
Anglo-Norman knights.

The battle was a savage encounter.

The invaders hacked and cleaved
their way through the Irish.

In one refinement of the art of murder,

they broke people's legs
before hurling them into the sea.

They had one notable killer who went
by the name of Alice the Vicious.

She's said to have killed 70 men
in revenge for the death of her lover.

This was the same Norman ferocity that
had routed the Arab defenders of Sicily

and the warriors of Harold's England
a century before.

It was ferocity with a message -
submit or be annihilated.

When Strongbow stormed the city of
Waterford, the defenders were overwhelmed.

And the victor moved to claim
the first part of his Irish bargain.

Surrounded by the Irish dead
and in the smoking ruins of a church,

the priest in Daniel Maclise's
19th-century painting

blesses the union of Strongbow
and Dermot's daughter Aoife.

Irish nationalists would cast this

as the beginning of 800 years
of English oppression.

This painting is one of
those great examples

of how both sides in the Irish story
can look at a representation

of an historic event and take from it
totally different meanings.

Nationalists see this as
a moving evocation of their subjugation -

the forced marriage
of Ireland and England.

But the painter was a Cork-born Unionist
who represented a complex Irishness.

He felt a deep attachment
to an ancient Gaelic past,

but also to the British Empire.

Of course, what really matters
is how Strongbow saw things.

And for him and the rest of
the Anglo-Irish knights,

this was the beginning
of a great land grab.

Dermot died soon after, before
he could enjoy the fruits of victory,

and he was succeeded
as King of Leinster by Strongbow.

Here begins a great theme
of Ireland's story -

the fear of English monarchs that Ireland
will be used as a base to attack them.

For King Henry had never trusted Strongbow

and now feared he would set up
a stronghold in Ireland.

In 1171, Henry brought
a large army to Ireland

and received Strongbow's submission,

but he also confronted the Gaelic chiefs.

When Henry lands with his army,
his archers, his horsemen,

it's a pretty formidable sight

for the Irish chiefs
and they're faced a dilemma -

do you resist this man
or do you make peace?

What is the choice
they eventually make?

For about four years,
Irish kings were suffering

and their lands were literally being taken
from them by Anglo-Norman barons

who they considered to be freebooters.

They looked at Henry's arrival
and they considered him to be, perhaps,

a stabilising force.

The Irish kings welcomed
Henry II to Ireland.

We didn't hear too much about that
when I was learning my history

as a youngster in national school.

No, we didn't. But again,
it was considered by them, I think,

as the better of two options.

They accepted
the English King as their lord

and feasted with him on
a Norman dish they hated - roast crane,

the culinary symbol
of Irish submission.

(BELL TOLLS)

Henry left Ireland the following year...

...but the legacy of the conquest
he launched can be seen here

in this unique 14th-century
charter of Waterford.

What does this extraordinary
series of documents tell us

about the Irish relationship
with the English crown?

SE�N: This great charter roll of Waterford
could have come from an English city.

The earliest contemporary portraits
of a King of England that still survive

are here in Waterford, a city that
is anxious to impress the King

and protest their loyalty to him.

It is, for all intents and purposes,
an English city.

Over the next 50 years,

the Anglo-Normans established power bases
in the main population centres

and, crucially, they moved to set up great
estates on the best land in the country.

Ireland was about to be transformed.

Historically, we've tended
to curse the English a great deal,

but the Normans did quite a bit for us,
didn't they?

If you look around Ireland today,

the most characteristically
Irish traits are English.

Our parliamentary system was brought
to Ireland by the Anglo-Normans.

The system of law that we have
is the English common law system.

And, of course, the language
that has produced

most of the great writers of Ireland -
Joyce and Yeats -

is the English language.

The division of the country
into 32 counties,

that process began within about
20 years of the Anglo-Normans.

When we look around
the countryside in Ireland,

we think of fields and hedges -

almost non-existent in Ireland
before the 12th century.

Your classical image of rural Ireland
is actually a product

of the arrival of the English
in the 12th century.

The Normans embraced a Roman tradition
which saw conquered races as barbarians.

It would become a recurring theme
of how the colonists described the Irish.

In the English telling of the Irish story,
a stock figure starts to emerge -

wild, violent, a buffoon. A creature
not of intellect, but of instinct.

Now, of course, colonised peoples
are referred to in this way

in the language of the conqueror
across the globe.

But in Ireland,
the roots of this stereotype

lie in the writings
of a man who came here

not as a soldier,
but on a spiritual mission.

The 12th-century priest and chronicler
Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales,

profiled the Irish in his
Topographia Hibernica.

MAN: Seated on the throne, he's the
classic boring churchman - canon lawyer,

great advocate of celibacy, lover of the
Pope, lover of the rich, well-connected.

What he does is produce this remarkable
book with maps, with drawings

and accounts of the Ireland
that he found at that time.

THOMAS: And he says, "My book is a mixture

"of reading books and eye witness
and therefore has the surety of truth."

Of course, just because he says he went
to Ireland and saw lots of things

doesn't mean he hadn't an agenda.

FERGAL: One of the drawings in here
is of a woman having sex with a goat.

And it's full of attempts to portray
the Irish as barbarous,

pernicious, as he puts it himself,

- "wallowing in vice".
- Yes.

Here you have a group of men
taking part in a kingship ritual.

THOMAS: He doesn't see this
as an ancient ritual.

This ritual was first described
400 years before this book was produced.

- Ritual slaughter...
- Ritual slaughter of a horse.

But he sees this as an example
of how they are lawless,

they are outside the sphere of Roman law.

They have never had the benefits
of the Roman Empire,

so they're doing the wildest and most
bizarre things you could imagine.

This is a medieval precursor
to imperialism

and the justifications
which one had for imperialism.

The same rhetoric of looking at the
unusual behaviour and the unusual rituals

of anthropologists in India
in the 19th century

that same attitude can be found here.

200 years into the conquest
and the colony is unfinished.

Beyond the towns,
the Anglo-Normans hold no sway.

The Irish raid and retreat
into the mountains.

The Gaelic chiefs saw in the buildings of
the Normans the mark of permanence.

The colonists had thrown their world -

pastoralist, based on
the loyalties of clan - into retreat.

A stone curtain separated
English from native.

The old aristocracy
seethed with resentment.

The Irish chieftains decide to launch
Ireland's first diplomatic mission,

appealing for help to the most
powerful figure in Christendom.

As it was a pope who'd first given legal
sanction for the invasion of Ireland,

it was to Rome
that the Irish chiefs now complained

about their unjust treatment
at the hands of the colonists.

Written in 1317,

their document is known as
the Remonstrance Of The Princes.

Tell me what we see in this document.

MAN: This is the worst picture
of English rule since the invasion.

FERGAL: Not a document that minces words.

MAN: It certainly isn't.

It talks about how the Irish are savaged
by the vicious teeth of the English

and have fallen into an abyss of slavery.
It's very, very vivid imagery.

There's one particularly gruesome
example where Thomas de Clare

has had a banquet with
one of the Gaelic rulers

and at the end of the banquet,

he is taken from the table
and his head is amputated.

- FERGAL: "Amputato quoque capite".
- PETER: Exactly.

And this is being sent to the Pope. "This
is what the English are doing to us."

Yeah.

But Irish complaints
were of little matter in Rome.

The Pope passed the document
to King Edward II, who did nothing.

The simple truth was that English kings,
mired in struggles of their own,

were little bothered with Ireland.

English influence remained strong

in the fertile area
around Dublin and North Leinster,

lands they called The Pale,
until, as would happen so often,

the stories of other places
collided with that of Ireland.

The first was war.
A Scottish army fighting the English

opened a new front here in Ireland.
But the worst disaster of all

arrived here at the port of Howth
in July 1348.

The Black Plague ravaged
the towns and ports

where the Anglo-Normans were strongest.

A witness described how the disease

would carry off a man,
his wife and their children

all, as he put it,
in the common way of death.

Many of the English lords began
to abandon their castles and lands

and fled back to England.

Others had their property forcibly taken

as the Gaelic lords
exploited English weakness.

What we see in this period
is a resurgent Gaelic chiefdom.

People are coming back, taking lands
abandoned by the Anglo-Norman overlords,

but it seems like
a real cultural renaissance

of a people who feel
confident in themselves again.

What we see is a regrouping.

From 1150, we have basically no Irish
manuscripts, no Gaelic manuscripts.

But from 1350, we have
a large number of very well-decorated,

beautifully put together manuscripts.

It does seem to be a century during which
the Gaelic aristocracy

and Gaelic learned classes
are trying to find new ways

of asserting their
cultural distinctiveness.

(IN GAELIC)

Why in this period does poetry
assume such importance?

In the unstable political climate
of Ireland at this time,

art or gold work or tapestry
might not be such a good investment,

but in terms of securing your status,
securing your fame,

a poem can travel across the entire
Gaelic world from Kerry to the Hebrides.

When O'Neill comes to London,
someone observes with distaste

that his poets are sitting with him at the
same table and eating from the same dish.

We get these glimpses,
sometimes, of Gaelic custom

and the high status
accorded to the poet.

As Gaelic Ireland revives,
the English colony retreats.

There are a few military expeditions
by the Crown

and an attempt to separate
English and Irish by law,

but Ireland simply
isn't a strategic priority

until, near the end of the 15th century,
the Crown is given a rude awakening.

After years of civil war in England,

two different pretenders
to the throne attack from Ireland,

supported by Irish lords.

In their castles,
the lords were local emperors.

There was no strong central government
to contain them.

London might as well have been the moon

for all the real influence
the monarch could bring to bear.

The great Anglo-Norman families
had symbolised English power,

but now they could make alliances
with Gaelic chiefs.

Over three centuries,
they'd become, if not entirely Irish,

certainly no longer truly English.

This is an unsettled land
where warlords squabble

and London's writ does not run.

But the ascent to the throne
of a new king in 1509

will bring about the most concerted
attempt yet to subdue the Irish lords.

Henry VIII will come
to see these free-roving lords

as a threat to his power

and men who need to be taught a lesson.

Henry sought to create
the state ruled by a single king

that had eluded Brian Boru
and Dermot MacMurrough -

the first ever united Ireland,

but under the control of
an English king and his officials.

Under the centralising rule of the Tudors,

Ireland will no longer
be a wild colonial fringe

where Old English and Gaelic lords
rule themselves.

Here is an English administration coming
along saying, "We'll tidy this up for you.

"We will impose a legal framework
in which your position

"will not be threatened at all. You'll
continue to be local, regional boss.

"You'll continue to have this wealth
that you treasure so much,

"but we'll do this by legal means."

But such promises fail to impress
the powerful FitzGeralds,

the Old English lords of Kildare.

They'd been the King's
representatives in Ireland.

Now they saw their power slipping away.

In 1534, they rebelled.

Just as he had done with
the troublesome lords in England,

Henry crushed them ruthlessly.

As the Tower of London beckoned
to any troublesome nobles,

Henry declared himself King of Ireland.

But Henry would never settle
his Irish problem

for at home, he was moving towards
a fateful entanglement.

Henry's enduring legacy to Ireland
was forged in the chambers of his court.

There, a domestic imperative
propelled him into action

that would profoundly change the way
the Irish and the English saw each other.

(BELL TOLLS)

Henry had failed to obtain a male heir
from his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

In 1533, he disobeyed the Pope

by divorcing Catherine
and marrying Anne Boleyn.

Henry created the Church of England
with himself at its head.

In this manner, England joined
the great European Reformation,

the Protestant revolution which was
already challenging Church corruption,

doctrine and the power of the papacy.

Henry imposed his new church
on a reluctant English clergy

through terror
and the seizing of church lands.

But in Ireland he lacked
a standing army

that could enforce observance
of the new faith.

And so Ireland remained Catholic.

Henry's unfinished business here
left a dangerous legacy

in a Europe where religion
was becoming a battleground.

MAN: Political loyalty and religious
loyalty were increasingly seen as equal,

one to the other.

Where you had communities that were
divided on grounds of religion,

you almost invariably had civil conflict.

So, the diversity in religion meant
a challenge to the authority of monarchs.

In Europe, the Pope led a powerful
movement against the Reformation.

Religious orders like the Jesuits
enforced a new militant Catholicism.

In Spain, the inquisitions
crushed the Protestant faith

and it was sent into retreat
across much of the rest of Europe.

Even in England,
the Reformation was overthrown

as Henry's Catholic daughter Mary
succeeded to the throne.

In the terror that followed,
Mary's Protestant sister Elizabeth

saw hundreds
of her co-religionists killed.

Elizabeth and her supporters
remembered that terror

when she became queen in 1558.

They saw Catholicism as being the ogre

which was always threatening
the liberties of Protestantism.

This was represented
by the tyranny of Spain,

which had threatened
the invasion of England itself.

FERGAL: At forts like this
on the Kent coast,

her soldiers scanned the horizon
for the foreign invasion fleets.

But they were not the only threat,

because to the west lay Catholic Ireland.

NICHOLAS: There are an increasing number
of young people from Ireland

who have been trained in continental
seminaries and returned to Ireland

imbued with the zeal
of the Catholic Counter-Reformation,

intent on resisting the advancement
of Protestantism within the country.

The Queen does not launch
a Protestant crusade in Ireland

for she is no religious zealot.

Above all, Elizabeth demands security

so she dispatches a new breed
of soldiers and officials,

the Elizabethan adventurers.

The English adventurers who arrive here,
how do they view the Irish?

MAN: Well, they leave The Pale
and they go out into the Gaelic interior

and in Gaelic Ireland
they see people who live

in a fashion which is completely opposite
to the way things operate in England.

They don't live a settled lifestyle.

They are a pastoral people
who follow the herds.

Ireland is a heavily wooded landscape.

The Irish are seen
as being wood people.

They come out of the woods
to attack you at night time,

to burn your tent,
to steal your livestock,

to steal your women.

They can disappear.
They can see you, but you can't see them.

They're seen as a menace.

They're seen as enemies of order.

As the adventurers seized land
and curtailed private armies,

the great lords, Gaelic and English,
faced a dilemma -

to rebel or work with the English.

Some like the Gaelic Hugh O'Neill
went with the Crown,

but in Munster
the Anglo-Norman Desmonds rebelled.

Elizabeth I fears the Irish
rebel lords and chieftains

linking up with England's foreign enemies.
And it isn't a totally unrealistic fear.

The rebels send a petition to Philip II
in Spain and to the Pope in Rome.

The rebels are not seriously
motivated by religion,

but religion is a bridge to Europe.

It's a bridge to finance,
it's a bridge to money and weapons

and an invasion force.

Elizabeth's forces launched
a policy of scorched earth.

One of the most notorious English
commanders was Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

The record says he killed
man, woman and child.

He spoiled, wasted and burned...

so that he might leave nothing
of the enemy's in safety

which he might possibly
waste or consume.

The age of total war
had arrived in Ireland.

Gilbert also ordered
the decapitation of entire villages

and decorated the path to his tent
with heads.

Relatives of his victims would be
made to walk along the path.

He boasted later that the sight
of the heads of their dead fathers,

brothers, children, kinsfolk
and friends brought great terror.

They're also interested, of course,
in head money.

How do you collect
the reward on a dead rebel?

You chop off their head, right?
So, you have bags of heads being sent

from some part of Ireland to Dublin
where they are exhibited,

which adds to the horror
of the Elizabethan wars.

Bu this wasn't simply a matter
of the Irish fighting the invaders.

Some Irish lords helped the Crown
to protect their own power.

Here at the National Archives in London
is an Elizabethan document

detailing how one Irish lord behaved.

This is an extraordinary document

because it brings, in a very real sense,
that age of atrocity to life.

You can look back
at Irish history in this period

and thousands of people seem
to vanish into anonymous massacres

and battles. What you get here -

list after list of names.

They're Gaelic names -
Ovren, Mac Carthaigh.

A total of over 5,000 names.

And they are killed by the army of
another Irishman - the Earl of Ormond.

This butcher's bill he sends to London

to convince an English queen
that he is loyal to the Crown.

For Elizabeth, Irish loyalty would become
an increasingly urgent question

as the religious crisis
in Europe escalated.

In Paris in 1572 came an event that
would define for Protestants

the terror of the Counter-Reformation.

Here on the morning of August 24th,
the Feast of St Bartholomew,

the bells of this church,
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, rang out.

Not in celebration,
but as a signal for killing to begin.

Catholic death squads fanned out across
the city targeting Protestants

in the worst religious massacres
Europe had ever known.

Thousands were butchered.

(SCREAMING)

Amid such confusion,
an eyewitness reported,

everyone was allowed
to kill whoever he pleased.

The bodies were hurled
into the River Seine,

whose waters ran red
with the blood of the murdered.

In Rome, the Pope ordered bonfires lit
and the singing of the Te Deum

in celebration for "this glorious
triumph over a perfidious race".

In Protestant England, there was alarm.

French refugees from the Catholic violence
flooded into the East End of London

bringing with them tales of atrocity.

In the minds of the English
Protestant Establishment

there loomed the question -
would England be next?

English fears were confirmed
when the Desmonds rebelled again

and succeeded in getting papal help.

In 1579, a fleet of papal troops
landed in County Kerry

to aid the Munster rebels.

Part of the small force
would find itself besieged here

at Carrigafoyle Castle in North Kerry.

An Italian captain, 16 Spaniards
and 50 Irish defended this castle.

They were attacked by
an Elizabethan force with heavy guns

and after three days,
the defences were breached.

It was said that
in the fighting that followed,

these walls were slippery with blood.

What happens at Carrigafoyle
and in other massacres

foreshadows a new kind
of European warfare...

where the tactics of massacre, starvation,

of salutary terror
are becoming widespread.

It also helps to convince Elizabeth

of the need for a durable solution
to her Irish problem.

Elizabeth's is an age of turbulent energy.

In literature, science...

...in exploration
and the hunger for new lands.

Great empires are forming -
Spanish and English.

Like the very first invader, Henry II,

Elizabeth imagines Ireland
being civilised by Englishmen.

A place where "No dainty flower
or herb that grows on ground

"No arboret with painted blossoms drest

"And smelling sweet
but there it might be found."

The landscape of Ireland was about
to undergo profound change.

The axes of the Elizabethans
echoed through the great forests

as they cleared away the hiding places of
rebels and made space for plantation.

(WOOD CREAKS)

The idea was to create
an English garden in wild Ireland.

Among those given estates were a young
adventurer called Sir Walter Raleigh...

and his friend, the poet Edmund Spenser.

In his most famous poem,
The Faerie Queene, Spenser wrote,

"Who will not mercy unto others show
How can he mercy ever hope to have?"

But mercy was noticeably absent
in Spenser's role as apologist

for Elizabethan policy in Ireland.

Spenser had been present at massacres
and defended his commander,

the Lord Deputy of Ireland,

against charges
that he was a bloody man.

His loyalty was rewarded
with a forfeited estate.

Spenser's friend Walter Raleigh
was also granted 40,000 acres of land

around the Blackwater Valley.

And from this house
in the town of Youghal,

he would set forth
on his adventures in the New World.

Raleigh and Spenser epitomised
the contradictions

of Elizabeth's
adventure in Ireland.

Raleigh was an enthusiastic killer
of rebels, yet here in this room

he would sit with Spenser and discuss
the finer points of English verse.

Both men were willing to see
people subjected to famine

in order to clear the land.

And they rationalised it all
with the belief

that they had come to Ireland
on a civilising mission.

DAVID EDWARDS: Spenser sees his role as...

...advocate of hard measures
to ensure the victory

of English civilisation in Ireland.

He views the Irish as people
who need serious correction.

Some 30,000 Irish lost their lives,
many to famine.

By the late 1580s,
25 years after she had come to power,

Elizabeth had subdued the Irish
in Munster, Leinster and Connacht.

The leaders were dead or in hiding,
the people destitute.

But there was one great obstacle
to English domination in Ireland

and it lay far to the north in a province
that would become synonymous

with the conflict between the two islands.

This is Tullaghoge,
the Hill of the Warriors,

seat of the O'Neills,

lords of the ancient province of Ulster.

Ulster was the most Gaelic
of the Irish provinces

and was the stronghold
of Hugh O'Neill.

Hugh O'Neill is one of
the most fascinating figures

in the story of Ireland.

He embodied the complexities
of an age of dramatic change.

O'Neill could be a ruthless killer,
a wily charmer

and a master of the art of compromise,

whatever the situation demanded.

The imperative for O'Neill was
to protect the power of his family.

Constantly manoeuvring, he rode alongside
English adventurers against Irish chiefs

and was rewarded
with the Earldom of Tyrone.

He was a man who did his best
to fit in with the English system.

For much of his career, the odds were on
going with the Elizabethan project

of the extension of English laws,
English systems of administration

and English systems of land-holding.

The difficulty is that once
you commit to this English deal,

you make enemies.

And those enemies will increasingly
come from the ranks of the adventurers,

envious of his position and lands.

O'Neill is caught
in a rapidly changing world.

The English, with whom
he'd tried to make a deal,

are advancing inexorably.

And so he makes a momentous decision.

No longer will the Earl of Tyrone
be an enforcer for the Crown.

He will turn against Elizabeth.

In 1595, O'Neill allied himself with
the powerful chieftain Red Hugh O'Donnell

and prepared for war.

Trained in the English ways of warfare
and bolstered by Spanish advisers,

O'Neill begins to push back
the English forces from Ulster.

At the Battle of the Yellow Ford
in August 1598,

viewing the well-armed English,
O'Neill told his men

that victory lay "not in senseless armour,
but in courageous souls".

900 English are killed

and the same number desert.

As the war ground on, a furious
Elizabeth rounded on her commander

for his failure to stop O'Neill.

"It must be the Queen of England's
fortune,"she declared,

"to make a base cur to be accounted
so famous a rebel.

"Little do you know how he hath blazed in
foreign parts the defeats of regiments,

"the death of captains
and the loss of men of quality."

O'Neill's victory sparked rebellions
elsewhere in Ireland.

Far to the south, lands recently
planted and tamed rose again.

Here in Munster,
rebels descend from the woods.

Farms are burned, the English planters are
taken by surprise and many are butchered.

In Munster, the attempt
to make the land civil,

according to English ways, is overthrown.

Among the English refugees fleeing
Ireland is the poet Edmund Spenser.

As Ireland moved towards
a defining confrontation,

O'Neill sought to rally both the Gaelic
chiefs and the Old English to his banner.

(BELL TOLLS)

Hugh O'Neill sought a unifying cause,

but how was he going to achieve that

in a country where lords squabbled
and provinces were disunited?

He turned to the one unifying symbol in
all the existing varieties of Irishness -

the Catholic religion.

From now on, Hugh O'Neill's struggle
for power against the English

would be characterised as a battle
for faith and fatherland.

"I will employ myself to the utmost
of my power,"he wrote,

"for the extirpation of heresy...

"...for the delivery of our country
from infinite murders,

"wicked and detestable policies."

The English regarded
O'Neill's militant piety

as a cynical ploy.

When the Earl of Essex met him
during peace negotiations,

he remarked, "Hang thee up. Thou carest
as much for religion as my horse."

But O'Neill had made
an extraordinary connection,

one that would resonate
through Irish history...

...between religion and Irish identity.

(PAPAL BLESSING)

Pope Clement VIII declared O'Neill

Captain-General of the Catholic Army
in Ireland.

Cast as the Irish David
fighting an English Goliath,

O'Neill asked King Philip of Spain
for help.

The Spanish could see the value in tying
down a large English force in Ireland.

But Philip would prove a cautious ally.

He instructed his secretary to

"see what is the very smallest aid
that will be needed.

"If it be so small that we can give it,
we will help them."

On the morning
of September 21 st 1601,

a Spanish fleet of 33 ships.
Carrying 4,500 soldiers,

appeared here off the coast of Cork,

bearing down on the town of Kinsale.

But from the beginning, the expedition
was dogged by bad luck.

The army they'd come to meet
was waiting far to the north, in Ulster.

The Spanish had landed
in the wrong part of Ireland.

As the forces of the English Lord Mountjoy
massed at Kinsale,

O'Neill and O'Donnell made an epic march
through the Irish winter.

The English had by now massed
around 6,000 troops at Kinsale.

They besieged the Spanish and waited
months in horrendous conditions

for the Irish to arrive.

The phrase "turning point"
is one that swirls promiscuously

through Irish history,

usually summoned up by one side
or the other to make a political point.

But Irish and English,
Catholic and Protestant, all agree

that what happens here at Kinsale

will alter the balance of power
in Ireland for ever.

(BIRDSONG)

(POUNDING OF DRUM)

By dawn on Christmas Eve 1601,
the two sides are ready for battle.

The Spanish and Irish have amassed
a force of 9,500 men

against an English army weakened
by disease to around 6,000.

Hardened by relentless war,
the Irish are tough fighters.

When he sees the Irish,
the English commander Mountjoy says,

"The kingdom is lost."

The gravity of the situation
is very clear to him.

He realises that defeat beckons unless
some... almost a miracle can happen.

(POUNDING OF DRUM)

(FIFE PLAYS)

But O'Donnell, who had marched
separately from O'Neill,

became lost and failed
to make his rendezvous.

According to the Spanish, there was
a catalogue of tactical blunders.

O'Donnell alerted the English
with a loud call to arms.

In the confusion,
O'Neill left his hill-top position

and went to open ground
where his men were more vulnerable.

On seeing the hill unoccupied,
a Spanish witness said,

"The enemy closed up on to it.
He grasped his opportunity."

(NOISE OF BATTLE)

The English cavalry now charged
downhill at O'Neill's men.

DAMIAN: The Irish were fighting
in open ground

against English cavalry
that had the run of the field.

The Irish had never really been
in that situation before.

But what it essentially comes down to,
at the end of the day,

is that the English had stirrups.

The fact that the English solders
had stirrups

meant they could drive home
a charge with a lance

because a stirrup takes the shock,

you don't get knocked
off the back of the horse.

Whereas the Irish had shorter horses.
They carried their lances over arm.

But although it gave them
extra manoeuvrability,

it meant they couldn't charge
another body of horse.

- The fate of Ireland hung on a stirrup?
- More or less, yes.

According to the Spanish eyewitness,
800 men were killed in the rout.

Most of the Irish survivors made for
Ulster while the Spanish sailed home.

DAMIAN: The Irish should have won the
Battle of Kinsale. There is no question.

But they don't -
circumstances go against them -

and the entire course of Irish history
is altered as a result.

FERGAL: For the Spanish,
Kinsale was a military fiasco

and they would never intervene
in Ireland again.

The English saved their colony,
but the war was ruinously expensive.

It almost bankrupted the Crown.

But for the Gaelic lords, Kinsale was the
moment that broke their power for ever.

Mountjoy laid waste
to O'Neill's lands in Ulster.

Mountjoy understood well
the power of symbols in Ireland

and when he arrived here at Tullaghoge,
the Hill of the Warriors,

he first ordered his troops to lay waste
to the surrounding countryside.

They then came here
and shattered the stone

upon which generations
of the O'Neills had been crowned.

Hugh O'Neill surrendered and was allowed
to keep his title and some of his land.

But he knew as well as his enemies did

that his real power had been destroyed.

On the 14th of December 1607,

O'Neill and O'Donnell and their families
left Ulster for Europe.

The peasants over whom they'd ruled were
left to make their peace with new masters.

Hugh O'Neill died in exile in Rome
nine years later,

still dreaming of leading an invasion
of his homeland.

For the English, the rebellion had proved

that a Catholic Ireland
would always be a threat.

The flight of the earls is one of the most
romanticised images in Irish history,

but now that they were gone, the question
was, what would replace them?

If Ireland couldn't be made loyal,
an entire order would be transplanted here

that was Protestant, loyal to
the British Crown and determined to stay.

The death of the old order
would give birth to a new age of conflict

whose consequences we live with still.

Ripped By mstoll