“But they all had reckoned without the tenacity of King Eamonn, the loyalty of his retainers, and the pugnacity of the folk of Lagan. Betwixt the midnight and the dawn, Eamonn sallied forth at the head of his picked garrison, and whilst the Flemings were fighting and dying to protect their camp and trains and guns from the one, clear menace, a strong force of knights and mounted gallowglasses, supported by a host of archers and armed peasants, took them in the rear and on the flanks, looted and burned their camp, and made away with vast quantities of equipment, food, gunpowder, wheeled transport, and draft animals, and an assortment of weapons, including a dozen demiculverins and sakers. Out of the eight bombards, five were dismounted and the other three deliberately overcharged and so destroyed.
“With the dawning, the badly mauled condotta sagaciously withdrew from Lagan, harried at flanks and rear by King Eamonn’s victorious followers. In Lagan, they left seven out of eight bombards and most of the smaller pieces as well,
plus everything they could not carry on their backs or behind their saddles, those who still had mounts. It is attested that Archbishop Mustapha rode into Dublin in an embroidered nightshirt and a lancer’s travelcloak, all his clothing having been either looted or burned along with his pavilion.”
“I would imagine,” remarked Foster dryly, “that His Grace was not in the best of moods just then. So what was his next move?”
De Burgh chuckled. “He appealed to Tara, of course, but the war in Munster was continuing to drag on and Tara’s only support could be simply moral. The High King sympathized, of course, but . . .” The descendant of Norman reavers spread his hands and shrugged in a typically Gallic gesture.
Foster, too, smiled. “His High Holiness felt for the put-upon cleric, but he couldn’t quite reach him, eh?”
De Burgh nodded. “Well and succinctly put, mein Heir Markgraf. While men may put their gold on the larger dog to win, still will they cheer the shrewd nip of the smaller, through sheer admiration of courage in the face of odds. Had the High King had troops to spare in the beginning, he would have personally seen to the crushing of King Eamonn and deliverance of his lands and all to the Church, for he then was most wroth at Eamonn. But when Lagan and its king proceeded to accomplish the impossible, to defeat and throw back in utter confusion several times their numbers of seasoned, professional troops, such valor bought for them the admiration of all true Irishmen. The Archbishop, who always has been a proud, arrogant, stiff-necked, and usually difficult man, was rendered a laughingstock, the butt of many a cruel jest or jibe or scurrilous song or ribald rhyme. Such was his disgrace that he saw fit to leave Ireland within a bare month of his military debacle in Lagan.”
De Burgh paused in his narrative to take a long pull from his jack of Rhenish wine, sighed gustily, then went on. “And all Ireland thought we’d seen and heard the last of that particular squabble and affairs returned to about normal.
“Eamonn had two of the captured great bombards mounted at previously vulnerable points on his castle walls and sold the other three, their carriages and accessories to King Colm XVI of Ailech—which went a long way toward covering his debts for that abortive Crusade. However, the agents of the Church, in Dublin, upon accepting the gold he proffered them, noted that when once the original loan was paid off and its interests and penalties, he still would owe the costs of hiring the Flemings, the cost of their transport, bloodprices for all mercenaries slain or wounded, the full values of all weapons and equipment burned or looted under his walls or anywhere within the lands of Lagan . . . and so on; the list was long.
“King Eamonn had as much pride as any other gentleman, and the agents of the Church were supercilious and openly insulting to him. Moreover, it is unheard of in Ireland for a defeated party to try to dictate terms of reparation, and with the sure knowledge that public opinion already weighed heavily in his favor, Eamonn made certain that attested copies of the demands of the Church were widely circulated.