4.30 Europe: a.d. 1601 to 1700  (Page 21/30)

Ireland

At the end of this section in the last chapter we described the encirclement of 4,000 Spanish troops sent to help the Irish in their rebellion. In the final battle of 1601 the Irish and Spanish lost to the English Lord Mountjoy. The Irish O'Neill with 100 other chieftains and a thousand followers then went into exile on the continent. James and Charles I of England continued the oppression of Ireland, crushing rebellion af ter rebellion and giving land progressively to Protestants at the expense of Catholics. It even became illegal for Catholics to buy land, although most of the Irish remained with their faith, anyway. Caught up in the religious and civil wars of England, in 1641 the Ulster Irish rose, scattering thousands of colonists. In 1646 Irish Catholics beat the English at Blackwater River, but victory was short lived. After Oliver Cromwell defeated and beheaded Charles I, he came to Ireland to get revenge and forever settle the "Irish Question". He smashed Catholic Ireland and its people with massacres. 30,000 lrish hurriedly left for the continent and Ireland lost a quarter of its population. Within 50 years Catholic Ireland was largely owned by wealthy, often absent Protestant English. (Ref. 110 )

Later, when James II fled England he went to Ireland, enlisted a Catholic army and attempted to retrieve his throne, but was beaten at the battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Although the resulting treaty yielded the Catholics some land and rights, neither the English nor the Irish Protestant Parliaments would ratify it and the oppression continued. All the inhumanity that was to be visited by Catholics upon the Protestants of France in 1680-1690 had been visited by Protestants upon the Catholics of Ireland, particularly from 1650 to 1660. Those bitter years remain in Irish memory as an undying heritage of hate.

Peasants of Ireland were of ten close to f amine. They bled cows, boiled the blood with some milk and butter and herbs, making a savory blood pudding, a version of which is still known in County Cork and elsewhere. In Tyrone and Derry, the coagulated blood was salted and preserved for use at other times of the year. (Ref. 211 ) Fortunately for the Irish, one quarter acre of land will yield 20 hundredweight of potatoes and this, with a few pigs, could just sustain a family. (Ref. 213 )

The battle of the Boyne was actually not the last gasp for Catholic Ireland. Patrick Sarsfield defended Limerick until a great battle at Aughrim (1691) where William and Mary's Dutch General Ginkel defeated a French General St. Ruth and the Irish. Sarsfield then led some 14,000 troops to the continent to try to continue to fight on against England along with French troops. (Ref. 110 ) That Irish brigade subsequently played a prominent role in French military history. (Ref. 222 ) (Continue on page 977)

Scandinavia

Norway

Many factors allowed the continuation of dominance of Denmark over the geographically larger Norway. Denmark had a much larger population, a much larger capital and much more productive land. Only 5% of Norway is cultivable, while 75% of Denmark is so. The tide of Renaissance splendor which washed in over Denmark never reached as far north as Norway. The country was just basically poor. There was fishing, timber and some farming, but the roads were terrible and the country thinly populated. In the pre-railroad centuries, all of Denmark's military forces could be assembled at any point in a few days, whereas it took weeks or months to bring Norwegians together from scores of separated valleys and fjords. (Ref. 34 ) Norway stagnated under Danish rule and the only redeeming monarch was Christian IV (1588-1648) who made an honest effort to give the Norwegians a better position. He developed mining, instituted new civil and religious laws and developed Norwegian trading companies. He founded Oslo, naming it "Christiana". In his endless wars with Sweden, however, several Norwegian provinces were given away and Norway's population fell to about 480,000.