♪♪
Over 850 years ago,
armed warriors from England and Wales invaded Ireland.
Powerful and militarily superior,
they took control of much of the country.
For centuries after,
Ireland would lie under British rule.
But the invaders were not simply British.
Many of them were closely connected with a French region,
Normandy.
Henry II was French.
That's how he identified,
and that was the source of his power.
A bitter struggle between Ireland's Kings
opened the door for the invaders.
Diarmait MacMurrough fled when this coalition of forces
went against him, so he quickly removed himself from the scene.
This real-life Game of Thrones would have disastrous consequences.
But the newcomers also revolutionised agriculture,
developed our cities and towns,
and built massive castles and churches.
They altered the course of history,
and not just in Ireland,
because the invasion set in motion forces
that would change Europe forever.
♪♪
On the remote headland of Baginbun, County Wexford,
heavy machinery is busy at work.
It's laying down an interconnector cable
to join up the Irish and British electricity grids.
When it's completed,
the cable will run under the Irish Sea for 150 kilometers.
Between Baginbun and Pembroke in Wales,
power will flow in both directions.
850 years ago,
a different power flowed along the same route to this exact spot.
Raymond Le Gros arrived over.
He's a man who landed at Baginbun.
It was a famous poem that was later written about it,
"At the Creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won."
Early one May morning in 1170, Raymond Le Gros,
apparently with two ships of archers and men at arms,
arrives here on the sandy beaches of Baginbun,
having travelled from South Wales.
They drew their ships up here on the beach.
They scaled the banks,
probably dragging their ships ashore onto this
well-protected headland that is ideal for their position.
Right away, the invaders set about securing the location.
This may look like a fairly ordinary agricultural ditch, but in fact,
one of the first things that Raymond Le Gros
and his men did was get to work digging this defensive ditch,
building these banks, making this place impregnable.
They cast the earth up,
building mounds on either side, probably four meters high,
and then probably on top of that,
they had timber palisades all the way across the headland,
200 meters to the other side.
And the very fact that we can see it eight
and a half centuries later, still obvious in the landscape,
is testament to the work that was put into this.
Once, Le Gros and his men had fortified the headland,
they went in search of supplies.
Archeologist Michael Potterton is
fascinated by what this small force accomplished in such a short time.
They would have needed food and fuel and raw materials,
so they headed out into the local landscape
and they took what they needed.
Cattle and sheep, and those cattle were corralled here,
partly for supplies of food, probably for milk as well.
But in fact, it turned out that they had
a very useful purpose a little bit later than that.
The invader's presence provoked a swift reaction.
At this time, Waterford was ruled by descendants
of the Vikings who'd founded the city 300 years earlier.
They quickly joined sources with the Irish of Waterford, the Deise.
A large army set out for Baginbun,
determined to herd Le Gros and his men back into the sea.
Some of the early sources suggest
there were 3,000 of Waterford men and the local Gaelic Irish.
Raymond Le Gros seems to have thought
it was much better to retreat here
to the encampment where they had their cattle station.
Whether it was either by design or by accident,
the cattle were spooked.
They turned, they stampeded towards
the oncoming Waterford men and Irish,
and they scattered them.
Apparently, hundreds of these attackers were killed.
But some were captured.
70 or so hostages were taken.
A horrific fate awaited these prisoners.
Apparently, some felt that it would be better to keep them hostage,
but others felt it would be better to dispose of them.
And that's what they did.
They broke their limbs and they threw them
over the cliffs here to their deaths below on the rocky shore.
Now, this would have sent some message
to the survivors back in Waterford.
♪♪
With only a few dozen men,
Raymond Le Gros had won a devastating victory.
His small group was just one of several
invading forces to land in Ireland around this time.
We remember these invaders as the Normans or Anglo-Normans.
Their arrival would change Ireland forever.
It's hard to believe 850 years on
that a series of events in the summer of 1170
would have had such a massive snowball effect
on Irish history, culture, and politics.
It's hard to believe the impact
that those first few settlers would have had.
The language, the landscape,
the laws of the country, the flora, the fauna they introduced.
You can see this right through the people,
the surnames, the local names of places,
the first names of people that are in use,
and probably right down to the very blood and DNA of the people.
To understand how this transformation happened,
we must go back to the middle of the 12th century.
Ar aghaidh leat.
A period when Ireland was torn apart by a feud between rival Kings.
A turbulent time when a real-life Game of Thrones
played out on these shores.
A lot of people have compared Game of Thrones to the medieval world,
and in particular to medieval Ireland.
I can certainly see some of those similarities.
Politics is always a brutal business,
but I think the most brutal of all
was probably the early medieval Ireland.
The 12th century Ireland resembled Game of Thrones quite a lot
because there's a lot of players with whom
the possibility rests of becoming high king of Ireland.
Ceart go leor, cén treo?
Ireland was less urbanised than many of its European neighbours.
The political scene was a bit more fragmented
in the sense that there was not a single unified kingship
that exercise control over the entire island.
There's five big provinces with Connaught and Ulster
probably in the ascendancy,
but still, Munster keeping an eye on the possibility,
Meath and Leinster.
It's a whole load of sub-kingoms, each with a potential rival
who could scramble his way to the top.
Tiernan O'Rourke was one of these power players.
He ruled the Kingdom of Bréifne in present day Cavan and Leitrim.
In 1152,
O'Rourke lost his wife to Diarmait MacMurrough,
the King of Leinster.
This bitter love triangle would have fateful consequences.
But the woman in question was no femme fatale.
She's connected with a religious site deep in the Midlands: Durrow.
A great monastery once stood here, now all but forgotten.
This weathered high cross is one of its last remnants.
Early in the 12th century,
a princess was born into the royal family that controlled this place.
Her name was Derbforgaill.
Derbforgaill is the daughter of the King of Meath,
but it is a declining kingdom,
and she's married to Tiernan O'Rourke.
Her husband was king of Bréifne,
but he wasn't content just to rule that territory.
He began to expand into Meath.
Between him and various other power players at the time,
they're all snapping at her father's kingdom, trying to shave bits off.
So she's in a difficult position because
in the Irish tradition, when a woman gets married,
she doesn't automatically sever her links to her own family.
She has loyalty to her father, to her brother,
who's also in contention for a kinship of Meath.
So Tiernan O'Rourke ends up warring with East Meath,
trying to conquer it rather than use his marriage alliance.
And this means quite a lot of tension.
They must have been estranged from each
other because he is fighting Derbforgaill's father.
O'Rourke's attempt to dominate Meath
also antagonised someone else.
A man known for his ruthlessness and naked ambition.
Diarmait MacMurrough is King of Leinster,
not without opposition.
Tiernan O'Rourke is the ruler of Bréifne
with ambitions to be king of Meath.
So geographically, they are potentially rivals.
The rivalry becomes very bitter and very personal
when during the course of their raiding,
Diarmait MacMurrough gets one over Tiernan O'Rourke.
In 1152,
MacMurrough and his allies succeeded
in driving O'Rourke out of his kingdom.
But Diarmait wasn't satisfied with simply defeating his rival.
He wanted to humiliate him.
To do so,
he turned to Tiernan's estranged wife.
The dramatic events that followed
are now commemorated in a breathtaking work of art.
The Ros Tapestry tells the story
of the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland,
from its origins to its aftermath.
♪♪
The Ros tapestry is comprised of 15 panels of 4 feet by 6.
Over 180 stitchers have now been stitching for over 24 years.
And all of the panels have been completed,
with the exception of the battles in the Kingdom of Ossory,
which is nearing completion now.
Working from a preliminary design,
the stitchers transform the image into something magical.
The stitchers work to recreate that image using thread.
So the direction of the stitches
that they choose is hugely important.
The shading over hundreds of different colours
that they choose from.
So the stitching is certainly a skill, but it's also an art.
And it's the interpretation of the colours,
the techniques they use to bring movement into the piece
to create that 3D effect that until you see the tapestries in reality,
you don't quite appreciate just how skillful
and how beautifully it's done.
The stitchers themselves would refer
to their work more as needle painting than embroidery.
The 14 completed panels are currently on display in Kilkenny Castle.
Together, they're a mesmerising portrait of the invasion.
And the events that triggered it.
♪♪
In this panel,
Diarmait MacMurrough has defeated Tiernan O'Rourke,
forcing him to flee his kingdom.
In O'Rourke's absence, Diarmait and Derbforgaill have eloped.
Or have they?
From what I know about the position and the role of Irish women
in society at that time, it seems incredibly unlikely
that she ran away with Diarmait MacMurrough as some love act.
They're both older.
That's not to say they didn't fall madly in love,
but it seems to have been premeditated.
So she may have done it in conjunction with her brother
to put a a halt to Tiernan O'Rourke's expansionist activities
within her family's lands.
She was a very politically savvy woman.
I think she was looking to save her family's holdings
in the face of rapacious actions
from her husband and other men around him.
And I think that's why she did it.
Was it a sexual chemistry between
Diarmait MacMurrough and Derbforgaill?
It's impossible to know from the sources.
I think there's no harm in including a sexual dynamic to the motive.
Passionate decisions are made that lead to severe consequences.
Whatever the truth,
Diarmait and Derbforgaill's affairs set unstable forces in motion.
Because Tiernan O'Rourke had been humiliated by his bitterest enemy,
Diarmait MacMurrough.
When he abducted O'Rourke's wife and brought her back
to Leinster with him, it was a very grave political insult
to O'Rourke because it undermined his status in the eyes of his peers.
It offended his honour.
This, to Diarmait, would have been a fantastically powerful statement.
It would have reinforced his reputation across the whole island,
and it would have humiliated Tiernan across the whole island.
In the sense, you could say this is the moment
that the Game of Thrones within Ireland becomes global,
becomes continental,
because Tiernan is not going to relent.
He wanted the utter destruction of the man
who had shamed him by stealing his wife.
In the 12th century, the small town of Ferns
was the command center of Leinster's most powerful king.
In 1152,
Diarmait MacMurrough returned here to the stone castle he called home.
There's a reference to a stone house or a caisleán.
If It's the only site in Leinster at that time that may have one.
Now, various different academics have
argued where this might be, and there's been sites proposed.
One is by the Marshall Castle at the other end of the town.
This castle dates from a slightly later period,
but Diarmait's stone fortress may well have stood on this site.
Diarmait also constructed church buildings in Ferns.
Around 1160, he built St. Mary's Abbey for the Augustinians,
a European monastic Monastic order.
MacMurrough would have built the church as a statement in stone.
So he would have been doing two things,
one, looking after his soul after his death,
but also making a statement
on the landscape of, I'm Irish, but I'm connected to Europe.
I'm putting his statement on the landscape
of this as a new monastic order coming in.
But soon, Diarmait would meet a fierce challenge in Ferns.
Now,
the Irish Archeology Field School is investigating the site,
hoping to find out more about these events.
The weather we've been having the last couple of weeks
with the torrential rain is very problematic,
but there's always something that needs to be done
and can be done in the rain.
On an archeological site,
we're trying to ascertain different features,
different soil types, and rain often helps that process.
It does expose features as well.
We excavated one female, which is about 30 years of age.
We've got a radiocarbon date back on that individual,
and she is broadly contemporary with MacMurrough.
We're looking at a preliminary osteological analysis.
It seems that she has sharp force trauma to her arm, her right arm,
and also her spine, possibly self-defense wounds.
So it looks like she met a quite unfortunate end.
The woman's death could be linked to a devastating attack on Ferns.
Because in 1166,
Tiernan O'Rourke saw a chance for vengeance.
In that year, Rory O'Connor, the King of Connaught,
claimed the high kinship of Ireland, and O'Rourke supported him.
The pair forged a formidable alliance and set
out to crush the greatest threat to their power,
Diarmait MacMurrough.
O'Rourke and O'Connor invaded Leinster.
Their combined forces were too much for MacMurrough.
He fled,
leaving the vengeful Tiernan to destroy his stronghold at Ferns.
Then O'Rourke and O'Connor caught up with Diarmait.
It's hard to know why O'Rourke and O'Connor
didn't take that opportunity to fully eliminate MacMurrough.
And I think if you look further back in time,
you can see that the O'Connor family,
continuing on to Rory O'Connor,
they were trying to divide and conquer.
So I suspect that O'Connor, especially,
was happy as long as Diarmait submitted.
There's so many different players vying
for the high kingship of Ireland.
So there was constant submissions and withdrawal of submissions.
They had an opportunity then, with hindsight,
to come up with a more permanent solution to him,
but instead, he was allowed to flee Ireland and go abroad.
But I don't think anybody at that time
can have imagined that he would have gone abroad.
It was a relatively unusual thing for an Irish king to do.
♪♪
Taking with him only a small band of followers,
Diarmait set sail from Bannow Bay on Wexford's south coast.
From here, with favourable conditions,
he could reach England in less than a day.
He is desperate.
He is in exile.
He has been thrown out of his kingdom,
and he wants desperately to regain it.
The reason that he goes to England first
is probably because of his pre-existing
contacts in the merchant community of Bristol.
He has friends there who he thinks can help him.
♪♪
One of these friends was the wealthy merchant, Robert Fitzharding.
His house stood on Broad Street,
near the medieval Church of St. John.
Sir Robert Fitzharding is a fixer.
He is someone you go to talk to if you
want information and advice on how to take the next step.
Fitzharding offered Diarmait's shelter and valuable advice.
O'Rourke and O'Connor were too strong,
and Diarmait couldn't hope to beat them on his own.
But if he could get help from Henry II,
the King of England, he might have a chance.
Fitzharding had a huge network of contacts.
He was in very good standing with Henry II,
so it's very likely that Fitzharding would have said,
Go to Henry II yourself.
Though he sat on the throne of England,
Henry II was from France,
and it was there that Diarmait would seek him.
The chain of events that led to a Frenchman
becoming king of England began centuries earlier.
In the late 800s,
Viking warbands appeared off the northwest Coast of France.
Hunting for booty, they sailed up the River Seine.
♪♪
A Viking leader called Rollo besieges Paris and Chartres.
And the king at the time,
Charles the Simple,
decides to strike a deal with Rollo.
In order to bring Rollo on side,
Charles the Simple granted him lands,
which created the territory we later called Normandy.
So once Rollo and his followers had set themselves up,
that then created the Duchy of Normandy.
The Vikings settled down there and Rollo became Duke of Normandy,
subject to the French king.
Once they settled in France,
they took over existing stretches of government.
The conversion to Christianity was part
of the deal they negotiated to receive lands in Normandy.
And quite quickly, their children and grandchildren children
learned French, married with local people.
And so you get this hybrid culture developing in Normandy,
which is strongly French in its emphasis,
but also with elements of Viking character as well.
♪ ♪
Just like their Viking forebears,
the Normans longed to invade foreign lands and take their riches,
and they had the military prowess to realise this dream.
Famously, the Normans deployed warriors on horseback.
Knights were the special forces of the day
and almost unstoppable in battle.
The Normans had an elite of mounted knights,
who were men who were trained, often from childhood,
if they were aristocrats,
to fight on horseback,
fully armoured.
This is a world in which metal is very, very expensive.
So to be dressed in iron, make them up to you out immediately.
They're horsemen.
Horsemen were the elite, as distinct from the foot soldiers.
It was one of the ambitions of foot soldiers to become horsemen.
But of course, you had to be trained.
You had to have the warhorses that they needed.
So you've got this elite group who are primarily aristocratic
or gentry people who've been trained in that.
Internationally, the Normans
became the military force to be reckoned with.
In this period, 11th, 12th century,
the Normans are conquering Southern Italy.
They go on crusades.
They establish lordships in the Middle East.
They're masters of castle building.
Castles, which they use subsequently
to control the lands that they've conquered.
And castles, which again are used throughout the Norman world,
are the way that you convert this conquest
into a real colonisation
through which you can exact resources from the land,
control it, and make a much more meaningful impact.
But also maybe there's a psychological drive.
They seem to have the urge to dominate.
They seem to want to have not only what
they possess, but what everyone else possesses.
The Normans went far afield in search of conquest,
but the greatest prize was the one that lay close to home.
Around 1028,
a descendant of Rollo was born at Falaise Castle in Normandy.
In 1066, he crushed the Anglo-Saxons
at the Battle of Hastings
and became king of England.
To this day,
we remember him as William the Conqueror.
Conquests tend to carry on under their own momentum.
So the open question was,
well, would William and his Normans stop with England,
or would they roll on into Scotland,
Wales, and indeed, Ireland.
The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
thought that had William lived any longer,
he would have conquered Ireland,
surely without the need to draw a sword.
Ireland was an object for conquest.
William's successors proved to be just as ambitious as he was.
In 1154, his great grandson, Henry, took the throne of England.
Henry II was born in France.
He was the son of the Count of Anjou,
so he inherited lands in France
before he came to the throne in England.
And Normandy, which his father granted to Henry as his son.
Henry then married Eleanor of Aquitaine,
who was probably one of the most desirable marriage partners
in Europe at that time because she had inherited a vast territory.
She had previously been Queen of France.
And then, of course, he inherited England and the interests
that England had with its neighboring kingdom
to further expand its territory.
♪♪
This one man now controlled a massive expanse of territory,
stretching from the Pyrenees to Southern Scotland.
When we think of Henry II,
we tend to think of him as the King of England.
You might think he identifies as English himself.
But Henry II was culturally, socially, and linguistically French.
He was from France.
He spent most of his time in France.
That's how he identified,
and that was the source of his power.
♪♪
So when Diarmait MacMurrough went seeking
Henry's help in the decisive year of 1166,
he went not to England, but to France.
MacMurrough was a king,
so he wasn't a man who lacked self-confidence.
So when he was meeting Henry II,
certainly in terms of the royal status,
MacMurrough had no doubt that he was of equal
status to Henry, and they did probably know each other.
Because it's one of the neglect protected facts of Irish history
that MacMurrough went to Henry
in 1166 because he knew Henry was likely to help him,
because he probably knew that Henry was interested in Ireland.
Diarmait told Henry he'd been wrongfully thrown out of his kingdom.
He offered the Anglo-Norman King his allegiance
if he would help him win it back.
Diarmait was pushing against an open door,
and he probably knew it
because this was the chance Henry had been waiting for.
We know that Henry II had a long-standing interest in Ireland.
He was a very ambitious monarch.
It makes sense that he might want to expand to the neighboring island.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is an incredible character.
She certainly wasn't a passive player in the politics of the time,
and I think she must have been a key figure
in the early years of the marriage in influencing Henry II's policies.
Eleanor may have been a force in advising
him to further extend his territorial ambitions to Ireland.
The contemporary sources tell us that he swore fealty to Henry II.
One source tells us that he performed homage.
He got down on bended knees and he performed homage before him.
He became his man.
Now, the moment that he did that,
that established a constitutional link between the Kingdom
of England and the Kingdom of Leinster,
MacMurrough's overkingdom.
He was Henry's vassal.
So MacMurrough, it seems to he had absolutely no difficulty
in entering into this relationship with Henry II,
that he knew had very significant political consequences.
But Henry stopped short
of giving the Irish king direct military assistance.
Historians have sometimes said that
maybe MacMurrough was a little bit disappointed by the outcome of it,
because you got fancy words from Henry, but nothing more.
But this is an age when Kings didn't have standing armies.
So what could Henry II have given MacMurrough?
There was no such thing as the Royal Navy that could be sent to Ireland.
That didn't exist.
So what could Henry have gave him?
Well, he accepted him as his vassal,
which gave Henry a concomitant duty to protect his vassal.
And he issued letters to his other vassals in England,
telling them that it was okay for them
to go off a conquering in Ireland
to assist MacMurrough.
♪♪
So having met Henry, Diarmait retraces his steps,
and he establishes himself at Bristol for a while
before he goes to Wales,
and he spends two or three or four weeks
showing all comers this letter that he has
from Henry II, which is crucial to getting support
for his posited trip back to Ireland
and the retaking of his kingdom.
And among the people who come to him is Richard de Clare,
Strongbow.
Diarmait and Strongbow find each other,
and when they find each other,
they recognise in each other a very similar kind of story.
Diarmait is ousted from power.
He needs help.
Strongbow is effectively ousted from power.
He needs an opportunity.
♪♪
The town of Chepstow, in Wales, is home to a mighty castle.
Built by the Normans, it has stood here since 1071.
The castle's ruined inner keep still evokes a sense of splendor and power.
This was once the home of Richard de Clare,
the Earl of Strigoil.
Today, he's better remembered by his nickname, Strongbow.
Chepstow Castle is well-situated,
stacked on limestone cliffs above the River Wye.
But Strongbow's own fortunes rested on shakier ground.
Strongbow has been languishing in debt,
emasculated, unable to wage war,
which is the normal way in which a lord comes to fame,
attracts followers, attracts wealth.
He's in Chepstow Castle, cooling his heels for years.
Henry II had become King of England at the end of a civil war.
One of the individuals who had opposed him
during the course of that civil war
was the man we know in history as Strongbow.
Strongbow throughout Henry's reign, had really been out of favour.
Diarmait and Strongbow recognising each other,
a very similar kind of story.
Diarmait is ousted from power.
He needs help.
Strongbow is effectively ousted from power.
He needs an opportunity.
And now Diarmait arrives,
says, I have permission for you
to help me regain my kingdom, Leinster.
♪♪
You can become the King of Leinster.
Here's my daughter, Aoife.
You can marry her if you will help me get my kingdom back.
From Strongbow's point of view, this is wonderful news.
Not only the idea that he might acquire some lands in Ireland,
but that he might, by marrying MacMurrough's daughter,
succeed to the Kingdom of Leinster,
that was a really mouthwatering prospect.
At least that's the deal that they struck,
even though it's completely out of line
with traditional Irish methods of royal succession.
Whether a medieval princess was attractive or not
probably had a lot more to do with the land and the political influence
she brought than any physical medical feature.
And in those terms, Aoife was potentially very attractive
because she meant the possibility of becoming a Leinster king.
I think it probably came as a bit of a shock to contemporaries when,
of all the people that MacMurrough could have recruited
was this man, Strongbow, who, from having been a man
of a high reputation and blue blood in his veins,
but was penniless and almost landless,
was now going to the heir to a kingdom.
I mean, that was headline news.
The alliance with Strongbow boosted Diarmait's confidence.
He traveled on to southwest Wales,
where the Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd held sway,
and here he struck lucky again.
In 1165, Rhys had rebelled against Henry II.
He attacked Cardigan Castle and imprisoned Henry's loyal servant,
Robert Fitz-Stephen.
From Rhys' point of view,
Robert was probably a bit of an embarrassment,
a bit of a problem.
He's held this man a prisoner.
What are we going to do with him?
Diarmait's arrival gave Rhys a chance to rid himself of Fitz-Stephen.
The Welsh Lord offered to release him
on condition that he joined Diarmait's mission in Ireland.
Fitz-Stephen, already being known by Henry, and respected,
he would have been the perfect person, really,
to lead the expedition, both as a military leader and as a person.
Diarmait promised Fitz-Stephen the town of Wexford
in return for his help.
The Irish king now had two Norman allies on his side.
Suddenly, his chances of reclaiming Leinster looked a lot better.
Now Diarmait looked to the west.
Not far off lay the Welsh Coast, and beyond it, the Irish Sea.
On a clear day,
Diarmait would almost have been able to see the Coast of Ireland.
He was within striking distance of his homeland and his enemies.
In August 1167,
exactly a year after he'd fled in ignominy,
Diarmait returned to Ireland and his old capital, Ferns.
Back on his home turf,
he had one uncomfortable consideration.
He didn't know when Strongbow would arrive.
In the period between Strongbow and Diarmait meeting
and the actual invasion of Ireland, there's this strange lull.
And the lull is probably because
Strongbow needs to get a sense of where Henry is at
and whether he'll be punished
or how much room has he got to maneuver.
And Henry's probably imposed the delay by putting tasks on Strongbow.
Luckily, Diarmait had another sword in the fire.
In 1169, Rhys App-Griffith finally
released Robert Fitz-Stephen from prison in Wales.
As soon as Robert is released,
he goes instantly overnight from being
a prisoner to all of a sudden a leader of men.
Because the Crown is backing the expedition,
it's likely that most of the men at arms,
the knights, the Crown, would supply those.
The difference is the archers.
They're almost certain to have been Welshmen,
and the Welsh bowmen are recognised as the best in the world,
and this will make all the difference
to the campaign to Ireland.
♪♪
On Wexford's south Coast,
a ruined chapel overlooks a lonely shore.
This is Bannow Church,
and it has withstood the ravages of wind and sea
for over eight centuries.
Nearby lies Bannow Island,
now fastened to the mainland by built-up silt.
This may be a remote area,
but it witnessed one of the most important events in history.
It was here in May 1169
that Robert Fitz-Stephen landed in Ireland.
A moment captured in vivid detail in the Ross tapestry.
Robert Fitz-Stephen arrives at Bannow,
so he clearly had advanced knowledge
of the best place to land in this area,
and it's also likely that Diarmait had his men
waiting for him in a beacon,
letting Fitz-Stephen and others know where to bring up his ships.
And then the landing, of course, is important here
because soon after they join up with Diarmait MacMurrough.
Fitz-Stephen had with him 36 knights,
60 men at arms, and 300 archers.
This sizable force needed food and shelter,
so Fitz-Stephen immediately started a settlement here at Bannow.
This was Ireland's first Norman town.
Today, only the church remains,
and the time-worn graves of early settlers.
Already, the invaders were putting down roots in Ireland,
but Robert Fitz-Stephen knew
that they would have to fight for what they took.
He and MacMurrough headed for Wexford town,
one of the three places that held the key to victory.
If you controlled Dublin and Waterford and Wexford,
you were never going to be in trouble in Ireland
because you could always get fleets of soldiers back
and forth in to help you out if you ever got into trouble.
So the ports were the single greatest
concentration of wealth on the island of Ireland.
They were absolutely critical in terms
of the success of the invasion.
The men of Wexford advanced to confront
the attackers and met an intimidating sight.
A squadron of armoured knights mounted on horses,
stood ready for battle.
The Anglo-Normans use many of the same
military techniques that they employ elsewhere
and that are very successful elsewhere in Europe.
One of the most famous of these is the mounted cavalry charge,
this tradition of fighting on horseback.
We know from contemporary accounts
that this was terrifying to face and that it could be very effective.
They use this in Ireland.
Faced with this show of strength,
the Wexford men retreated into the town.
For two days, they defended it bravely,
and then they surrendered.
During Diarmait was quick to honour his agreement,
and he handed control of the town to Robert Fitz-Stephen.
The campaign was gathering momentum,
but Diarmait faced an anxious wait.
There was still no sign of his other ally.
Then, at last, Strongbow acted.
In May 1170, he sent Raymond Le Gros to Baginbun.
Le Gros achieved a spectacular victory,
and his small force was only a vanguard.
They are an advanced party arriving some weeks before the key player,
Strongbow and his men.
In Milford Haven, Wales,
Strongbow had mustered an army over a thousand strong.
Finally, he was ready to come to Diarmait's aid.
And then an unexpected event
threatened to scuttle the whole enterprise.
He had ships packed full of warriors on the turning tide
when a messenger arrived from Henry II to say,
Do not go to Ireland or you will be a criminal.
The consequence would be that Strongbow would be killed.
His followers would be killed.
Henry absolutely put his foot down on Strongbow going.
So Strongbow has to decide, does he take this tide or not?
Allez.
Strongbow then ignored that and set out to win his fortune in Ireland.
So Ireland was make a break for Strongbow.
His fleet would have arrived out here with
something upwards of 1,500 men.
Raymond Le Gros may even have seen him from the headland going past,
and he gathered those who had survived the initial skirmishes here
and took them on along with Strongbow into Waterford Harbour,
preparing to attack the town.
They came to Ireland intent upon helping
MacMurrough seize or re-seize the towns within Leinster.
Waterford, next to Dublin, was probably the most significant
Irish trading center in the 12th century.
On the 23rd of August, Strongbow laid siege to the city.
A savage battle followed.
There was a stone wall already built at that end of the of the city,
and there was obviously wooden palisade on top of that.
But we know from our archeological
excavations that they were firing arrows at the city.
You remember, archers made up about 85% of the attacking armies.
The Welsh were very famous as archers.
There's descriptions of them shooting their arrows
in the 12th century at a mounted knight,
and the arrow goes through the armour on the man's leg,
through his leg, through the armour on the inside,
through the saddle of the horse, and into the horse.
That's how powerful these longbows were.
And we found a big number of arrows.
We found long, thin arrow heads, which were piercing chain mail.
And then we found the other typical arrowhead
that we all know for firing at people, of course,
who are not wearing armour.
The inhabitants of Waterford defended fiercely,
driving back two assaults on the city walls.
But then the attacker settled on a different strategy.
Strongbow and Raymond Le Gros decided to pull
down a house that hung over the town wall.
Their horses probably pulled on the ropes
and pulled the whole structure down,
and that allowed them to enter the city.
He spent three days trying to take the city.
It fell on the 25th of August.
No sooner had the fighting finished, then Strongbow claimed as a reward.
At Waterford's medieval Cathedral,
he married Diarmait MacMurrough's daughter, Aoife.
The original church is long gone,
replaced by the present Christ Church Cathedral.
Nearby, a modern statue of the newlyweds
commemorates this fateful event.
So for someone like Aoife,
who's brought up in a patriarchy,
in a warrior-led, extremely hierarchical society
where women have very limited powers.
Essentially, she's moving into just another one
when she marries Strongbow.
You're just substituting one layer of rules
and regulations for another.
She adapted because she had to survive,
so she did what she needed to do.
The famous marriage completely changed Irish history.
I know that may sound like a cliché, but it wasn't.
That completely changed the nature of the Anglo-Norman conquest.
Meant that the King of England now was going to get involved because,
of course, he was afraid that Strongbow
would become too powerful.
The last thing Henry II wanted was a very powerful Norman lord,
Anglo-Norman Lord, here.
When Strongbow won for himself an independent kingdom,
which is what happened in Leinster,
this must have been shocking to Henry.
He was well aware of what William the Conqueror had achieved
when he won for himself an independent kingdom
as a vassal of the French king.
Henry had no intention of allowing one of his vassals to create
such an independent power base for himself,
because that would have set up
another potential threat on Henry's flank.
Henry was not the only one following Strongbow's progress.
Rory O'Connor was still the high king of Ireland, but so far,
he had been little more than a spectator.
He desperately needed to gain control of the situation.
When Strongbow and MacMurrough and their forces
marched on Dublin and established a base there,
it was at that point, I think,
that the Irish began to think, Well, this is getting serious.
We have to do something about it.
We know that Rory O'Connor stops
in Castleknock as he's readying his army to attack Dublin.
So when he came here to Castleknock,
and he was thinking, I'll get this done.
This is not a problem.
And of course, it turns out it was a problem.
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Subtitling RTÉ 2024.