Rosa Luxemburg’s body found
Apparently they buried the wrong body, German efficiency is dead, the body in grave isn’t Rosa’s after all. Guess they’re now going to put the real one in a state monument. I wonder if any of those peope who went to her grave each year are going red?
Iron Age Ireland – The Invisible People
Around 1000bce Ireland was coming to the end of the Bronze Age and on a largely parallel path to England. The population was growing, people were moving to fortified hills, militarism was on the rise observable in both burials and new polities and their power-bases. However within a few centuries Ireland was to take a mysterious divergent course, a course that makes the Iron Age the most obscure period of Irish archaeology and lead to Barry Raftery dubbing the Iron Age Irish the ‘invisible people’.
The iron age began in Ireland about 700 BCE and sort of ended 600 BCE as it failed to take hold. For the next five centuries Bronze (despite abundant supplies of bog ore) continued to be the preferred metal for the next 5 centuries across the country apart from a few sites across the north. With the Iron age in full swing across Europe, populations booming, the population of Ireland suddenly started to diminish. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe studying this anomaly noticed that tree rings showed large scale forest regeneration in the period suggesting a substantial decline agriculture. Rich burials also disappeared at this time. While the gold hoards are being buried with kings in Britain and across Europe, Irish burials become increasingly impoverished.
Reasons for the ‘unique’ decline of Ireland in this period remains a mystery. It has been suggested the appearance of hill forts and Raths in the period shows that widespread warfare could be the cause, but as exactly the same was occurring in Britain, that was prospering, so this is unlikely. Iron Age Ireland remains one of archaeology’s mysteries.
This graph from “Iron Age Ireland, Finding the Invisible People” by Katrina Becker, John O’Neal and Laura Flynn. In a recent survey of all all Iron Age sites illustrates the drop in population.
One solution may be that between 700bce and 500bce temperatures dropped a full two degrees, this was known as the Sub-Atlantic-Period.
Nigel Wright (“Separating Romans and Barbarians” MA thesis) says in Upper Teesdale circa 600 BC;
“large scale clearances increased erosion, leading to the spread of moorland across a wide area along with increasingly waterlogged and acidic soils. These depleted soils were incapable of sustaining forest regeneration.”
As the agricultural land dropped to a minimum, Raftery suggest the remaining Irish returned to a more nomadic lifestyle, but this weather change wouldn’t have effected Ireland in isolation but Britain as well. So why wasn’t Britain devastated?
What seems to have happened is as the climate changed it became wetter and farming more difficult the English moved their farms onto higher lands. This corresponds with the boom in Hill-forts surrounded by farms on the slopes. The British were driven to the hills but still flourished.
Thinking for a moment this contradicts everything I learnt in archaeology class, that the British moved to the hills because of overpopulation causing widespread warfare and the need for defence. As for the Irish, why didn’t they do the same. Simply, Ireland unlike Britain is a relatively flat country, there wasn’t the highlands to move too.
Fog of War and Marston Moor
Arguably the battle that lost a king his crown, but may never have happened. The battle only happened because of a note sent from Charles to Rupert. For the last three hundred years historians have tried to work out what it said….. Wanna try?
On 2 July 1644 no less than five armies lined up against one another. On one side was the army of Thomas Fairfax and the Northern Parliamentarians, who in the Royalist stronghold of Northern England, out numbered and resourced had fought a brave but doomed struggle against the forces of the Marquis of Newcastle. However this had all changed as the Scots invaded England in the summer of 1644 under the Earl of Leven, one of the finest soldiers in Europe, who had commanded a Brigade for Gustavus Adolphus at Lutzen and promoted to a Swedish field Marshal defeated the combined forces of the Holy Roman emperor and Saxony at Wittstock. Heavily outnumbered Newcastle had fallen back to the Royalist stronghold of York where he found himself besieged by Fairfax and Leven. Matters got worse when a third army, the Eastern Association, under the Earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell joined the siege.
With Newcastle in dire straits and faced with losing his most powerful and successful field army King Charles from his Oxford base was forced to act, dispatching the Oxford army under Prince Rupert to aid Newcastle leaving Oxford itself at threat from southern Parliamentarian armies. Rupert initially tried to draw forces away from the York siege by taking the Parliamentarian city of Liverpool however to no avail. What he was to do next was unclear until Charles sent him one of the most famously unclear dispatches in military history.
“But now I must give the true state of my affairs, which, if their condition be such as enforces me to give you more peremptory commands than I would willingly do, you must not take it ill. If York be lost I shall esteem my crown little less; unless supported by your sudden march to me; and a miraculous conquest in the South, before the effects of the Northern power can be found here. But if York be relieved, and you beat the rebels’ army of both kingdoms, which are before it, then (but otherwise not) I may possibly make a shift upon the defensive to spin out time until you come to assist me. Wherefore I command and conjure you, by the duty and affection that I know you bear me, that all new enterprises laid aside, you immediately march according to your first intention, with all your force to the relief of York. But if that be either lost, or have freed themselves from the besiegers, or that for want of powder, you cannot undertake that work, that you immediately march with your whole strength, directly to Worcester to assist me and my army; without which, or you having relieved York by beating the Scots, all the successes you can afterwards have must infallibly be useless onto me”
Few people can comprehend what Charles actually meant but Rupert was clear. He was to break the seige of York and destroy Parliamentary/Scots armies. On the morning of the 2nd of July Rupert in a stroke of genius out maneuvered all three besieging armies and entered York to join up with Newcastle’s forces and by midday Rupert’s entire army was in the city. However Newcastle’s army was far from ready to fight many parts of it off looting. The rash Rupert and the cautious Newcastle immediately fell into disagreement. Rupert wanted to launch a surprise attack on the besiegers immediately but Newcastle wanted to wait for his entire army to return. The dispute between the two commanders magnified as Rupert deployed his forces on Marston Moor ready to attack the besiegers but Newcastle’s troops deployed painfully slowly only finishing when all his troops arrived back in the city, Rupert accusing Newcastle of deliberately delaying things.
It was only around 7pm the Royalists were finally ready to give battle. However then another one of Gustaphus Aldophus’s Scots, Lord Eythin, commanding Newcastle’s army, decided it was too late in the day to attack and called off the assault.
Meanwhile the Earl of Leven in overall command of the Scots and Parliamentary forces took the alternate view declaring “A summer’s evening is as long as a winter’s day” and at 7:30 pm launched an attack on the unprepared royalists.
The battle started with Cromwell charging the cavalry on the Royalist left wing and breaking them. Rupert rushed his cavalry from the right over to reinforce them and halted Cromwell, however David Leslie then charged in support of Cromwell and and the Royalist left was routed. On the right the Royalist cavalry under Goring similarly broke the Parliamentarian left. Meanwhile under Manchester and Fairfax the Parliamentarian infantry assaulted the centre. Initially the assault went well but when Newcastle’s elite whitecoats joined the fray and Goring’s victorious cavalry from the Royalist right waded into the Parliamentry infantry from the flank and they began to waver. The Earl of Leven believing the battle lost fled the field, meanwhile Cromwell seeing the danger rode his cavalry around to the Royalist right and fell upon Goring from behind. A few hours later under moonlight only Newcastle’s whitecoats remained unbroken and surrounded, opting for no-quarter rather than surrender.
The battle was the turning point of the civil war that up to then had been a stalemate. Of the three main Royalist field armies one army had been destroyed, another seriously damaged and the stronghold of the north lost. the fate of a nation had been determined by one of the least clear military dispatches in history.
Journey of Mankind
This superb interactive map traces the journey of mankind and the populating of the Earth for 140,000 years based on Stephen Oppenheimer’s recent contraversial research and will tear up everything you learnt at school.
MacBeth the True Story
Seems this blog is having a bit of a MacBeth fest. After having done the play, I thought I better check out the real dude.
Wolves Circling
At the dawn of the 11th century Scotland was a declining nation, and one that really shouldn’t have survived at all. Divided within into highland and lowland, then again into Mormaer (Earldoms) each with little in common except mutual hatred and treachery towards one another. To the north Caithness, Shetland and Orkney were in the hands of the Norsemen, ever building strength to both raid and snatch more Scottish soil. To the south the powerful Northumbria, the traditional foe with it’s greedy eyes ever transfixed on the lowlands. In the west the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde was still independent and in somewhat of a renaissance, stretching as far south Cumbria and a jagged thorn. Overseas Cnut was building his Scandinavian Empire intent to add the Scottish crown to his own.
Scotland hung together by a thread, the Mormaer in principle owed fealty to the king, who could call upon them to defend Scotland from foreigners. Amongst the Mormaer one stood out in power, the northerly province of Moray, much larger than it is now, stretching from west coast to east and encompassing almost the entire of the Grampian mountains. The power of Moray rivalled that of the king himself, technically the Mormaer of Moray was still a vassal of the king, though, Irish chroniclers always referred to the Mormaer of Moray as King of Moray, reflecting the fact the Mormaer of Moray were virtually independent monarchs of the highlands.
Tanaise
The Kingship of Scotland was always a bloody business, more a matter of plots and assassination that rightful succession. in the 11th century, never was this so true. So precarious was the position of Scotland, that a single weak link and the nation would succumb to the wolves that surrounded it. Just as Edward I’s empire collapsed fell apart in the hands of Edward II or Henry V’s conquest were left in the hands of the infant Henry VI. One weak ruler and Scotland would be overrun. Scotland avoided this by not practicing primogeniture, but instead a system known as Tanistry.
Scottish lords named a ‘Tanaise’ as heir, the Tanaise was an adult selected from among the lords larger family group Tanaise would be an adult proven in battle and the most capable of ruling. Based. His extended included; brothers, nephews, uncles, sons, stepsons, cousins ect. The extended family or a lord during the height of his reign would be in a constant brutal struggle to prove the fittest to be Tanaise.
When the noble in question died, the Tanaise would become lord and often slaughter his entire extended family to secure his position. More often than not a relative not named Tanaise would get in first, murdering both the lord and his Tanaise and proving even more ruthless and canny, a fit to rule. When the new Mormaer of king came to power he then immediately had to find an extended family to begin the struggle to succeed him. Family ties were given a low priority in this, and adoption, by marrying widows with sons, was just a legitimate as blood relative, extended family grouping in which one would undoubtedly excel in brutality and treachery. Scotland owed it’s existence to Mr Darwin.
Hubble
This was the world Macbeth was born into, around 1005, the son of Findlaech Mac Ruaridh, Mormaer (Earl) of Moray. Little is known about his ancestry but he was possibly the grandson of Malcolm II, the king of Scotland, through his mother.
When Macbeth was around 15 his father was murdered by his cousin who became Mormaer and began the slaughter of the family. One of the advantages of Tanistry unlike primogeniture is children are spared, but Macbeth at 15 was old enough to be considered a threat and disposed of. The young seems to have had his head screwed on and managed to flee south to the sanctuary of the court of King Malcolm II. The young Macbeth resided in Malcolm’s court for at least a decade finding both favour and high office which suggests he was quite capable. In 1031 he is mentioned as one of the emissaries sent by Malcolm to Cnut, delivering Malcolm’s submission after Cnut’s invasion of Scotland, along with two other Scottish kings.
A year later Macbeth torch was so strong he was able to raise an army an march on Moray to avenge his father’s murder and become Mormaer. Arriving with a band of men he caught the current Mormaer (his cousin Gillacomgain, his father‘s assassin) by surprise, Gillacomgain took refuge in one of his strongholds which Macbeth surrounded, subsequently the stronghold was set fire and Gillacomgain and fifty of his men burnt to death.
Bubble
Macbeth was now Mormaer of Moray the second most powerful man in Scotland, he had served the king well for over a decade and had proven a canny and ruthless politician as well as a capable commander. He probably considered himself to be a good candidate to be name Tanaise by Malcolm. However Malcolm was about to drop a bombshell on both Macbeth and Scotland.
In 1034 Malcolm II died. On his deathbed he abolished Tanistry and adopted European primogeniture at the legitimate method of succession for Scotland. Malcolm named his young unproven grandson Duncan as heir, his own son being ineligible having joined an order of monks.
This would have been all well and good if Duncan had proven a good king. Shortly after becoming king, obviously aware of the doubts upon his shoulders, Duncan made the bold move of going on the offensive against his enemies. The Saga or Orkneyinga tells the story of a massive Scottish attempt to regain the islands from the Norse and their calamitous defeat at the final battle.
Duncan after the defeat must have felt his position weakened. In 1039 he decided to try again. His objective was to strike a blow at his main foe, the Northumbrians. This time he lead his forces personally, laying siege to Durham. However the siege quickly deteriorated into a shambles as the city held out, the besieging Scots ran out of supplies and retreated chaos
“Dunecan, king of the Scots, advanced with a countless multitude of troops, and laid siege to Durham, and made strenuous but ineffective efforts to carry it. For a large proportion of his cavalry was slain by the besieged, and he was put to a disorderly flight, in which he lost all his foot-soldiers, whose heads were collected in the market-place and hung up upon posts. Not long afterwards the same king, upon his return to Scotland, was murdered by his own countrymen.”
Historia Ecclesiae Dunelmensis
Scotland had been humiliated twice and the wolves that circled licking their lips. The fact that Macbeth’s coup never became a civil war suggests it was orchestrated with the consent of the other Mormaer. Evidence for this can be seen in that after Macbeth seized power there was no massacre of his extended family or assassinations of his rivals. The Mormaer probably agreed Duncan needed, a return to the old ways was needed and Macbeth the natural Tanaise.
No report of the event that occurred or how Macbeth’s usurping of the throne occurred, though a certain Mr Shakespeare has a rather famous theory.
In 1040 the Annals of Ulster announced,
“Donnchad son of Crinan, king of Alba, was killed by his own people.”
The Annals of Tigernach reported,“Duncan was killed at an immature age”
The Chronicle of Melrose states,
“By Macbeth, the son of Finleg (Findlaech), he was struck down; The mortally wounded king died in Elgin (in Moray)”
Marianus Scotus wrote
“Duncan, the king of Scotland, was killed in the autumn by his earl, Macbeth, Findlaech’s son”
The fact that Duncan died in Moray suggests that Duncan took the initiative again and marched north to attack Macbeth. He was mortally wounded at the battle of Bothgafnane taken to the Blacksmiths hut and died of his wounds there.
Toil
With Duncan dead, Macbeth was now Tanaise King of Scotland. However the hereditary heir was Duncan’s son Malcolm ‘Canmore’, who proclaimed himself king. Testimony of how the Scots recognised Macbeth not Canmore is the lack of support his claim gain. Canmore and his brother Donald tried to gain support for their cause against Macbeth but fail and after two years were forced in exile overseas, Donald to Ireland and Canmore to Northumbria.
The first serious challenge to Macbeth’s throne came in 1045 when Duncan’s father, Crinan, who as Abbot of Dunkeld, a position that commanded substantial resources, organised what was described as a sizable rebellion, which left 180 of his men dead. Why Macbeth left Crinan in such a strong position when he had usurped his son is a mystery. Was Crinan one of the lords that supported Macbeth coup in Scotland’s darkest hour? Was Macbeth still ruling independently enough from the other Mormaer to be allowed to dispose of him? Or was Macbeth showing a fatal weakness by not brutal deposing of his enemies, something he notably didn’t do to many others who would be aparty to his downfall.
After the failure of Crinan’s rebellion the middle years of Macbeth’s rule seems to have been one of stability and prosperity. In 1052 showed great statesmanship when Edward the Confessor expelled all Normans from England Macbeth granted them refuge and lands, many of them loyally served him to the end.
The Prophecy of Berchan gives a clear description of Macbeth and his rule,
“The ruddy faced king… will possess Scotland.
The strong one was fair, yellow-haired and tall.
Brimful of food was Scotland, east and west,
During the reign of the ruddy, brave king”
Strong, brave and ruddy (red) faced (perhaps with rage) if this is added to tall, fair and with long blond hair, a picture of huge terrifying warrior emerges, the kind of man to forge a country in a violent age.
The line, Brimful of food, suggests what facts seem to support, Scotland was a stable and prosperous land for a time. So stable that in 1049 felt secure enough to leave Scotland and go on a pilgrimage to Rome. Leaving your country was a big deal for any medieval king, but for Macbeth, with a pretender Malcolm Canmore exiled in Scotland’s main rival Northumbria, this was a blod move of a confident man.
Macbeth arrived in Rome in Easter 1050 where he visited the poor areas of the city and scattered so much silver in the streets it was written of by monks in Hamburg. Why he went on pilgrimage he was less clear. As a Norman ally was he seeking more favour from the pope against England? Was it to try and get the pope to legitimise his rule over Malcolm Canmore? Or maybe he just was genuinely pious.
Trouble
Towards the end of Macbeth’s reign discontent emerged in Scotland. The reasons are unknown, but for the first time Malcolm Canmore found support for his cause in Scotland and he was to return to haunt Macbeth.
Earl Siward of Northumbria hadn’t harboured Canmore for all these years out of kindness, but as a card to play in the prolonged struggle between the two realms, in 1034 he decided to play it.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records,
“This year went Siward the earl with a great army into Scotland, both with a ship-force and with a landforce, and fought against the Scots, and put to flight the king Macbeth, and slew all who were the chief men in the land, and led thence much booty, such as no man before had obtained. But his son Osbarn, and his sister’s son Siward, and some of his housecarls, and also of the king’s, were there slain, on the day of the Seven Sleepers”
According to the chronicle, Siward and Canmore rode at the head of a large army into Scotland and defeated Macbeth, however it’s not this straight forward. Amongst the Northumbrian army were a lot of the personal troops of Edward the Confessor, which suggests it was an English not Northumbrian orchestrated invasion, perhaps in response to Macbeth’s harbouring of Normans.
By standards of the day the invading force was huge. The Northumbrian Chronicles paint a vivid picture, a large Northumbrian fleet lead by Canmore captured the city of Dundee and was joined by Scottish rebels including horse. They marched out to the plains of Gowire past the capital Scone and Edinburgh, probably pillaging in an attempt to force Macbeth to face them. Macbeth presumably having to ride the country to muster forces to fight such a huge invasion. The campaign was recorded as being costly to men on both side and culminated in one of the most massive battles seen to date in Scotland, the Battle of Seven Sleepers (Dunsinane). The Northumbrian Chronicle tells little of the battle but Macbeth’s forces charged down from the hills at the Northumbrians and were put to flight. The annals of Ulster record as many as 3000 Scottish dead, 1500 English dead and all of Macbeth’s Normans wiped out.
The Battle of Seven Sleepers put Canmore in firm control of the Lowlands, for the English this was enough, who made a separate peace with Macbeth and returned to with their booty back to London and Northumbria leaving him with only his own forces.
Canmore now devoid of English support lacked the power to venture into the highlands and confront Macbeth. Meanwhile Macbeth still Mormaer of Moray, the most powerful Mormaer in Scotland retreated to the security of his highland kingdom where he mounted a guerrilla war against Canmore raiding south. For three years Macbeth carried out his war leading ambitious raids deep into the lowlands and retreating north assured the lowlanders could never follow, he was to prove wrong. 1057 Malcolm Canmore manage to lead a force to Macbeth surpise across the Grampian mountains and ambush the unsuspecting Macbeth, at the village of Lumphanon, deep in Moray, as he returned from a southern foray. Macbeth was slain in the battle.
Macbeth 1005-1057 (King 1040-57)
It is always said, with the death of Macbeth died Tanistry in Scotland, as Malcolm Canmore and his descendants ruled in primogeniture from then on. However in a great twist of irony it was perhaps Macbeth himself who ended it when his own stepson became his successor, ‘Lulach the foolish,’ never crowned, Lulach survived his father by only seven months before Canmore invaded Moray again and slew him. Whereas Canmore himself was succeeded by his brother (briefly) before his son. Macbeth may not have been the last Tanaise monarch of Scotland, but he was the last Highlander.
Bibliography
Macbeth, Man and Myth – Nick Aitchison
In Search of British Heroes – Tony Robinson
Annals of Ulster
Annals of Tigernach
Chronicle of Melrose
Prophecy of Berchan – Marianus Scotus
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Northumbrian Chronicle
The literary encyclopaedia
Dot to doomsday – http://www.stephen.j.murray.btinternet.co.uk
