#OnThisDay 1170 Strongbow landed at Passage East at the head of an army of 200 knights & 1000 men-at-arms. He attacked & took Waterford then would march on Dublin, not before marrying Aoife MacMurrogh. The Norman Conquest of Ireland had begun in earnest.
#OnThisDay 1922 Michael Collins was shot dead in an ambush by Anti-Treaty forces at Béal na Bláth, Cork. “They won’t shoot me in my own county,” said he. While theories abound, we may never know who fired that fatal shot. Ireland had lost a great leader. #Ireland #History
#OnThisDay 1798 General Humbert landed in Killala, Mayo with over 1,000 French troops to aid the United Irishmen Rebellion that had already effectively ended. Despite some initial successes in Castlebar, they eventually surrendered in Longford. It was also his birthday.
#OnThisDay 1920 The IRA kill Constable Martin Foley in Merlin Park, Galway. Reprisals by the RIC in Oranmore set fire to house & businesses. The RAF are called in to intervene and extinguish the fires.
#OnThisDay 1861 Colonel Frederick Crawford, the organiser of the Larne gun running and signatory of the Solemn League and Covenant (supposedly in his own blood) was born in Belfast. Interestingly, in 1798 his great-great grandfather, a United Irishman was arrested for high treason & shared a cell in Kilmainham Gaol with their leader Henry Joy McCracken.
The Irish at War 