Both the longest and shortest urban sieges in Irish history were experienced in Galway, according to a new book, by military historian Dr Pádraig Lenihan.
Siege in Ireland, 1641-53: Blood and Stone by the former University of Galway academic, is a thematic overview of ‘siege’ as the defining experience of the grindingly brutal Irish Wars of Religion in the Seventeenth Century.
Siege warfare dominated the Williamite War of 1689-91, as it had the Confederate and Cromwellian Wars of forty years earlier. Strong redoubts behind the Shannon Defence Line - Limerick, Athlone, Sligo and Galway - were repeatedly beleaguered.
Galway town and fort endured four sieges (in 1642, 1643, 1651-52 and in 1691 ). The third, nine-month siege (August 1651 to May 1652 ) was the longest in Irish history, and the fourth was the shortest, lasting just two days and a night (20 to 21 July ).
Rather than a chronological narrative, Lenihan uses representative and documented examples to illuminate different kinds of siege, including witness testimonies of those who experienced it. He describes modern technology, like images created from ground-penetrating drone surveys, which illustrate forgotten siege defences, such as in Claddagh or Bohermore.
The book analyses sneak attacks, blockades, betrayal, demoralisation, famine, gunnery, engineering, recollection and morality, amongst other topics.
Siege in Ireland, 1641-53 from www.FourCourtsPress.ie is priced €40.
