For all that Brian was an unmistakable king, and proved himself to be
one. He defeated the Danes again and again, reducing even those
inveterate disturbers of the peace to a forced quiescence; entered
Dublin, and remained there some time, taking, say the annalists,
"hostages and treasure." By the year 1002 Ireland had a master, one
whose influence made itself felt over its whole surface. For twelve
years at least out of its distracted history the country knew the
blessings of peace. Broken by defeat the Danish dwellers of the seaport
towns began to turn their energies to the milder and more pacific
activities of trade. The ruined monasteries were getting rebuilt;
prosperity was beginning to glimmer faintly upon the island; the chiefs,
cowed into submission, abstained from raiding, or confined their raids
to discreeter limits. Fortresses were being built, roads made, and
bridges repaired in three at least of the provinces. Another twenty
years of Brian's rule and the whole future history of Ireland might have
been a different one.

[Illustration: Doorway of Killeshin Church, Co. Carlow. (_From a
Photograph_.)]

It was not to be however. The king was now old, and the work that he had
begun, and which, had he been followed by a successor like himself,
might have been accomplished, was destined to crumble like a half-built
house. The Danes began to stir again. A rebellion had sprung up in
Leinster, the coast-line of which was strong-holded at several points
with Danish towns. This rebellion they not only aided with their own
strength, but further appealed for assistance to their kinsmen in
Northumbria, Man, the Orkneys, and elsewhere, who responded by sending a
large force under Brodar, a Viking, and Sigurd Earl of Orkney to
their aid.

This force Brian gathered all his energies to oppose. With his own
Munster clansmen, aided by all the fighting men of Meath and Connaught,
with his five sons and with his old rival, King Malachy of Meath,
fighting under his banner, he marched down to the strand of Clontarf,
which stretches from the north of Dublin to the out-jutting promontory
of Howth, and there, upon Good Friday, 1014, he encountered his Leinster
rebels and the Viking host of invaders, ten thousand strong it is said,
and a great battle was fought, a battle which, beginning before the
dawn, lasted till the sun was beginning to sink.

To understand the real importance of this battle, we must first fully
realize to ourse