An edited repost from the archives.
In the Deadly Force series, which includes the upcoming book Love’s Last Kiss, a group of disgraced ex-Green Berets are desperate to figure out who’s responsible for their dishonor and discharges from the Army while they also battle two disparate enemies. One of their enemies is known simply as the Fianna. A secretive and brutal army of assassins whose history dates back to pagan Irelend. Last week in Part 1, I wrote about the Fianna from the early Roman invasions up through the time of King Arthur. Today I’d like to jump ahead a bit to more modern accounts of these mythical warriors.
There are so many myths and poems written about the Fianna that it’s hard to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t. But that also gave me a lot of leeway when developing my version of the Fianna Army. In the book that releases tomorrow, Love’s Last Kiss, the 21st Century Fianna are a huge source of trouble for the hero Kade Dolan. And since Kade, an Army Ranger and ex-convict, is now working outside of the law and polite society, he has to save himself and Rose Guthrie, the woman he loves, from this powerful, brutal enemy. Unfortunately for Rose and Kade, their chances of surviving are so slim it will take a tremendous act of love and betrayal for everyone to survive.
Did the Fianna ever exist? Yes. Do they exist now? I hope not. But below is a list of anecdotes that make me wonder otherwise. From the research I’ve done, the Fianna was the single reason Rome never conquered the Isle and why the Picts and Scots, and even the Vikings, made very few forays into Ireland until the late Middle Ages.
A Brief History of the Fianna: Part 2
- One particular documented historical fact about the Fianna was written by the Roman Historian Tacitus. In the first century, around 82 AD, Rome’s famous military governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola (who defeated Queen Boudica in 61 AD) sought to invade Ireland with 5,000 men. He even had a minor Irish King willing to betray his countrymen and help him overtake the Island. Despite resources being stretched thin by battles with the Celts and Picts in Scotland, he invaded, confident that he’d win. The battle details are sketchy, but between battling the Fianna warriors from the moment they set foot on the Island, to an extremely rare mutiny within the Roman Legion ranks, Agricola lost and was recalled to back to Rome by the Emperor Domitian. After that, the stories say that the Roman Legionnaires refused to fight in Ireland or simply disappeared before they’d face the Fianna.
- There is also a connection between Shakespeare and the Fianna. Shakespeare (a Catholic in England when that was a dangerous thing) was purported to be a secret supporter of the young men who were fighting for Irish Nationalism. When the English captured these Irish soldiers, the English guards told stories that their prisoners communicated in Shakespearean verse as well as in the verses of Gaelic poetry. This may not be true, but I thought it was so interesting that I included it in my own fictional Fianna army.
- In 1866, a group of Irish soldiers who called themselves the Fianna, assaulted British forts and trading stations in Canada. These are still known as the Fenian Raids.Their goal was to gain independence for Ireland from Britain. These men, after their capture, cited the seven articles of the ancient Fianna army as written in Keating’s History of Ireland and Hume’s The History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688.
- Since these Canadian raids took place during the American Civil War, there’s evidence the U.S. turned a blind eye to these assaults and even more speculation that the U.S. government wanted to use these Fianna warriors in unauthorized and unconventional ways. There’s no proof these men ever fought for the Union Army, but there is anecdotal evidence that, because of their secretive brutal ways, they were asked to join the Civil War.
- Ironically, these trading station attacks were one of the reasons the provinces of Canada decided to form a single country in 1867. Neither the U.S. (who was at war with itself) nor the ineffectual Canadian Militia could take down the Fianna. It wasn’t until the 1890’s, when both Canada and the U.S. worked together, that they were they able to eradicate the threat.
- During World War II, there were murmurings (aka gossip) by German POWs held in Ireland about a brutal Irish underground army known as Na Fianna Éireann. (there was another group that went by this name, but they were younger boys and it was more like a Boy Scout troop). The Germans assumed they were part of the Fenian Brotherhood, a rebel offshoot of the men who fought in the early 20th century Irish rebellions. But the Irish locals discounted that story and refused to talk about the young warrior men who lived on the outskirts of society. They were simply known as the Fianna.
- There is no mention of the Fianna after WWII, including nothing during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland (from late 1960s to 1998). There is one brief mention of Fianna warriors in Indochina, right before the Vietnam War began–but it’s so sketchy that I even hesitate to mention it. So did the Fianna disappear, or are they just really good at covering their tracks (digital and physical) like they are in my novels? I’m not sure. But either way, they are terrifying… and make a perfect foil for my heroes in the Deadly Force series.