Originally Posted by
Anthony
Just wanted to give some ideas of the non-Roman portions of the British isles. Haven't played mod yet, so keep that in mind (intend to, but BI has been giving me trouble). I tend to just go about forums and mods and chime in on this in historically-minded mods.
Of the Picts and Gaels, the bigger threat to Roman-Britons were Gaels. Niall became king of Ireland early in the period (after seizing the forts at Teamhair {Tara}, Eamain Macha {Navan}, and Ard Macha {Armagh}), and was an associate of the Picts, and armed them (Gaels had far more iron). Picts themselves were becoming more Gaelic (until they began dressing sort of like them; wearing knee-length shirts and going bare-legged and such, but they didn't have the strict clothing laws), though they lacked the large amount of weapons Gaels had, spoke their own language, etc. Picts rarely conducted more than raids in the north. More of a threat to the southern Caledonian kingdoms (Gododdin, Strathclyde, Galwyddel) than the Roman Britons, though they did obviously raid deep at times. However, Niall raided deep in Britain and Gaels actually established kingdoms (Dyfedd was originally ruled by Irish lords subservient to the Eoganacht of Munster) or territorial holdings, and served as far as the Alps as mercenaries. Picts seemed more interested in maintaining their territories (mind also that Niall took submission payments from the Picts for a brief period, but that's possibly what led to his death; they got tired of paying them, and he went to Pictland to fight them, was ambushed and killed, though that's only one account of his death; another is he was serving with other Gaelic mercenaries in the Roman army and was killed in the Alps, another was he was strangled at sea by the treasonous Riruire of Leinster). I don't expect you to change faction selection, it just kind of struck me as odd, but I guess more people are familiar with the Picts at the time. However, I do hope Ireland at least isn't using Pictish units; they weren't the same, and we actually know what the Gaelic military structure was (after the Irish converted they wrote an awful lot, and regularly about the army and how it worked, which shows more sophistication than one may expect). They are not remotely similar to late medieval Irish armies (which CA seemed to assume), and dressed completely different than 'Celts'. Gaels were demi-Celts, not genuine Celts, and looked a lot different; that's a problem everyone seems to make, assuming that the inhabitants of Ireland were 'Celts' in the vein of Gauls or Britons, but they were vastly different people who had absorbed Celtic influences but had their own society and aspects of their life.
And now, onto that, sorry if this gets longwinded. The army is divided into three main bodies (though one is mercenaries). Almost everyone carried darts (gassu or gae varieties) or throwing spears. I don't know if it's any use at this point, but here it is.
The Ceithernn (Warband), which became 'kerns', but quite different in this period. The Ceithernn are levies, and divided themselves into a few sub-groupings, the 'Ceithernn' in the strict sense (levies of little trained people; also the lowest rank who ever fought; by law every settlement carried enough darts and small shields for every able bodied man and woman, so this was as close as they came to 'peasants'), the Fianadi (semi-professional soldiers who acted as light infantry), and Bogclocernn (missiles, usually slings), who were provided largely the same as the other lower Ceithernn. The Ceithernn wore tights, shoes, and a thigh length shirt, and typically shaved their faces clean, and wore their hair straight and long. Only the uppermost, the Fianadi, wore any armor (a padded jacket), and often a fur cloak. Fianadi were typically afforded a spear or sword (mind that Gaelic swords were wide, short flat blades usually, which resembled a gladius, and were drawn from the same source, an Iberian sword) in addition to a shield (usually a fairly big round shield) and some javelins. The lower Ceithernn were guaranteed a spear and a clutch of darts, and a little round shield, and little else.
The Cliarthairi ('Troopers'), the volunteer regulars drawn from the ranching and business estates. The Cliarthairi dressed in a knee-length shirt with no trousers, and wore cloaks with colors and patterns (stripes, plaid, or checkers) and that designated their social rank (but not clan affiliation, that's tartan and comes centuries and centuries later, and is Scottish). The upper part of the ignoble Cliarthairi were Dhiolmaini. A Cliarthaire was assigned to a portion of a regiment (a ruta) based on what armaments he possessed. Every Cliarthairi had to provide a spear, two throwing spears, a shield (usually an oval shield), and a dagger. He would then be given a heavy padded coat. If he had wealth or a generous Fuire (a county-king, the lowest rank of Gaelic nobility) or Boaire (the highest ignoble rank, the owner of a farm estate), he would carry a sword of a similar type to what Fianadi carried, but better quality, and usually just a bit longer, and a round helmet. Most Gaelic horse was from the lowest type of Cliarthairi. They had to provide their own horse, but had to qualify on it as well (throwing javelins through rings). Cliarthairi trained one month out of every four months, including one week each of those months with the Ceithernn (and two with the Fianadi), so that the levies could march with them properly and understood how to follow commands. The uppermost part of the ignoble Cliarthairi was usually the Curadi (champions from among ignoblemen).
The Aire (noblemen and their retainers) were technically part of the Cliarthairi. However, the uppermost of them wore robes instead, and fuller helmets with cheekguards, and armor above padding (bronze chest plates, scale armor, lamellar, or mail in the case of the upper most of them). They include the Arras (Oath-Friends, bodyguards of noblemen of the rank of Ruire or higher; that is, the actual kings and immediate sub-kings), the Deaisbard (the bodyguards of Fuire), the Loachi and Milidhi (noble champions and heroes). Mind that one was not necessarily born into a noble position; you would be 'elected' via tanistry. There was no genuinely blood-inheritance. While bloodlines affected the selection of the heir a totally unrelated heir could be and often was selected (that nonsense with 'Celtic noble clansmen' being in their position by birth is completely inaccurate). Wealthy enough, also, were they to afford actual long bladed swords more similar to the spatha, but of local make and design, and derived in general from old styles (Gaels seemed to carry a notable contempt for most Roman goods; they don't show up in Ireland far from the Roman forts on the coast, and, as such, with the exception of some small goods, most Gaelic objects seem largely derived from older designs of Celtic or Iberian objects).
Gaels fought in formations akin to shieldwalls much of the time in the Cliarthairi and up, with charges being done by the Ceithernn or Deisi tribes (Deisi, or vassal, tribes had 'Cliarthairi' but they were equipped lighter, usually totally unarmored but for a shield, and just dressed like Cliarthairi; the Deisi also worked as mercenaries for foreigners regular, and may have been the 'Attacotti' the Romans hired) while the Cliarthairi approached, usually with the Marcshulaidh (cavalry) doing flanking manuevers. The nobles and champions were spread in small blocks in the wall to encourage the men.
Men were organized in multiples of 25 or 50, up to 500 men in a single rutati (a sub-regiment/company). Each one of these groups in the Cliarthairi had a standard (a regional banner usually), a hornblower, and a Cobticc (a captain, drawn from the Ocairi, the farm managers, and Boairi); the Ceithernn acted as 'attachments' and took commands from a captain, but had no standard or horn. Commands were given by the hornblower of the leader of an army, and were repeated by the hornblowers of each troop. There were totally irregular troops, but they were typically mercenaries (Gasraidh, 'rabble') or fanatics in pagan Ireland (naked spearmen were apparently popular with pagan Irish in some capacity; with the exception of these, Gaels never fought shirtless, they could be fined for it). The actual Rutama (the army) obeyed a hierarchy though based on ranks of high social rank ignobles then the noble grades.
Some other notes; mustaches were worn by the middle class and up, but not beards usually. Beards were rarely worn by anyone but upper nobles or the otherwise wealthy. People rose and bathed in a washtub with soap, and shaved clean of their bodyhair (it was considered too dirty and kept dirt on the body, a holdover from the Celtic cleanliness moors). Health and sanitation were not remotely new concepts, though they were bolstered when Christianity was introduced (Ireland became the most major repository of Greek medical knowledge in western Europe outside of Italy during the first half of the dark ages and still had a very dense population until the Renaissance era and ultimately the potato famine; Ireland had a population relatively equal to that of Britain most of the time, but denser overall due to Ireland's smaller size), with actual hospitals being built in the major forts (though two were destroyed by the Norse and the third by the Normans who then built a new one over it). The hermitic and monastic tradition was also heavily refined there (seems silly in BI that Celts didn't have monasteries when they clearly did). Something a bit older; Ireland is home to the oldest intact 'highway' in Europe (from around 200 BC), a wood-plank road that was of a type common of Celts between their major forts (most of the roads remained for some time, but were ripped up in various periods, and replaced with stone roads during the middle ages). Clans, while they 'existed' in a very loose sense, were not and are not a major component of traditional Irish society. The traditional component was a Fine (family), and above that, a Tuath (tribe), the Fine being substantially smaller than later clans, and the Tuath, substantially larger (Noble clansmen again, made no sense; Gaels were not a clan society, that is a later aspect of highland Scotland, and is not from ancient Gaelic society).
I guess I get impassioned over it because this was the beginning of the Irish golden age. Until around 1100, Ireland experienced a period of relative advancement in many fields compared to their neighbors (which slowed down during the 1000s, and recessed in the 1100s as they internalized more), as they hadn't experienced the negative effects of the dark ages, and kept going on their path of development and further then introduced Christianity and imported Greek learning (more Greek developments than Roman, didn't care for most Roman things for some reason). It so regularly gets painted as some anarchic backwater, but in this period it was a major political player and held alliances with the Byzantines and other major Christian powers. The faux-intellecual likes to say 'Ireland was divided up between hundreds of kings' to 'prove' Ireland was anarchic, but seems to forget that 'king' is a generic term in Gaelic society that is interchangeable with 'noble'. Every single noble title except 'Flath' (which just meant a 'noble office' in this period, but came to mean a prince) was derived from a word for king. However, the kings were not indepedent, and were loyal to Coicid Ri (King of a Fifth)/Riruire (King Over Kings), and in the cases of the early genuine high kings like Niall, the Ri Eireannacht (King of the Irish/Ireland, not 'Ard Ri', which is a later term). There were some nominally indepedent lesser kings (like the Fuire of the Aran islands was often indepedent for a long time), but most of them held loyalty to at least a provincial king. Below them were Boaire, who are sometimes maligned by modern speakers as 'kings', but they clearly weren't. They weren't real nobles and could pass on land by blood (that was the only thing children of nobles were guaranteed, they'd inherit a parcel of land, because every noble was also a Boaire, but most Boaires were not nobles). A Boaire was effectively just any wealthy farm owner or businessman, who divided his territory up into 'treb' to be managed by his Ocairi, typically his relatives.
About Britain/Ireland in mod
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I'd love to see a Gaelic faction in the future(*Drools over the thought of Gaels vs.WRE*) and will take this information to heart when thinking of it. Thanks Anthony. 
