They would smash through walls, tears up rooftops and burn houses to the ground in order to get these people out. Soon, the police started showing up at the farmers' doorsteps with battering rams, ladders, and even torches. They barricaded their homes and organized mobs who, when the police came to kick them out, were ready and willing to fight them off. And other times, it just meant kicking them out onto the streets – even if they hadn’t missed a single payment.īut the Irish farmers refused to move. Sometimes, that meant cranking up their rents to rates that no person could afford.
They fought back – and started the Irish Land War.Ĭountless farmers across Ireland at the time lived on rented land owned by Englishmen, most of which were absentee landlords who would hire corrupt middlemen to squeeze every possible penny out of their tenants. English landlords started evicting tenants across Ireland – but the farmers had had enough. In the mid-19th century, after years of being ravaged by famine, Irish farmers were being forced out of their own homes.
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