However, the Battle of the Braes has come to be regarded as a historic event because it signalled a decisive change of direction from past episodes of protest. For one thing, it had been the people who first took the initiative to try to regain grazing rights which they had lost over seventeen years before. This disturbance was therefore proactive rather than reactive. For another, the rent strike, which had been employed with deadly effect on numerous Irish estates in earlier years, was a new tactic which proprietors found difficult to combat without contemplating mass eviction, a policy that
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