Essex, writing to Elizabeth in his usual crafty vein, asked whether she chose to "suffer this people to inhabit here for their rent or extirpate them." Doubtless the queen ordered the latter course, and in the campaign of extermination there occurred certain treacheries that even to this day make "English faith" a byword and a hissing in Ireland. The "banquet of Mullaghmast," to which 400 Irish leaders were bidden to attend on pain of having refusal considered as a "lack of amity," turned into a butchery, only one guest escaping with his life. Essex himself, as told by Lecky, accepted the hospitality of Sir Brian O'Neil, and after a banquet, when the Irish chief had retired unsuspiciously to rest, the English general surrounded the house with soldiers, captured his host, with his wife and brother, sent them to Dublin for execution, and massacred the whole body of his friends and retainers.

Yet in 1594 the Ulster Irish rose again under Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell. Had stage and audience been larger, these two leaders would stand in history along with Hannibal. Uniting their people and driving their armies forward with a skill that rose at times to military genius, these indomitable

men beat back the strength of England for ten terrible years. The great victory of the Yellow Ford destroyed one army, and in 1599 a new and larger force was shattered and dispersed.

Lord Mountjoy, chosen by Elizabeth to succeed the ill-fated Earl of Essex, found himself master of only a few miles around Dublin, but new thousands were poured into Ireland, and under sheer weight of numbers the Irish were forced to give ground in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. By the middle of 1601 O'Neill and O'Donnell faced defeat, but at this moment came the longexpected aid from Spain. A small fleet, bearing 3,400 troops, entered the harbor of Kinsale and took possession of the town. The English forces, 12,000 strong, gathered for attack, but down from Ulster swept O'Donnell and O'Neill, hemming in the besiegers with a wall of spears.

Victory was certain with patience, for famine and disease were wasting the English, but the impetuous O'Donnell insisted upon an attack. Through treachery, the English were given information of the Irish plans, the Spanish did not co-operate, a terrible storm separated O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the

battle was lost. The Spanish commander, broken-spirited, basely concluded a surrender that saved himself even while it sealed the fate of O'Neill's rebellion.

This did not mean, however, that resistance was ended. Victory had been too near for hope to die instantly, and under the banner of Donall O'Sullivan, the Lord of Beare and Bantry, various Irish chieftains still kept up the fight, giving exhibitions of courage that in English, French, or American history would have thrilled school-children of the world down through the centuries.

In the castle of Dunboy a garrison of 143 men held out for eighteen days against a force of 4,000 men supported by heavy artillery. Day after day they beat back attack; when the upper walls were demolished they retreated to the cellars, and in the last terrible grapple the wounded survivors crawled with torches to the powder-barrels that all might perish in one final explosion. Even Carew, the English commander, had admiration, if not mercy, reporting that "no one man escaped, but were either slaine, executed, or buried in the ruins; and so obstinate and resolved a defense had not been seen within this kingdom."

From Spain came the sad news of O'Donnell's death; Hugh O'Neill was fighting for his own life in the hills, and O'Sullivan Beare, leaving the glens of South Munster, resolved to join forces with the rebels of Ulster. In the dead of winter he set out at the head of 400 fighting men, carrying in his train 600 women and children, and for two weeks they froze and starved and fought, ever pushing forward indomitably, until at last, when they staggered across the threshold of the castle of the O'Ruarcs, just 35 scarcely human beings remained of the original 1,000.

The policy now adopted by the English was to destroy utterly everything that might sustain life, and in merciless succession the four provinces were laid waste systematically and completely. The few remaining Irish fled to the hills to save their children against the day when Ireland should rise again to expel the invaders, and the terror of the land may be gathered from these boasting reports sent to London by Lord Mountjoy:

We have seen no one man in all Tyrone of late, but dead carcasses merely hunger starved, of which we found divers as we passed. Between Tullaghoge and Toome (seventeen miles) there lay unburied