In the meantime troops and money came over from England, and on September 17, Colonel Randolph was at the head of an army in Lough Foyle; and the lord deputy took the field accompanied by Kildare, the old O'Donel, Shane Maguire, and O'Dogherty. So that this war against O'Neill was waged for the dispossessed Irish chiefs as well as for England. Armagh city they found a mere heap of blackened stones. Marching without obstruction to Ben brook, one of O'Neill's best and largest houses, which they found 'utterly burned and razed to the ground,' thence they went on towards Clogher, 'through pleasant fields, and villages so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm was like it.' The Bishop of Clogher was out with Shane in the field. 'His well-fattened flock were devoured by Sidney's men as by a flight of Egyptian locusts.' 'There we stayed,' said Sidney, 'to destroy the corn; we burned the country for 124 miles compass, and we found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most harm.' But he says not a word of the harm he was doing to the poor innocent peasantry, whose industry had produced the crops, to the terrified women and children whom he was thus consigning to a horrible lingering death by famine. This was a strange commencement of his own programme to treat the people with justice.
The lord deputy expected to meet Randolph at Lifford; but struck with the singular advantages presented by Derry, then an island, for a military position, he pitched his tents there, and set the troops to work in erecting fortifications. Nothing then stood on the site of the present city, save a decrepid and deserted monastery of Augustine monks, which was said to have been built in the time of St. Columba.
Sidney stayed a few days at Derry, and then, leaving Randolph with 650 men, 350 pioneers, and provisions for two months, he marched on to Donegal. This was once a thriving town, inhabited by English colonists. At the time of Sidney's arrival it was a pile of ruins, 'in the midst of which, like a wild beast's den, strewed round with mangled bones, rose the largest and strongest castle which he had seen in Ireland. It was held by one of O'Donel's kinsmen, to whom Shane, to attach him to his cause, had given his sister to wife. At the appearance of the old chief with the English army, it was immediately surrendered. O'Donel was at last rewarded for his fidelity and sufferings; and the whole tribe, with eager protestations of allegiance, gave sureties for their future loyalty.' Sidney next directed his march to Ballyshannon, and on by the coast of Sligo. Passing over the bogs and mountains of Mayo, they came into Roscommon, and then, 'leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in England or Ireland all utterly waste,' the army crossed the Shannon at Athlone, swimming 'for lack of a bridge.' The results of this progress are thus summed up by Mr. Froude. 'Twenty castles had been taken as they went along and left in hands that could be trusted. In all that long and painful journey Sidney was able to say that there had not died of sickness but three persons; men and horses were brought back in full health and strength, while her majesty's honour was re-established among the Irishry, and grown to no small veneration—"an expedition comparable only to Alexander's journey into Bactria," wrote an admirer of Sidney to Cecil—revealing what to Irish eyes appeared the magnitude of the difficulty, and forming a measure of the effect which it produced. The English deputy had bearded Shane in his stronghold, burned his houses, pillaged his people, and had fastened a body of police in the midst of them, to keep them waking in the winter nights. He had penetrated the hitherto impregnable fortresses of mountain and morass; the Irish who had been faithful to England were again in safe possession of their lands and homes. The weakest, maddest, and wildest Celts were made aware that, when the English were once roused to effort, they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal.'[9]
O'Neill had followed the lord deputy to Lifford, and then marched on to the Pale, expecting to retaliate upon the invaders with impunity. But he was encountered by Warren St. Leger, lost 200 men, and was at first hunted back over the border. He again returned, however, with 'a main army,' burned several villages, and in a second fight with St. Leger, compelled the English to retire, 'for lack of more aid;' but they held together in good order, and Shane, with the Derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O'Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was fastened in his unguarded side.'
In order to accomplish this object, he hovered cautiously about the Foyle, watching for an opportunity to attack the garrison. But Randolph fell upon him by surprise, and after a short sharp action, the O'Neills gave way. O'Dogherty with his Irish horse chased the flying crowd of his countrymen, killing every person he caught; and Shane lost 400 men, the bravest of his warriors. The English success was dearly bought, for Randolph leading the pursuit, was struck by a random shot, and fell dead from his horse.
Before the Irish chief could recover from this great disaster, Sidney 'struck in again beyond Dundalk, burning his farms and capturing his castles. The Scots came in over the Bann, wasting the country all along the river side. Allaster M'Connell, like some chief of Sioux Indians, sent to the captain of Knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and the wives and bairns that he had slain. Like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate Shane on every point where they could fasten; while in December the old O'Donel came out over the mountains from Donegal, and paid back O'Neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile. The tide of fortune had turned too late for his own revenge: worn out with his long sufferings, he fell from his horse, at the head of his people, with the stroke of death upon him; but before he died, he called his kinsmen about him, and prayed them to be true to England and their queen, and Hugh O'Donel, who succeeded to his father's command, went straight to Derry, and swore allegiance to the English crown.
'Tyrone was now smitten in all its borders. Magennis was the last powerful chief who still adhered to Shane's fortunes; the last week in the year Sidney carried fire and sword through his country, and left him not a hoof remaining. It was to no purpose that Shane, bewildered by the rapidity with which disasters were piling themselves upon him, cried out now for pardon and peace; the deputy would not answer his letter, and nothing was talked of but his extirpation by war only.'[10]
The war, however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the Derry garrison. By the death of their commander left 'a headless people,' they suffered from want of food and clothing. They also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead. By the middle of November 'the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;' many of the best men went away because there was none to stay them. The secret of the dreadful malady—something like the cholera—was discovered in the fact that the soldiers had built their sleeping quarters over the burial-ground of the abbey, 'and the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them.' The officer who succeeded to the command applied the most effectual remedy. He led the men at once into the pure air of the enemies' country, and they returned after a few days driving before them 700 horses and 1,000 cattle. He assured Sidney, that with 300 additional men, he could so hunt the rebel, that ere May was passed, he should not show his face in Ulster. But the 'Black Death' returned after a brief respite; and, says Mr. Froude, in the reeking vapour of the charnel-house, it was indifferent whether its victims returned in triumph from a stricken field, or were cooped within their walls by hordes of savage enemies. By the middle of March there were left out of 1,100 but 300 available to fight. Reinforcements had been raised at Liverpool, but they were countermanded when on the point of sailing. The English council was discussing the propriety of removing the colony to the Bann, when accident finished the work which the plague had begun, and spared them the trouble of deliberation. The huts and sheds round the monastery had been huddled together for the convenience of fortification. At the end of April, probably after a drying east wind, a fire broke out in a blacksmith's forge, which spread irresistibly through the entire range of buildings. The flames at last reached the powder magazine: thirty men were blown to pieces by the explosion, and the rest, paralysed by this last addition to their misfortunes, made no more effort to extinguish the conflagration. St. Loo, with all that remained of that ill-fated party, watched from their provision boats in the river the utter destruction of the settlement which had begun so happily, and then sailed drearily away to find a refuge in Knockfergus. Such was the fate of the first efforts for the building of Londonderry; and below its later glories, as so often happens in this world, lay the bones of many a hundred gallant men who lost their lives in laying its foundations. Elizabeth, who in the immediate pressure of calamity resumed at once her noble nature, 'perceiving the misfortune not to come of treason, but of God's ordinance,' bore it well; she was willing to do that should be wanting to repair the loss; and Cecil was able to write cheerfully to Sidney, telling him to make the best of the accident and let it stimulate him to fresh exertions.'[11]
In the meantime Shane O'Neill, hard pressed on every side, earnestly implored the cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, in the name of their great brother the duke, to bring the Fleur-de-lys to the rescue of Ireland from the grasp of the ungodly English. 'Help us,' he cried, blending Irish-like flattery with entreaty: 'when I was in England, I saw your noble brother, the Marquis d'Elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow. If the most Christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us. I alone in this land sustain his cause.' To propitiate his holiness, Primate Daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and Creagh received his crosier, and was taken into O'Neill's household.
'All was done,' says the English historian, 'to deserve favour in earth and heaven, but all was useless. The Pope sat silent or muttering his anathemas with bated breath. The Guises had work enough on hand at home to heed the Irish wolf, whom the English, having in vain attempted to trap or poison, were driving to bay with more lawful weapons.' His own people, divided and dispirited, began now to desert the failing cause. In May, by a concerted movement, the deputy with the light horse of the Pale overran Tyrone, and robbed the farmers of 3,000 cattle, while the O'Donels mustered their forces for a great contest with Shane, now struggling, almost hopelessly, to maintain his supremacy. The O'Neills and O'Donels met on the banks of the Foyle near Lifford. The former were superior in number, being about 3,000 men. After a brief fight 'the O'Neills broke and fled; the enemy was behind them, the river was in front; and when the Irish battle cries had died away over moor and mountain, but 200 survived of those fierce troopers, who were to have cleared Ireland for ever from the presence of the Saxons. For the rest, the wolves were snarling over their bodies, and the seagulls whirling over them with scream and cry, as they floated down to their last resting-place beneath the quiet waters of Lough Foyle. Shane's foster-brethren, faithful to the last, were all killed; he himself with half-a-dozen comrades rode for his life, pursued by the avenging furies. His first desperate intention was to throw himself at Sidney's feet, with a slave's collar upon his neck; but his secretary, Neil M'Kevin, persuaded him that his cause was not yet absolutely without hope. Sorleyboy was still a prisoner in the castle at Lough Neagh, the Countess of Argyle had remained with her ravisher through his shifting fortunes, had continued to bear him children, and notwithstanding his many infidelities, was still attached to him. M'Kevin told him that for their sakes, or at their intercession, he might find shelter and perhaps help among the kindred of the M'Connells.'