In the Royalist camp, the state of affairs was meanwhile absolutely desperate.  The Munster colonists had gone over almost to a man to the enemy.  The “panther Inchiquin” had taken another bound in the same direction.  The quarrels between Ormond and the old Irish party had grown bitterer than ever The hatred of the extreme Catholic party towards him appears to have been if anything rather deeper than their hatred to Cromwell, and all the recent disasters were charged by them to his want of generalship.  The young king had been announced at one moment to be upon the point of arriving in person in Ireland.  “One must go and die there, for it is shameful to live elsewhere!” he is reported to have cried, with a depth of feeling very unlike his usual utterances.  He got as far as Jersey, but there paused.  Ireland under Cromwell’s rule was not exactly a pleasant royal residence, and, on the whole, he appears to have thought it wiser to go no further.

His signature, a year later, of the Covenant, in return for the Scotch allegiance, brought about a final collapse of the always thinly cemented pact in Ireland.  The old Catholic party thereupon broke wholly away from Ormond, and after a short struggle he was again driven into exile.  From this time forward, there was no longer a royal party of any sort left in the country.

Under Hugh O’Neill, a cousin of Owen Roe, who—­fortunately, perhaps, for himself—­had died shortly after Cromwell’s arrival, the struggle was carried on for some time longer.  As in later times, Limerick was one of the last places to yield.  Despite the evident hopelessness of the struggle, Hugh O’Neill and his half-starved men held it with a courage which awoke admiration even amongst the Cromwellians.  When it was surrendered the Irish officers received permission to take service abroad.  Galway, with a few other towns and castles, which still held out, now surrendered.  The eight years’ civil war was at last over, and nothing remained for the victors to do but to stamp out the last sparks, and call upon the survivors to pay the forfeit.

[Illustration:  ST. COLUMBA’S ORATORY, KELLS.]

XL.

CROMWELL’S METHODS.

The total loss of life during-those weary eight years of war and anarchy has been estimated at no less than six hundred thousand lives, and there seems to be no reason to think that these figures are exaggerated.  Whereas in 1641 the population of Ireland was nearly one and a half millions, at the end of 1649 it was considerably under one.  More than a third, therefore, of the entire population had disappeared bodily.

Nor were the survivors left in peace to bind up their wounds and mourn their slain.  In England, once the fighting was over, and the swords sheathed, there was little desire to carry the punishment further; and the vanquished were, for the most part, able to retire in more or less melancholy comfort to their homes.  In Ireland the reverse was the case.  There the struggle had been complicated by a bitterness unknown elsewhere, and had aroused a keen and determined thirst for vengeance, one which the cessation of hostilities only seemed to stimulate into greater vehemence.