Bagnall had between four and five thousand men under him, Tyrone having about the same number, or a little less.  A few years previously a very small body of English troops had been able, as we have seen, to put to flight fully three times their own number of Irish.  In the last dozen years circumstances however had in this respect very materially changed.  The Desmond followers had been for the most part armed only with skeans and spears, much as their ancestors had been under Brian Boru.  One English soldier armed with a gun could put to flight a dozen such assailants as easily as a sportsman a dozen wolves.  Tyrone’s men, on the other hand, were almost as well armed as their antagonists.  Some of these arms had come from Spain, others had been purchased at high prices from the English soldiery, others again from dealers in Dublin and elsewhere.  Man to man, and with equal arms, the Ulster men were fully equal to their assailants, as they were now about to prove.

In August, 1598, Bagnall advancing from the south found Tyrone engaged in a renewed attack upon the fort of Blackwater, which he had invested, and was endeavouring to reduce by famine.  At the advance of Bagnall he withdrew however to a strong position a few miles from the fort, and there awaited attack.

The battle was not long delayed.  The bitter personal hatred which animated the two leaders seems to have communicated itself to the men, and the struggle was unprecedentedly fierce and bloody.  In the thick of the engagement Bagnall, lifting his beaver for a moment to get air, was shot through the forehead and fell.  His fall was followed by the complete rout of his army.  Fifteen hundred soldiers and thirteen officers were killed, thirty-four flags taken, and all the artillery, ammunition, and provisions fell into the victor’s hands.  The fort immediately surrendered, and the remains of the royal army fled in confusion to Armagh, which shortly abandoning, they again fled south, not attempting to reform until they took refuge at last in Dundalk.

Such an event as this could have but one result.  All the waverers were decided, and all determined to throw in their lot with the victor.  The talisman of success is of more vital importance to an Irish army than probably to any other, not because the courage of its soldiers is less, but because their imagination is greater, and more easily worked upon.  A soldier is probably better without too much imagination.  If the auguries are unfavourable he instinctively augments, and exaggerates them tenfold.  Now, however, all the auguries were favourable.  Hope stood high.  The Catholic cause had never before showed so favourably.  From Malin Head to Cape Clear all Ireland was in a wild buzz of excitement, and every fighting kern and galloglass clutched his pike with a sense of coming triumph.

XXIX.

THE ESSEX FAILURE.

Elizabeth was now nearly seventy years of age, and this was her third war in Ireland.  Nevertheless, she and her Council girded themselves resolutely to the struggle.  There could at least be no half-hearted measure now; no petty pleas of economy; no penurious doling out of men and money.  No one, not even the queen herself, could reasonably question the gravity of the crisis.