The next person to appear upon the scene is Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose brilliant mercurial figure flashes for a moment across the wild and troubled stage of Ireland, only the next to vanish like some Will-o’-the-wisp into an abyss of darkness and disaster.

At that moment his fame as a soldier stood as high if not higher than that of any of his cotemporaries.  If Raleigh or Sidney had more military genius, if his old rival, Sir Henry Norris, was a more capable general, the young earl had eclipsed all others in mere dash and brilliancy, and within the last few years had dazzled the eyes of the whole nation by the success of his famous feat in Spain, “The most brilliant exploit,” says Lord Macaulay, “achieved by English arms upon the Continent, between Agincourt and Blenheim.”

[Illustration:  ASKEATON CASTLE, THE PROPERTY OF THE EARLS OF DESMOND. (From the “Pacata Hibernia,” of Sir G. Carew.)]

Essex was now summoned to the queen and given the supreme command in Ireland, with orders to proceed at once to the reduction of Tyrone.  An army of 20,000 infantry and 1,300 horse were placed under him, and the title of Lord-Lieutenant conferred, which had not been granted to any one under royal blood for centuries.  He started with a brilliant train, including a number of well-born volunteers, who gladly offered their services to the popular favourite, and landed in Dublin early in the month of April, 1599.

His disasters seem to have dated from the very moment of his setting foot on Irish soil.  Contrary to orders, he had appointed his relative, the Earl of Southampton, to the command of the horse, an appointment which even after peremptory orders from the queen he declined to cancel.  He went south when he was eagerly expected to go north.  Spent a whole fortnight in taking the single castle of Cahir; lingered about the Limerick woods in pursuit of a nephew of the late Desmond, derisively known as the “Sugane Earl,” or “Earl of Straw,” who in the absence of the young heir had collected the remnants of the Desmond followers about him, and was in league with Tyrone.  A few weeks later a party of English soldiers were surprised by the O’Byrnes in Wicklow, and fled shamefully; while almost at the same moment—­by a misfortune which was certainly no fault of Essex’s, but which went to swell the list of his disasters—­Sir Conyers Clifford, the gallant governor of Connaught, was defeated by the O’Donnells in a skirmish among the Curlew mountains, and both he and Sir Alexander Ratcliffe, the second in command, left dead upon the field.

Essex’s very virtues and better qualities, in fact, were all against him in this fatal service.  His natural chivalrousness, his keen perception of injustice, a certain elevation of mind which debarred him from taking the stereotyped English official view of the intricate Irish problem; an independence of vulgar motives which made him prone to see two sides of a question—­even where his own interests required that he should see but one—­all these were against him; all tended to make him seem vacillating and ineffective; all helped to bring about that failure which has made his six months of command in Ireland the opprobrium ever since of historians.