Bacon wished, as he said afterwards, to see him “with a white staff in his hand, as my Lord of Leicester had,” an honour and ornament to the Court in the eyes of the people and foreign ambassadors.  But Essex was not fit for the part which Bacon urged upon him, that of an obsequious and vigilant observer of the Queen’s moods and humours.  As time went on, things became more and more difficult between him and his strange mistress; and there were never wanting men who, like Cecil and Raleigh, for good and bad reasons, feared and hated Essex, and who had the craft and the skill to make the most of his inexcusable errors.  At last he allowed himself, from ambition, from the spirit of contradiction, from the blind passion for doing what he thought would show defiance to his enemies, to be tempted into the Irish campaign of 1599.  Bacon at a later time claimed credit for having foreseen and foretold its issue.  “I did as plainly see his overthrow, chained as it were by destiny to that journey, as it is possible for any man to ground a judgment on future contingents.”  He warned Essex, so he thought in after years, of the difficulty of the work; he warned him that he would leave the Queen in the hands of his enemies:  “It would be ill for her, ill for him, ill for the State.”  “I am sure,” he adds, “I never in anything in my life dealt with him in like earnestness by speech, by writing, and by all the means I could devise.”  But Bacon’s memory was mistaken.  We have his letters.  When Essex went to Ireland, Bacon wrote only in the language of sanguine hope—­so little did he see “overthrow chained by destiny to that journey,” that “some good spirit led his pen to presage to his Lordship success;” he saw in the enterprise a great occasion of honour to his friend; he gave prudent counsels, but he looked forward confidently to Essex being as “fatal a captain to that war, as Africanus was to the war of Carthage.”  Indeed, however anxious he may have been, he could not have foreseen Essex’s unaccountable and to this day unintelligible failure.  But failure was the end, from whatever cause; failure, disgraceful and complete.  Then followed wild and guilty but abortive projects for retrieving his failure, by using his power in Ireland to make himself formidable to his enemies at Court, and even to the Queen herself.  He intrigued with Tyrone; he intrigued with James of Scotland; he plunged into a whirl of angry and baseless projects, which came to nothing the moment they were discussed.  How empty and idle they were was shown by his return against orders to tell his own story at Nonsuch, and by thus placing himself alone and undeniably in the wrong, in the power of the hostile Council.  Of course it was not to be thought of that Cecil should not use his advantage in the game.  It was too early, irritated though the Queen was, to strike the final blow.  But it is impossible not to see, looking back over the miserable history, that Essex was treated in a way which was certain,