It was July, but the weather was wet, the rivers were high, Ormond was ill, Sussex would not leave his friend, and so the English army stayed in town doing nothing till the end of the month, when their failing provisions admonished them that an Irish hosting would be desirable.  O’Neill, who seems to have been aware of the state of things, presented the appropriate temptation.  Spies brought the lord deputy word that in the direction of Cavan there were herds of cows, which an active party might easily capture.  These spies, with ardent professions of loyalty, offered to guide the English troops to the place where the booty would be found, their object being to draw them among bogs and rivers where they might be destroyed.  The lord deputy did not think it necessary to accompany this host, which consisted of 200 horse, 500 men-at-arms, and some hundreds of the loyal Irish of the Pale.  Shane intended to attack them the first night while resting on their march.  But they escaped by an alteration of the route.  Next morning they were marching on the open plain, miles from any shelter of hill or wood, when the Irish chief, with less than half their number, pursued them, and fell upon the cavalry in the rear, with the cry, ‘Laundarg Aboo—­the Bloody Hand—­Strike for O’Neill!’ The English cavalry commanded by Wingfield, seized with terror, galloped into the ranks of their own men-at-arms, rode them down, and extricated themselves only to fly panic-stricken from the field to the crest of an adjoining hill.  Meantime, Shane’s troopers rode through the broken ranks, cutting down the footmen on all sides.  The yells and cries were heard far off through the misty morning air.  Fitzwilliam, who had the chief command, was about a mile in advance at the head of another body of cavalry, when a horseman was observed by him, galloping wildly in the distance and waving his handkerchief as a signal.  He returned instantly, followed by his men, and flung himself into the melee.  Shane receiving such a charge of those few men, and seeing more coming after, ran no farther risk, blew a recall note, and withdrew unpursued.  Fitzwilliam’s courage alone prevented the army from being annihilated.  Out of 500 English 50 lay dead, and 50 more were badly wounded.  The survivors fell back to Armagh ’so dismayed as to be unfit for farther service.’  Pitiable were the lamentations of the lord deputy to Cecil on this catastrophe.  It was, said he, ’by cowardice the dreadfullest beginning that ever was seen in Ireland.  Ah!  Mr. Secretary, what unfortunate star hung over me that day to draw me, that never could be persuaded to be absent from the army at any time—­to be then absent for a little disease of another man? The rearward was the best and picked soldiers in all this land. If I or any stout man had been that day with them, we had made an end of Shane—­which is now farther off than ever it was.  Never before durst Scot or Irishman look on Englishmen in plain or wood