The lord deputy expected to meet Randolph at Lifford; but struck with the singular advantages presented by Derry, then an island, for a military position, he pitched his tents there, and set the troops to work in erecting fortifications.  Nothing then stood on the site of the present city, save a decrepid and deserted monastery of Augustine monks, which was said to have been built in the time of St. Columba.

Sidney stayed a few days at Derry, and then, leaving Randolph with 650 men, 350 pioneers, and provisions for two months, he marched on to Donegal.  This was once a thriving town, inhabited by English colonists.  At the time of Sidney’s arrival it was a pile of ruins, ’in the midst of which, like a wild beast’s den, strewed round with mangled bones, rose the largest and strongest castle which he had seen in Ireland.  It was held by one of O’Donel’s kinsmen, to whom Shane, to attach him to his cause, had given his sister to wife.  At the appearance of the old chief with the English army, it was immediately surrendered.  O’Donel was at last rewarded for his fidelity and sufferings; and the whole tribe, with eager protestations of allegiance, gave sureties for their future loyalty.’  Sidney next directed his march to Ballyshannon, and on by the coast of Sligo.  Passing over the bogs and mountains of Mayo, they came into Roscommon, and then, ’leaving behind them as fruitful a country as was in England or Ireland all utterly waste,’ the army crossed the Shannon at Athlone, swimming ‘for lack of a bridge.’  The results of this progress are thus summed up by Mr. Froude.  ’Twenty castles had been taken as they went along and left in hands that could be trusted.  In all that long and painful journey Sidney was able to say that there had not died of sickness but three persons; men and horses were brought back in full health and strength, while her majesty’s honour was re-established among the Irishry, and grown to no small veneration—­“an expedition comparable only to Alexander’s journey into Bactria,” wrote an admirer of Sidney to Cecil—­revealing what to Irish eyes appeared the magnitude of the difficulty, and forming a measure of the effect which it produced.  The English deputy had bearded Shane in his stronghold, burned his houses, pillaged his people, and had fastened a body of police in the midst of them, to keep them waking in the winter nights.  He had penetrated the hitherto impregnable fortresses of mountain and morass; the Irish who had been faithful to England were again in safe possession of their lands and homes.  The weakest, maddest, and wildest Celts were made aware that, when the English were once roused to effort, they could crush them as the lion crushes the jackal.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Vol. viii. p.407.]