hereupon, continues the despatch, "The twenty-third day, being Tuesday
next before Easter day, there was a galiard assault given before five
o'clock in the morning, and the base court entered; at which entry there
were slain of the ward of the castle about sixty, and of your Grace's
army no more but John Griffin, yeoman of your most honourable guard, and
six others which were killed with ordnance of the castle at the entry.
Howbeit, if it had not pleased God to preserve us, it were to be
marvelled that we had no more slain. After the base court was thus won,
we assaulted the great castle, which within a while yielded."
Thirty-seven of the remaining garrison were taken prisoners, with two
officers, two Irish ecclesiastics who had distinguished themselves in
promoting the insurrection, and one of the murderers of the archbishop.

The place was taken by fair fighting, it seems, without need of
treachery; and the capture by storm of a fortified castle was a
phenomenon altogether new to the Irish, who had yet to learn the effect
of well-served cannon upon walls.[372]

The work at length was begun in earnest, and in order to drive the
lesson home into the understanding of the people, and to instruct them
clearly that rebellion and murder were not any longer to be tolerated,
the prisoners were promptly brought up before the provost-marshal, and
twenty-six of them there and then, under the ruins of their own den,
were hung up for sign to the whole nation.[373]

[Sidenote: The Pardon of Maynooth. The effect of it upon the people.]

[Sidenote: The rebellion vanishes.]

A judicial operation of this kind had never before been witnessed in
Ireland within the known cycle of its history, and the effect of it was
proportionately startling. In the presence of this "Pardon of Maynooth,"
as it was called, the phantom of rebellion vanished on the spot. It was
the first serious blow which was struck in the war, and there was no
occasion for a second. In a moment the noise and bravado which had
roared from Donegal to Cork was hushed into a supplication for
forgiveness. Fitzgerald was hastening out of Thomond to the relief of
his fortress. When they heard of the execution, his army melted from him
like a snowdrift. The confederacy of the chiefs was broken up; first
one fell away from it, and then another; and before the summer had come,
O'Brien of Inchiquin, O'Connor, who had married Fitzgerald's sister, and
the few scattered banditti of