y the worse hearts. As Curran put it in
1817--"The triumph of England over Ireland is the triumph of guilt
over innocence."

The Earl of Essex who came to Ireland in 1599 with one of the largest
forces of English troops that, up to then, had ever been dispatched
into Ireland (18,000 men), had ascribed his complete failure, in
writing to the Queen, to the physical superiority of the Irish:

"These rebels are more in number than your Majesty's army and have
(though I do unwillingly confess it), better bodies, and perfecter
use of their arms, than those men who your Majesty sends over."

The Queen, who followed the war in Ireland with a swelling wrath on
each defeat, and a growing fear that the Spaniards would keep their
promise to land aid to the Irish princes, O'Neill and O'Donnell,
issued "instructions" and a set of "ordinances" for the conduct of the
war in Ireland, which, while enjoining recourse to the usual methods
outside the field of battle--(i.e. starvation, "politic courses,"
assassination of leaders; and the sowing of dissension by means of
bribery and promises), required for the conflict, that her weaker
soldiers should be protected against the onslaught of the unarmoured
Irishmen by head pieces of steel. She ordered "every soldier to be
enforced to wear a murrion, because the enemy is encouraged by
the advantage of arms to _come to the sword_ wherein he commonly
prevaileth."

One of the generals of the Spanish King, Philip III, who came to
Ireland in the winter of 1601 with a handful of Spanish troops (200
men), to reinforce the small expedition of de Aguila in Kinsale, thus
reported on the physical qualities of the Irish in a document that
still lies in Salamanca in the archives of the old Irish College. it
was written by Don Pedro De Zubiarr on the 16th of January, 1602, on
his return to the Asturias. Speaking of the prospect of the campaign,
he wrote: "If we had brought arms for 10,000 men we could have had
them, for they are very eager to carry on the war against the English.
The Irish are very strong and well shaped, accustomed to endure hunger
and toil, and very courageous in fight."

Perhaps the most vivid testimony to the innate superiority of the
Irishman as a soldier is given in a typically Irish challenge issued
in the war of 1641. The document has a lasting interest for it
displays not only the "better body" of the Irishman of that day, but
something of his better heart as well, that still r