d prefer skirmishes
and petty warfare ... and are obstinately opposed to the English
government."

They did not like attacking or defending fortified places, he also
believed. It was only his experience. The campaigns of Shane O'Neill,
a bold but ill-balanced warrior, were full of such attacks, but one
potent cause for Irish reluctance to make sieges a strong point of
their strategy was that the strongest fortresses were on the sea. An
inexhaustible, powerful enemy who held the sea was not in the end to
be denied on sea or land, but the Irish in stubborn despair or
supreme indifference to fate fought on. Religious rancor was added to
racial hate. Most of the English settlers, or "garrison," as they
came to be called, had become Protestants at the royal order. Ruin
perched upon Ireland's hills and made a wilderness of her fertile
valleys. The Irish chieftains with their faithful followers moved
from place to place in woods and hollows of the hills. English
colonists were settled on confiscated lands, and were harried by
those who had been driven from their homes. It was war among graves.
At last O'Neill made composition with the government when all was
lost in the field, but the passionate Irish resolve never to submit
still stalked like a ghost, as if it could not perish.

When Elizabeth died it was thought that better things were coming to
Ireland with James I., the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Nothing of
the kind. That curiously minded creature at once made an ingenuous
proclamation:

"Whereas his Majesty was informed that his subjects of Ireland had
been deceived by _a false report that his Majesty was disposed to
allow them liberty of conscience_ and the free choice of religion,
now, etc." Fresh "transplanting" of English and Scotch settlers on
the lands of the Irish was the gist of his answer to the "false
reports." So again the war of surprise, ambush, raid, and foray went
on in a hundred places at once, but the result was that the English
power was even more firmly seated than before.

In the time of Charles I. there were terrible slaughters both of
Protestants and Catholics. Patriotism and loyalty as moving causes
had disappeared, but religion fiercely took their place. With
Cromwell, the religious persecution took on an apocalyptic note of
massacre, but the Irish were still showing that they were there with
arms in their hands. The names of Owen Roe O'Neill and his splendid
victory, in 1646, at Benburb ov