All the captains, without exception, followed on the same side.

"What was to be done, then ?" asked Lord Grey, impatiently.

"Would they have him murder them all in cold blood ?" And for a while every man, knowing that it must come to that, and yet not daring to say it; till Sir Warham St.Leger, the marshal of Munster, spoke out stoutly: "Foreigners had been scoffing them too long and too truly with waging these Irish wars as if they meant to keep them alive, rather than end them.

Mercy and faith to every Irishman who would show mercy and faith, was his motto; but to invaders, no mercy.

Ireland was England's vulnerable point; it might be some day her ruin; a terrible example must be made of those who dare to touch the sore.