mond failed, or turned
against his country, God would avenge it on him. But Desmond's reply
was an offer to the deputy 'to go against the rebel with all his
power. The Scots also held back.' Shane offered them all Antrim to
join him, all the cattle in the country, and the release of Sorleyboy
from captivity; but Antrim and its cattle they believed that they
could recover for themselves, and James M'Connell had left a brother
Allaster, who was watching with eager eyes for an opportunity to
revenge the death of his kinsman, and the dishonour with which Shane
had stained his race.

In the meantime troops and money came over from England, and on
September 17, Colonel Randolph was at the head of an army in Lough
Foyle; and the lord deputy took the field accompanied by Kildare, the
old O'Donel, Shane Maguire, and O'Dogherty. So that this war against
O'Neill was waged for the dispossessed Irish chiefs as well as for
England. Armagh city they found a mere heap of blackened stones.
Marching without obstruction to Ben brook, one of O'Neill's best and
largest houses, which they found 'utterly burned and razed to the
ground,' thence they went on towards Clogher, 'through pleasant
fields, and villages so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm
was like it.' The Bishop of Clogher was out with Shane in the field.
'His well-fattened flock were devoured by Sidney's men as by a flight
of Egyptian locusts.' 'There we stayed,' said Sidney, 'to destroy the
corn; we burned the country for 124 miles compass, and we found by
experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most
harm.' But he says not a word of the harm he was doing to the poor
innocent peasantry, whose industry had produced the crops, to the
terrified women and children whom he was thus consigning to a horrible
lingering death by famine. This was a strange commencement of his own
programme to treat the people with justice.

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 march