Armagh, in order to make it a fortified depot for his
stores. He then fell back into Meath, where he was joined by Ormond
with flying companies of galloglasses. Soon after a singular attack
was made on the English garrison at Armagh. Seeing a number of kernes
scattered about the town, the officer in command sallied out upon
them, when O'Neill suddenly appeared, accompanied by the Catholic
Archbishop, on a hill outside the walls. 'The English had but time to
recover their defences when the whole Irish army, led by a procession
of monks, and every man carrying a fagot, came on to burn the
cathedral over their heads. The monks sang a mass; the primate walked
three times up and down the lines, willing the rebels to go forward,
for God was on their side. Shane swore a great oath not to turn his
back while an Englishman was alive; and with scream and yell his men
came on. _Fortunately there were no Scots among them._ The English,
though out-numbered ten to one, stood steady in the churchyard, and,
after a sharp hand-to-hand fight, drove back the howling crowd. The
Irish retired into the friars' houses outside the cathedral close, set
them on fire, and ran for their lives.'

'So far,' adds Mr. Froude, 'all was well. After this there was no more
talk of treating, and by the 18th, Sussex and Ormond were themselves
at Armagh with a force--had there been skill to direct it--sufficient
to have swept Tyrone from border to border.'

The English historian exults in the valour of the small garrison of
his countrymen, well-disciplined and sheltered behind a strong wall,
in resisting the assault of a howling multitude of mere Irish, and he
observes significantly, that 'fortunately there were no _Scots_ among
them.' But he is obliged immediately after to record an Irish victory
so signal that, according to the lord deputy himself, 'the fame of the
English army so hardly gotten, was now vanished.' Yet Mr. Froude does
not, in this, lay the blame of defeat upon the _nationality_ of the
vanquished. It is only the Irish nation that is made the scape-goat in
such cases.

It was July, but the weather was wet, the rivers were high, Ormond was
ill, Sussex would not leave his friend, and so the English army stayed
in town doing nothing till the end of the month, when their failing
provisions admonished them that an Irish hosting would be desirable.
O'Neill, who seems to have been aware of the state of things,
presented the appropriate temptatio