The preparations were made in profound silence: a man could travel across the country without perceiving any stir or uneasiness. But on the appointed day, October 23, the day of St. Ignatius, the insurrection everywhere broke out. In Ulster the O’Neils, under the leadership of Phelim, succeeded in obtaining possession of Charlemount, which commanded one of the most important points on the northern roads. The O’Guires surprised Mountjoy; the O’Hanlons Tanderagh in the county of Armagh, and Newry, where they found arms and powder: in the county of Monaghan all, in Cavan, where the sheriff himself headed the rising, nearly all the fortified posts were seized; here and there the government troops, where they met the insurgents, carried away by their impulses, made common cause with them. The insurrection, however, did not fully attain its object. The chief attack was directed against the castle of Dublin, where they hoped to gain great supplies of arms and military stores; and then, with the co-operation of the inhabitants who sympathised with them, they would have been in a position to defy the attacks of England. This did not seem a hard thing to achieve, for the government, which always liked to do the exact opposite of what Strafford had done, had neglected military matters; it had no troops in the city, and the castle was very insufficiently garrisoned, so that it might apparently have been captured by two hundred men. Perhaps it may be affirmed that the English dominion in Ireland was saved through some natives of Irish origin having been won to Protestantism. The conspirators applied to one of these, Owen Conolly, to gain his accession to their cause. He was an opponent of Strafford, as such had come into contact with the zealous [A.D. 1641.] Puritans during a short stay in England, and by them had been strengthened in the Protestantism which he had always professed[272]: he abhorred the religious tendency of the Irish rising, and on the evening of the 22nd gave information. The government awoke from perfect security to a sight of their terrible danger: they had still just time to arrest the leaders who were already in the city, and to secure the gates of the castle and city, so that those who came up, seeing that they were discovered, obeyed the order to disperse. Several other places also held out, as Londonderry and Carrickfergus, and afforded places to which the Protestants might fly. But no one can paint the rage and cruelty which was vented, far and wide over the land, upon the unarmed and defenceless. Many thousands perished: their corpses filled the land and served as food for the kites. The elemental forces, which hitherto had been repressed by the strong hand of the government, arose in the wildest licence: religious abhorrence entered into a dreadful league with the fury of national hatred. The motives of the Sicilian Vespers and of the night of St. Bartholomew were united. Sir Phelim, who at once was