The desolation which, at this period more than any other, afflicted Ireland, might easily have been averted, had there been a central government strong enough to rally around it the hearts and arms of the people. But the monarch was merely a titular one, and less powerful than his vassals. Instead of harmony there was dissension only among the members of the body politic; and this evil was aggravated a hundred fold by the mischievous practice of hiring the aid of strangers. When, in 837, another powerful reinforcement arrived from the north, and commenced its depredations on the banks of the Liffey and the Boyne, the evil which, since 795, had afflicted the country, was increased a thousand fold. There was not, says the eloquent historian of Ireland, “a single spot of renown in the ecclesiastical history of our country, not one of those numerous religious foundations, the seats and monuments of the early piety of her sons, that was not frequently, during this period, made the scene of the most fearful and brutal excesses.” Let it not be forgotten that this frequency of destruction evinces the zeal of the Irish in rebuilding their holy places, and the intrepidity with which they repaired to them, even when assured that they should be there met by incarnate demons, and sent to aggrandise the “noble army of martyrs.” In general the higher dignitaries were spared for the sake of the ransom. The mischief was, that the head quarters of Turges always presented a rallying-point for the defeated Northmen, and for such new comers as arrived on the coast. The way in which this veteran chief at last met his fate, is romantically told by Giraldus de Barri. He had fallen in love, says that amusing Welchman, with the daughter of the king of Meath, and he made known his love to the father. Pretending to comply with his suit, a day was appointed on which Turges, attended by fifteen followers, was to meet his bride, accompanied by as many maidens, on a small island of Loch-Var. To the place of meeting, however, the Irish lady was escorted by fifteen young men in the female garb, and they destroyed the tyrant. Probably the relation of the native annalists, that he was drowned in that lake by the king of Meath, is the true one. However this be, his death was a fatal blow to the Scandinavian power in Ireland. From this period (844) we read, indeed, of their depredations, of their formidable combinations, even of their victories; but there was no longer the same hope, the same confidence in their invincibility.[296] [Sidenote: 849 to 872.]