So Cormac, disciplined in adversity, came to the throne in the year A.D. 227, according to the Four Masters.[29] During the earlier years of his reign he was engaged in continual wars with the provincial kings, who had yet to learn that Cormac was their master in fact as well as of right. We are told that he fought no less than fifty battles against these turbulent kings to vindicate his own position as High King of Erin. The accurate Tighernach furnishes us with brief notices of those various battles against the refractory sub-kings. In one year he fought three battles against the Ultonians. In another he fought four times against the Momonians. The Leinster King, Dunlaing, taking advantage of Cormac's absence from Tara, attacked the royal rath itself, and wantonly slaughtered thirty noble maidens with their attendants--thirty for each--who lived in a separate building on the north-western slope of Tara. Cormac promptly avenged this awful massacre by invading Leinster, and putting to death twelve sub-kings of that province; and besides he increased and enforced the payment of the ancient Borumean or cow-tribute imposed by his predecessors on the same province. The Ultonians, however, were his most inveterate foes; and twice, it seems, they succeeded in "deposing" him, that is, in driving him for some months from Tara. At length, however, the king gained a complete victory over his northern rivals, with the aid of Tadhg, a grandson of Ollioll Olum, and his Munster auxiliaries. Cormac rewarded the Munster hero by giving him, as he had promised, as much of the territory of Meath as Tadhg could drive round in his chariot from the close of the battle till sunset. The veteran hero, spent with loss of blood and battle-toil, still contrived to drive his chariot round a district extending from Duleek to the Liffey, which was afterwards called Cianachta--the land of Cian's descendants. Tadhg's father was Cian, son of Ollioll Olum, hence the name. Cormac, now undisputed master of his kingdom, took measures to preserve the public peace and secure the prosperity of his dominions. He was the first, and we may say also, the last king of Erin, who maintained a standing army to check the arrogance of his turbulent sub-kings. This Fenian militia was, it is said, modelled after the Roman legions, which Cormac might have seen, or heard of at that time in Britain. They were quartered on the people in winter; but in summer they lived on the produce of the chase, and gave all their leisure to martial exercises. By this means they became most accomplished in all feats of arms, so that the fame of these Fenian heroes has come down to our own time in the living traditions of the people. The celebrated Finn Mac Cumhail was their general--a poet too, it was said, he was, and a scholar, as well as a renowned warrior. Ossian, the hero-poet, was his son; and the brave and gentle Oscar, who fell in the fatal field of Gabhra, was his grandson.