Mountjoy, after frequent indecisive skirmishes with O’Neill, amused himself by offering a reward of £2,000 for that chieftain’s head, and smaller amounts for those of his most important lieutenants. But no man was found among the faithful clansmen of Tyrone to murder his chief for the base bribe of the Lord Deputy. Yet Mountjoy continued to gain ground in Ulster, little by little, and he built more forts, commanding important passes, and garrisoned them in great force. He also caused most of the woods to be cut away, and thus laid the O’Neill territory wide open for a successful invasion. O’Neill was an admirable officer, and still, assisted by Hugh O’Donnell, presented a gallant front to Mountjoy, but he could do little that was effective against an enemy who had five times the number of soldiers that he had, and could thus man important posts, filled with all the munitions of war, without sensibly weakening his force in the field. Destitute of foundries and powder factories, he could make no progress in the matter of artillery, and such cannon as he had were destitute of proper ammunition. All this the Spaniards could have supplied, but their characteristic dilatoriness, in the end, ruined everything. Another circumstance also militated against the success of the brave O’Neill—the English and their allies were solidly unified for the destruction of the Irish, while the latter, as we have seen, were fatally divided by corruption, ambition, jealousy—fostered by their enemies—and endless English intrigue. No wonder that his broad brow grew gloomy and that his sword no longer struck the blows it dealt so fiercely at Clontibret and the Yellow Ford. At last, however, out of the dark clouds that surrounded his fortunes, there flashed one sun-ray of hope and joy. News suddenly reached the north, as well as the Lord Deputy, that a Spanish fleet had landed in Kinsale Harbor, on the coast of Cork. It carried a small force—less than 6,000 men, mostly of poor quality—under the command of the arrogant and incompetent Don Juan de Aguila. He occupied Kinsale and the surrounding forts at once, but was disappointed when the Munster Irish—already all but crushed by Mountjoy—did not flock at once, and in great numbers, to his standard. Of all the Munster chiefs there responded only O’Sullivan Beare, O’Connor Kerry, and the brave O’Driscoll. They alone redeemed, in as far as they could, the apathy of South Munster, and were justified in resenting the Spanish taunt, bitterly uttered by Don Juan himself, that “Christ had never died for such people.” The Spaniard did not, of course, take into consideration, because he did not know, the exhaustion of South Munster after the Geraldine war and the wars which succeeded it. Constant defeat is a poor tonic on which to build up a boldly aggressive patriotism.