The defence of this castle by the Irish garrison of one hundred and forty-three men, commanded by O’Sullivan’s intrepid lieutenant, McGeoghegan, was one of the finest feats of arms recorded in history. Although only a square tower, with outworks, it held out against General Carew, the Lord President, for fifteen days. It was bombarded by the fleet from the haven, and battered by artillery from the land side. Indeed, Carew had an army of 4,000 veteran soldiers opposed to McGeoghegan’s 143 heroes. A breach was finally effected in the castle, but the storming parties were repeatedly repulsed. The great hall was finally carried, and the little garrison, under the undaunted McGeoghegan, retreated to the vaults beneath it, where they sustained the unequal conflict for four-and-twenty hours, and, by the exertion of unexampled prowess, at last cleared the hall of the English. The latter replied with an overwhelming cannonade, and the walls of the castle crumbled about the ears of its heroic defenders. The latter made a desperate sortie with only forty men and all perished. The survivors in the castle continued the defence, but, in the end, their noble commander, McGeoghegan, was mortally wounded and they laid down their arms. While their wounded chief lay gasping in the agonies of approaching death, on the floor of the vault, he saw the English enter the place. The sight seemed to renew his life and energy. He sprang to his feet, seized a torch, and made a rush for an open barrel of powder, intending to blow assailants and assailed into the sky. But an English soldier was too quick for the dying hero. He seized him in his arms, and a comrade wrested the torch from the failing hand and extinguished it. Then they ran their swords through McGeoghegan’s body, and his glorious deeds and great sufferings were at an end. It should have been stated that ten of the garrison, who were of the party that made the sortie, on the failure of their bold effort, attempted to reach the mainland by swimming across the haven. This movement was anticipated by the English commander. Soldiers were stationed in boats to intercept the swimmers, and all were stabbed or shot, as if they had been beasts of prey. The survivors of the band of Irish Spartans, who made Dunboy forever memorable in the annals of martial glory, were instantly hanged by order of Carew, so that not one of the heroic 143 was left. Ruthless as he was, the Lord President himself, in an official letter, bore this testimony to their valor: “Not one man escaped; all were slain, executed, or buried in the ruins, and so obstinate a defence hath not been seen within this kingdom.” The defence of Dunboy Castle deserves to rank in history with Thermopylæ and the Alamo of Texas, and the butchery of its surviving defenders, in cold blood, was a disgrace to English manhood. How differently the gallant O’Neill treated the English prisoners taken at Armagh, Portmore, and other places in Ulster during