Here was the theatre on which Ireland saw a great game played out--the last and losing throw in the war of O'Neill and O'Donnell against the forces of Elizabeth. At the long last, the promised help from the Continent had come; a Spanish fleet under Don Juan d'Aquila entered the harbour, seized and held the town, which was beleaguered by the English (and Irish allies) under Mountjoy and Carew. O'Neill and O'Donnell, marching down from the north, drew an outer line about the besiegers, and on December 21st battle was joined. Tyrone would have waited, wisely, till the siege could be raised by cutting the English communications, and the force attacked on the march. But Red Hugh was always bad at waiting, and forced the attack. The combination failed, the Spaniards gave no help, and Mountjoy drove back the Ulstermen. D'Aquila surrendered on good terms, and O'Donnell in hot fury went to Spain to complain of his incompetence and to press for a new expedition. But Elizabeth had her agents in Spain also, and one of them did her such service as was freely rendered in those days. O'Donnell drank a poisoned cup at Simancas, and died of it, and the State Papers contain the poisoner's account of his own exploit and demand for fitting payment. It was only after this that Carew was able to write of _Pacata Hibernia_, an Ireland, where, in truth, he and his had made a wilderness and called it peace. They themselves tell how from the Rock of Cashel to Dingle Bay the voice of man or the lowing of cattle could not be heard. Loveliest of all regions in Ireland, this country of Desmond has suffered worst of all. Elizabeth's soldiers attempted here, and nearly carried out, a complete extermination of the native race by the sword and by starvation. And when after centuries the folk had multiplied again and were, by universal testimony, gay even in their rags, the famine of 1847 fell upon them, and in the blackest horrors of that time Skibbereen and West Cork attained an awful notoriety. Nowhere else did such heaps of famished and plague-stricken dead defy all efforts even to bury them.