So the eight generals were crowned with laurels. The entire struggle had lasted a month, which might have been put down in two days. The enemy was finished off at a single blow--at last--a worthy enemy! An honourable triumph! Disciplined forces had fought successfully against a rabble so besotted as to believe that a blessed bit of paper round the neck would make them bullet-proof; so ignorant as to run after falling shells and pick them up, wondering, as they did so, what the strange things were that 'spat at them.' When Scotland chose to rise, her misguided antics were repressed at once. Her leaders met the fate which they had courted, and there was an end of the matter. With Ireland it was otherwise. The freaks of her unstable nature were coldly calculated on; gins were set for her sliding feet; she fell into a trap, and grievous was her punishment. When the Americans rose against British misrule, their commanders were always treated with military courtesy. In Ireland masters and men were strung up side by side, or shot down, without a 'by your leave,' like dogs. Till the horror of a war of classes was intensified by the grafting on it of religious fanaticism, the opinions of the malcontents were of the broadest kind. All they demanded was social equality and freedom of conscience. Their demands were met by blows. Innocent and harmless men were lacerated by petty tyranny and wanton ill-usage, till they could endure no more. Then prudence was thrown to the winds. It was like the herd of maddened swine rushing headlong down a precipice into the gulf. As far as concerns the 'Hurry,' the example of massacre was set in the first instance by the 'Party of Order.' The rebels tried sometimes to proselytise; the Royalists were content to murder. The Royalists were never anything but cruel. The rebels hovered strangely 'twixt lenity and cruelty, according to the humour of the moment. With the supposed advantage of a little education, the squireens out-heroded the conduct of those who were quite ignorant; whereby we may gather that a little knowledge is as fatal as a little of anything else; for their scraps of education, instead of tempering their native savagery, merely served to instil into their warped minds an idea of superiority and dominion.