Soon after the accession of James VI. to the English throne, he was engaged in the last struggle of the Crown against the houses of O'Donnel and O'Neil. An earldom was bestowed as a peace-offering upon the chief of the former; but his plots against the king soon deprived him of it: his estates were seized, an English colony planted in the land of his tribe, and he fled to the Court of Spain, between which and the Irish there had been a close connexion during the animosity of Philip II. and Elizabeth. He was welcomed with all the honours of a Castilian grandee, and attained a high rank under King Charles. Eighty years after this we find his descendant, Baldearg O'Donnel, still remembering the days when the chiefs, or petty princes of his race, were solemnly inaugurated as the successors of St. Columba on the Rock of Kilmacrenan. He resigned his commission in the service of Philip V., of whom he begged permission to join the Irish, then in arms against William of Orange. Philip refused; but the O'Donnel fled by a route so circuitous that he visited Turkey, and after enduring many privations, landed at Kinsale in 1690, where seven thousand armed Ulster-men hailed him with joy, as the _Red O'Donnel_ of an ancient Celtic prophecy. From Baldearg O'Donnel is descended General Count O'Donnel, who commanded the army of Maria Theresa on the fall of Count Lacy at the great battle of Toorgau in 1761; and also General O'Donnel, Vice-Governor of Lombardy, who was attacked by the Milanese during the Austrian revolution of 1848, when his palace was stormed and himself taken prisoner. There was also a Count O'Donnel in the Hungarian service, who died at Brussels in 1767, after reaching the patriarchal age of one hundred and two years. Of this ancient Celtic family there are now, or were lately, four general officers of the highest rank in the service of Great Britain, Spain, Austria, and America; but of these the most distinguished is Leopold O'Donnel, Conde de Lucena and Marshal in the service of Donna Isabella II. The four O'Donnels, Henry, Charles, Joseph, and Alexander, who attained such distinction in Spain during the Peninsula War, were the sons of Irish gentlemen who emigrated to that country during the latter end of the last century; and of their services and honours our limits will allow but a brief outline; while General Sarsfield, Colonel O'Ronan, A.D.C. to the Marquis de Campo Verde, or such partisan soldiers as MacDonel, the unfortunate Guerilla chief who fell in action, Captain Flinter the Christino, or General O'Doyle and his brother, a captain, who were taken prisoners at the last battle of Vittoria, and shot in cold blood by Zumalacarregui, can only be indicated here by name.