The rash or, perhaps, treacherous share taken by a few Irish chieftains, in the schismatical and heretical as well as unpatriotic decrees of the Parliament of 1541, and in the subsequent ones of 1549, could compromise the Irish nation in nowise, inasmuch as the people, being still even in legal enjoyment of their own government, their chieftains possessed no authority to decide on such questions without the full concurrence of their clans, and these had already pronounced, clearly enough and unmistakably, on the return of their lords from their title-hunting expedition in England. All the chroniclers of the time agree that "the people" was invariably sound in faith, siding with the chieftains wherever they rose in opposition to oppressive decrees, abandoning them when they showed signs of wavering, even; but, above all, when they ranged themselves with the oppressors of the Church. The English Protestant writers of the period confirm this honorable testimony of the Irish bards, by constantly accusing the natives of a "rebellious" spirit. The history of the Geraldine struggle is known to all readers of Irish history, and does not enter into the scope of these pages. We have, however, to consider the foreign aid which the chieftains received, from Spain chiefly, and the causes of these failures, which at first would seem to argue a lack of firmness on the part of the Irish themselves. During the Geraldine wars, and later on in what is called the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell, the King of Spain sent vessels and troops to the assistance of the Irish. All these expeditions failed, and the destruction of the natives was far greater than it might otherwise have been, in consequence of the greater number of English troops sent to Ireland to face the expected Spanish invasion. The same ill success attended the French fleet and army dispatched to Limerick by Louis XIV. to assist James II., and, later still, the large fleet and well-appointed troops sent by the French Convention to the aid of the "United Irishmen," in 1798. In like manner, the Vendeans, on the other side, those French "rebels" against the Convention itself, received their death- blow in consequence of the English who were sent to their succor at Quiberon. It seems, indeed, a universal historic law that, when a nation or a party in a nation struggles against another, the almost invariable consequence of foreign aid is failure; but no conclusion can be deduced from that fact of lack of bravery, steadfastness, even ultimate success, on the part of those who rise in arms against oppression. Of the many causes which may be assigned to that apparently strange law of history, the chief are: