By the death of Owen Roe O'Neill just at that time, Ireland was left without a leader fit to cope with the great republican general. The country had already been devastated by Coote, Munro, St. Leger, and other Scotch and English Puritans; but the massacres which, until the coming of Cromwell, had been, at least, only local and checked by the troops of Owen Roe, soon extended throughout the island, unarrested by any forces in the field. The Cromwellian soldiers, not content with the character of warriors, came as "avengers of the Lord," to destroy an "idolatrous people." That their real design was to exterminate the nation, and use the opportunity which then presented itself for that purpose, there can by no doubt. It was only after a fair trial that the project was found to be impossible, and that other expedients were devised. Coote had previously acted with this design in view, as is now an ascertained fact, and had been encouraged in the course he pursued by the Dublin government. 1 (1 See Matthew O'Connor's "Irish Catholics.") The same might be shown of St. Leger, in Munster, toward the beginning of the insurrection. At all events, all doubt in the matter, if any existed, ceased with the landing of Cromwell in 1649, when the real object of the war at once showed itself everywhere. The result of this man's policy has been painted by Villemain, in his "Histoire de Cromwell," in a sentence: "Ireland became a desert which the few remaining inhabitants described by the mournful saying, 'There was not water enough to drown a man, not wood enough to hang him, not earth enough to bury him.'" The French writer attributes to the whole island what was said of only a part of it. To this day, the name of Cromwell is justly execrated in Ireland, and "the curse of Cromwell " is one of the bitterest which can be invoked upon a person's head. But, at present, the fidelity of the Irish to the Stuarts concerns us, and a few reflections will put it in a strong but true light before us.