Thus the Earl of Essex, in a despatch to Elizabeth, explained the
failure of his great expedition in 1599 against O'Neill and
O'Donnell. "These rebels ... have (though I do unwillingly confess
it) better bodies and perfecter use of their arms than those men whom
your Majesty sends over." The flight of the Earls in 1607 left
Ireland leaderless, with nothing but the bodies and hearts of the
people to depend on. In 1613 we read, in the same records, a candid
admission that, although the clan system had been destroyed and the
great chiefs expropriated, converted, or driven to flight, the people
still trusted to their own stout arms and fearless hearts:

"The next rebellion, whenever it shall happen, doth threaten more
danger to the State than any heretofore, when the cities and walled
towns were always faithful; (1) because they have the same bodies
they ever had and therein they had and have advantage of us; (2) from
infancy they have been and are exercised in the use of arms; (3) the
realm by reason of the long peace was never so full of youths; (4)
that they are better soldiers than heretofore their continental
employment in wars abroad assures us, and they do conceive that their
men are better than ours."

And when that "next rebellion" came, the great uprising of the
outraged race in 1641, what do we find? Back from the continent sails
the nephew of the great O'Neill, who had left Ireland a little boy in
the flight of the Earls, and the dispossessed clansmen, robbed of all
but their strength of body and heart, gathered to the summons of Owen
Roe.

Again it was the same issue: the courage and hardihood of the