Page 201 - Demo

Chapter Six 201 of the Geraldines.’ In a strange quirk of fate, the Sugán Earl died a prisoner in the Tower
of London in 1608-the same year his treacherous cousin, The White Knight died in Ireland.
Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, c. 1594.
According to Pacata Hibernia, Carew’s posthumously published account of his time in Ireland, the devastation and scorched-earth policies adopted by Mountjoy, and to a lesser extent, Carew himself, efected in a great measure the objects of their authors. By the sum- mer of 1601 English authority was re-established in the southern provinces, while the situation in the north had turned to the disadvantage of O’Neill. This then was the state of afairs in Ireland when the long-looked for, the long-promised and the long-awaited Spanish aid inally arrived.
On 21 September, 1601, a leet containing three thousand seven hundred troops under the command of Don Juan del Aguila landed at Cionn tSáile, modern Kinsale, in county Cork, and quickly took possession of the town.
The landing had been made in Kinsale because Munster had risen in rebellion, but as al- ready mentioned, by the time of the Spanish arrival, the English were back in control of the province, and with O’Neill and O’Donnell in Ulster, and the easy anchorage of the north- ern Lough Foyle in English hands, Kinsale was promptly placed under siege by Mountjoy and Carew and their combined armies of seven thousand men. It is maintained that from