An accidental spark set the fire materials alight. Hugh Maguire, reigning chief of Fermanagh, had been exasperated by the outrages inflicted on his people by a certain Captain Willis and his band of disorderly followers, who had come into his territory in a supposed official capacity, and he had driven the intruders out. In 1593 a campaign was organised against him, in which, very reluctantly, Hugh O’Neill took part. In 1594 the Deputy again invaded Fermanagh, and planted a garrison in Enniskillen, which was at once besieged by Maguire and Hugh Ruadh O’Donnell.

Towards the end of the year a force was sent to relieve it. Cormac O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone’s brother, came with 300 men to the assistance of the besiegers, and he and Maguire defeated the English at a ford on the river Erne The battle became known as that of ” the Ford of the Biscuits ” (” At n& mt>tuof5<yb.”), because of the great stores of provisions intended for. the Enniskillen garrison which were captured by the victors. Enniskillen was at once surrendered.

Although it was strongly suspected that Hugh O’Neill had been a party to his brother’s action in assisting Maguire,this could not be proved. With characteristic boldness, Hugh went down to Dublin and confronted his accusers at the Council Board. Again his wonderful powers of persuasion—his enemies would give it a harder name—were successfully exerted ; the Council permitted him to depart.

Once back safely in Tir Owen, O’Neill realised that nothing was to be gained by further delay. Early in 1595 he finally threw off the mask, and sent his brother Art to besiege the English garrison of Portmore on the Blackwater. The Tyrone Insurrection, ” the Nine Years’ War,” as it has been called, had begun.

This revolt was not, like former ones, confined practically to one part of Ireland. Chiefs and Anglo-Irish nobles from each of the four provinces joined O’Neill and O’Donnell; though of the latter the two most important, the Earl of Kildare and the Earl of Ormond, adhered throughout to the English. Several, both of the chiefs and of the Anglo-Irish, changed sides more than once during the war. The conception of the struggle as a national one, in which the whole future of Ireland was involved, seems to have been scarcely at all present in the minds of most of them, and probably was understood fully by none but O’Neill himself.

The two leaders saw plainly that Ireland, disunited as she was, could never, by her own unaided efforts, expel the stranger; that foreign help was absolutely necessary. Moreover, without a strong central power to establish a government afterwards, even success would be of little ultimate advantage. The Ruler of Spain was marked out by his very title of ” Most Catholic King,” as, next to the Pope, the great champion of Catholicity, and to him O’Neill and O’Donnell addressed a joint letter in September 1595, asking his assistance to deliver Ireland from the yoke of the heretic.

On many subsequent occasions they wrote to Philip II; after his death to his son, Philip III, and to the Pope (Clement VIII). The war they represented as a religious one, undertaken in defence of the Faith. This, if not the whole truth, cannot be said to be false. Undoubtedly the religious interest counted for much, both with O’Neill and O’Donnell themselves and with their adherents. In negotiations with the English authorities, religious toleration was the first and most strongly insisted on of the Irish demands.

In the letters sent to Philip, both those of the leaders and those of the lesser chiefs, he was requested to take over the rule of Ireland, or it was assumed that he would do so. Whether a real government by Spain was contemplated or a mere suzerainty, in which the Spanish monarch would play the part assigned in ancient Irish polity to the Ard Rf, is not apparent.

The replies received from Philip were gracious and encouraging; but the efficient assistance, the strong military force, for which O’Neill and O’Donnell asked, was delayed from year to year, though always declared to be in course of preparation. The Irish leaders strove in vain, by entreaties and by warnings that the favourable moment was passing, to hasten the slow and deliberate movements of the Court of Madrid.