Sarsfield
emigration which continued for a hundred years. Still, perhaps, the main reason why Sarsfield is held so high as a hero by the Irish is that he never compromised; he never accepted defeat, and the position of inferiority. Another reason, and a good one, why his name has more power than those of greater and more successful leaders is that he fought not for himself but for Ireland. Sarsfield could at any time have secured lands and position by accepting William's rule; or at least he had good right to think so, though he too, after a few years, would have found himself denied the right to own a horse worth more than £5. He fought for a principle. The great lords, Shane and Hugh O'Neill, and the O'Donnells, fought each for his own principality; the idea of an Ireland that was a whole, making the first claim on every Irishman, was scarcely evolved till Ireland was united by the final conquest. Owen Roe is the only man who stands in a position like Sarsfield's, and he stands higher by right. Yet there is scarcely the glamour about him that has shaped itself into the traditional picture of Sarsfield's death; the tall Irishman, in his gorgeous marshal's uniform, lying there on the field of Landen, and, as he looked at the lifeblood flowing, muttering to himself, "Would to God this were for Ireland."
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