562 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 46, grenades to throw over the walls. The bridge proved too slight for its work ; slipping and splashing through the water the men. got over, but their ' fireworks ' were wetted in the passage and they found themselves at the foot of thirty feet of solid masonry without ladders and with no weapons but their bows and battle-axes. ' The place was better defended and more strongly fortified ' than Sidney had supposed. Several of the English were killed and many more were wounded ; and the Deputy had the prudence to waste no more valuable lives or equally valuable days upon an enterprise which when accomplished would be barren of result. On the 24th the army crossed the river into Shan's own country. The Irish hung on their skirts but did not venture to molest them, and they marched without obstruction to Benbrook, one of O'Neil's best and largest houses, which they found * utterly burnt and razed to the ground.' From Benbrook they went on towards Clogher, through pleasant fields and villages ' so well inhabited as no Irish county in the realm was like it : ' it was the very park if preserve into which the plunder of Ulster had been gathered ; where the people enjoyed the profits of un- limited pillage from which till then they had been them- selves exempt. The Bishop of Clogher was a 'rebel/ and was out with Shan in the field ; his well-fattened flock were devoured by Sidney's men as by a flight of Egyptian locusts. ' There we stayed/ said Sidney, 'to destroy the corn ; we burned the country for twenty- four miles' compass, and we found by experience that now was the time of the year to do the rebel most hurt.'
