news arrived several days later of the appalling defeat of Elizabeth's army by the Irish rebels at Blackwater Fort--a defeat now infamously known as the Battle of the Yellow Ford. The Earl of Tyrone--indeed he had taken the title of The O'Neill--was being hailed as the King of Ireland, and he had quickly and with frightening ease begun bringing all of that blighted country under his control. His armies--unbelievable that they could be called armies at all--had streamed south into Leinster and Munster, overrunning the Pale and the plantations till there was hardly an English settler left in Ireland who was not dead or running for his life. All over the country the Crown's armies, foolishly packed with Irish recruits, soon found those soldiers turning coat and defecting to the other side, most of them carrying with them their English weapons. The shock and horror of The Yellow Ford had, in one afternoon, seen Henry Bagenal and two thousand of his men slaughtered, and brought England to its knees. 'Twas unthinkable, but Ireland was on the brink of being lost to a pack of ragged rebels! Elizabeth, humiliated and furious, had raged at her council to do something.