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A still more stringent edict was issued on the 2nd of August; and so eagerly had these degrees been expected, that they were published throughout Flanders and Brabant almost as soon as issued. Hitherto the leading officers of the Spanish army had kept aloof from the insurgents, and frowned upon their proceedings.
The French were commanded by the governor of Casale, Catinat, a man of noble heart, an elevated and philosophic mind, who deplored his fatal mission, and attempted to negotiate with the insurgents, but Catinat could neither persuade to submission these men resolved to perish rather than renounce their faith, nor restrain the fury of his soldiers exasperated by the vigor of the resistance.
In the year 1134, he led a strong force of Irish and Islesmen to the assistance of the Gaelic insurgents, but was defeated and slain, near Renfrew, by the royal troops, under the command of the Steward of Scotland.
A spirited combat ensued, with fatal results to the insurgents, as the Spanish guide, Antonio Oliva, running up to help a soldier who was surrounded by a large group of the enemy, fired his rifle at a horseman, who fell to the ground, and was found to be Jose Marti. Captain Enrique Satue was the first to recognize him.
The insurgents were completely disheartened by their loss, and during the rest of the winter the aid of the troops was not again called for. As soon as spring set in, the Poitou regiment marched to join the marshal. The Bavarian army had been weakened by the withdrawal of four thousand men to aid the Imperialists, who had been defeated by the Swedes in Bohemia.
The Hungarian insurgents were upon the point of making common cause with the discontented Protestants in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, and uniting all those countries in one fearful revolt. The downfall of popery in these lands would then have been inevitable.
But in the main the Patriots were armed with heterogeneous firearms and the machete a heavy, sword-like knife, used, in peace, for cutting cane. The latter at close quarters was a formidable weapon, and the insurgents became singularly proficient in its use; developing a style of machete play almost as exact and scientific as the school of the rapier in ancient France.
But the blood about to flow was French; it was therefore for these misguided people, already guilty of rebellion, to embrue their hands in the blood of their countrymen by striking the first blow. "At a quarter before five o'clock the insurgents had formed. The attack was commenced by them on all sides. They were everywhere routed.
Small bands of troopers were sent into the Wicklow mountains to hunt out the insurgents. Baltinglass escaped to the Continent, but the two Eustaces his brothers, with Garrot O'Toole and Feagh McHugh were caught, killed, and their heads sent to Dublin.
This was promptly suppressed without any undue tenderness either of speech or action; but it was very soon followed by the much more significant and formidable insurrection in the North, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The insurgents were headed by a very remarkable man, a lawyer named Robert Aske of a good North-country family.
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