prevaileth."

One of the generals of the Spanish King, Philip III, who came to
Ireland in the winter of 1601 with a handful of Spanish troops (200
men), to reinforce the small expedition of de Aguila in Kinsale, thus
reported on the physical qualities of the Irish in a document that
still lies in Salamanca in the archives of the old Irish College. it
was written by Don Pedro De Zubiarr on the 16th of January, 1602, on
his return to the Asturias. Speaking of the prospect of the campaign,
he wrote: "If we had brought arms for 10,000 men we could have had
them, for they are very eager to carry on the war against the English.
The Irish are very strong and well shaped, accustomed to endure hunger
and toil, and very courageous in fight."

Perhaps the most vivid testimony to the innate superiority of the
Irishman as a soldier is given in a typically Irish challenge issued
in the war of 1641. The document has a lasting interest for it
displays not only the "better body" of the Irishman of that day, but
something of his better heart as well, that still remains to us.

One Parsons, an English settler in Ireland, had written to a friend
to say that, among other things, the head of the Colonel of an Irish
regiment then in the field against the English, would not be allowed
to stick long on its shoulders. The letter was intercepted by the very
regiment itself, and a captain in it, Felim O'Molloy, wrote back to
Parsons:

"I will do this if you please: I will pick out sixty men and fight
against one hundred of your choice men if you do but pitch your camp
one mile out of your town, and then if you have the victory, you may