Carrigafoyle, the principal Desmond castle at the mouth of the Shannon at Easter 1580, cutting off the Geraldine forces from the rest of the country and prevented a landing of foreign troops into the main Munster ports. In July 1580 the rising spread to Leinster, under the leadership of Fiach MacHugh O'Byrne and his client the Pale lord James Eustace, 3rd Viscount Baltinglass. They ambushed and massacred a large English force under the Lord Deputy of Ireland Lord Grey de Wilton at the battle of Glenmalure on 25 August. On 10 September 1580, 600 papal troops landed at Smerwick in Kerry to support the rebellion. They were besieged in a fort at Dún an Óir. They surrendered after two days of bombardment and were then massacred. Through the relentless scorched-earth tactics of the English, who killed animals and razed crops and homes to deprive the Irish of any food or shelter, the rebellion was crushed by mid-1581. By May 1581, most of the minor rebels and FitzGerald allies in Munster and Leinster had accepted Elizabeth I's offer of a general pardon. John of Desmond was killed north of Cork in early 1582. The Geraldine earl was pursued by English forces until the end. From 1581 to 1583, his supporters evaded capture in the mountains of Kerry. On 2 November 1583 the earl was hunted down and killed near Tralee in Kerry by the O'Moriarty family and English soldiers from Castle Maine. The clan chief, Maurice, received 1,000 pounds of silver and a pension of 20 pounds a year from the English government for Desmond's head, which was sent to Queen Elizabeth. Desmond's body was displayed on the walls of Cork. (Maurice O'Moriarty ended his life by being hanged at Tyburn.) Aftermath After three years of scorched earth warfare by the English, Munster was racked by famine. In April 1582, the provost marshal of Munster, Sir Warham St Leger, estimated that 30,000 people had died of hunger in the previous six months. Plague broke out in Cork city, to where the country people had fled to avoid the fighting. People continued to die of starvation and plague long after the war had ended, and it is estimated that by 1589 one-third of the province's population had died. Grey was recalled by Elizabeth I for his excessive brutality. Two famous accounts tell us of the devastation of Munster after the Desmond rebellion.