"Gilbert’s actions provoked the outbreak, in June 1569, of the first of the Desmond rebellions, led by the Fitzgerald earls of Desmond, who controlled much of Munster. Sidney ordered Gilbert to pursue the rebel leader James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, a devout Catholic who resented the incursions of Elizabeth’s Protestant troops. Although Fitzgerald evaded capture by retreating into the hills and conducting a guerrilla war, Gilbert — now governor of Munster — pursued a policy of devastating the lands of the Desmonds. In December 1569 Sidney awarded Gilbert his knighthood, surrounded by the bloody corpses of his victims at an enemy camp that his troops had just decimated."