"Gilbert's campaign was utterly relentless, the main plank of his strategy being to spread such terror through the Irish people that they wilted in the face of his advancing troops. Thus, without having to rely on the artillery normally needed in siege warfare, Gilbert obtained the surrender of nearly forty castles in the Kerry area in just three weeks. Gilbert himself fought with great personal bravery, but the terror conducted by his forces was deliberate, systematic, gruesome and undertaken with relish — as in their practice of severing the heads of dead corpses and placing them neatly on the ground, their faces visible, to form a corridor leading to Gilbert's tent. Thus, when his enemies came to discuss the terms of their surrender, they were confronted with the decapitated heads of their ‘dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk and friends’."