XVII. of peerage for Sarsfield, some money which was not of brass, CHAP. and some clothing, which was even more acceptable than money. The new garments were not indeed very fine. But even the generals had long been out at elbows; and there were few of the common men whose habiliments would have been thought sufficient to dress a scarecrow in a more prosperous country. Now, at length, for the first time in many months, every private soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues. The Lord Lieutenant had also been authorised to announce that he should soon be followed by several ships, laden with provisions and military stores. This announcement was most welcome to the troops, who had long been without bread, and who had nothing stronger than water to drink.* During some weeks the supplies were impatiently expected. At last, Tyrconnel was forced to shut himself up: for, whenever he appeared in public, the soldiers ran after him clamouring for food. Even the beef and mutton, which, half raw, half burned, without vegetables, without salt, had hitherto supported the army, had become scarce; and the common men were on rations of horseflesh when the promised sails were seen in the mouth of the Shannon.† Arrival of a French fleet at Ruth. A distinguished French general, named Saint Ruth, was on board with his staff. He brought a commission which appointed him commander in chief of the Irish army. The Limerick: commission did not expressly declare that he was to be in- Saint dependent of the viceregal authority: but he had been assured by James that Tyrconnel should have secret instructions not to intermeddle in the conduct of the war. Saint Ruth was assisted by another general officer named D'Usson. The French ships brought some arms, some ammunition, and a plentiful supply of corn and flour. The spirits of the Irish rose; and the Te Deum was chaunted with fervent devotion in the cathedral of Limerick.‡ Tyrconnel had made no preparations for the approaching campaign. But Saint Ruth, as soon as he had landed, exerted himself strenuously to redeem the time which had been lost. He was a man of courage, activity, and resolution, but of a harsh and imperious nature. In his own country he was celebrated as the most merciless persecutor that had ever dragooned the Huguenots to mass. It was asserted by English * Life of James, ii. 433. 451.; Story's Blind; Fumeron to Louvois, April 22. 1691. May 2. Continuation. Macariæ Excidium; Mémoires de + Life of James, ii. 438.; Light to the Berwick; Life of James, ii. 451, 452. XVII. CHAP. Whigs that he was known in France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very cardinals had shown their abhorrence of his cruelty; and that even Queen Christina, who had little right to be squeamish about bloodshed, had turned away from him with loathing. He had recently held a command in Savoy. The Irish regiments in the French service had formed part of his army, and had behaved extremely well. It was therefore supposed that he had a peculiar talent for managing Irish troops. But there was a wide difference between the well clad, well armed, and well drilled Irish, with whom he was familiar, and the ragged marauders whom he found swarming in the alleys of Limerick. Accustomed to the splendour and to the discipline of French camps and garrisons, he was disgusted by finding that, in the country to which he had been sent, a regiment of infantry meant a mob of people as raked, as dirty, and as disorderly as the beggars, whom he had been accustomed to see on the Continent besieging the door of a monastery or pursuing a diligence up hill. With ill concealed contempt, however, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of disciplining these strange soldiers, and was day and night in the saddle, galloping from post to post, from Limerick to Athlone, from Athlone to the northern extremity of Loughrea, and from Loughrea back to Limerick.* The English take the field. It was indeed necessary that he should bestir himself: for, a few days after his arrival, he learned that, on the other side of the Pale, all was ready for action. The greater part of the English force was collected, before the close of May, in the neighbourhood of Mullingar. Ginkell commanded in chief. He had under him the two best officers, after Marlborough, of whom our island could then boast, Talmash and Mackay. The Marquess of Ruvigny, the hereditary chief of the refugees, and elder brother of that brave Caillemot who had fallen at the Boyne, had joined the army with the rank of major general. The Lord Justice Coningsby, though not by profession a soldier, came down from Dublin, to animate the zeal of the troops. The appearance of the camp showed that the money voted by the English Parliament had not been spared. The uniforms were new: the ranks were one blaze of scarlet; and the train of artillery was such as had never before been seen in Ireland.+ * Macariæ Excidium; Burnet, ii. 78; Dangeau; The Mercurius Reformatus, June 5. 1691. † An exact journal of the victorious progress of Their Majesties' forces under the command of General Ginckle this summer in Ireland, 1691; Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs. XVII. On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from CHAP. Mullingar. On the seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost surrounded by something between Fall of Ballymore. a swamp and a lake, stood an ancient fortress, which had recently been fortified under Sarsfield's direction, and which was defended by above a thousand men. The English guns were instantly planted. In a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction of seeing the besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another. The governor, who had at first held high language, begged piteously for quarter, and obtained it. The whole garrison was marched off to Dublin. Only eight of the conquerors had fallen.* Ginkell passed some days in reconstructing the defences of Ballymore. This work had scarcely been performed when he was joined by the Danish auxiliaries under the command of the Duke of Wurtemberg. The whole army then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the walls of Athlone.† fall of Athlone. Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most Siege and important place in the island. Rosen, who understood war well, had always maintained that it was there that the Irishry would, with most advantage, make a stand against the Englishry. The town, which was surrounded by ramparts of earth, lay partly in Leinster and partly in Connaught. The English quarter, which was in Leinster, had once consisted of new and handsome houses, but had been burnt by the Irish some months before, and now lay in heaps of ruin. The Celtic quarter, which was in Connaught, was old and meanly built. The Shannon, which is the boundary of the two provinces, rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream, and turned two large mills which rose on the arches of a stone bridge. Above the bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built, it was said, by King John, towered to the height of seventy feet, and extended two hundred feet along * London Gazette, June 18. 22. 1691; Story's Continuation; Life of James, ii. 452. The author of the Life accuses the Governor of treachery or cowardice. + London Gazette, June 22. 25., July 2. 1691; Story's Continuation; Exact Journal. Life of James, ii. 373. 376, 377. § Macaria Excidium. I may observe that this is one of the many passages which lead me to believe the Latin text to be the original. The Latin is, "Oppidum ad Salaminium amnis latus recenti СНАР. the river. Fifty or sixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford.* During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon. On the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five in the afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest breath. Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies of his deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. The grenades fell thick. The assailants mounted by hundreds. The Irish gave way and ran towards the bridge. There the press was so great that some of the fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow passage, and others were forced over the parapets into the waters which roared among the mill wheels below. In a few hours Ginkell had made himself master of the English quarter of Athlone; and this success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty wounded.† But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge was so narrow that a few resolute men might keep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were strongly guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle. That part of the Connaught shore where the river was fordable was defended by works, which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the murmurs of a powerful party, forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell had come back from France a more unpopular man than he had been when he went thither. It was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spoken opprobriously of the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been, only a few days before, publicly affronted by Sarsfield.‡ On I have consulted several contemporary maps of Athlone. One will be found in Story's Continuation. Diary of the siege of Athlone, by an Engineer of the Army, a Witness of the Action, licensed July 11. 1691; Story's Continuation; London Gazette, July 2. 1691; Fumeron to Louvois, June 28. 1691. The account of this attack in the Life of James, ii. 453., is an absurd romance. It does not appear to have been taken from the King's original Memoirs, or to have been revised by his son. July 8. Macaria Excidium. Here again I think that I see clear proof that the XVII. the twenty-first of June the English were busied in flinging CHAP. up batteries along the Leinster bank. On the twenty-second, soon after dawn, the cannonade began. The firing continued all that day and all the following night. When morning broke again, one whole side of the castle had been beaten down the thatched lanes of the Celtic town lay in ashes; and one of the mills had been burned with sixty soldiers who had been posted in it.* : Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During several days there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait passage. The assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by inch. The courage of the garrison was sustained by the hope of speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at length completed his preparations; and the tidings that Athlone was in danger had induced him to take the field in hasto at the head of an army, superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of military strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general seems to have thought that the bridge and the ford might easily be defended, till the autumnal rains, and the pestilence which ordinarily accompanied them, should compel the enemy to retire. He therefore contented himself with sending successive detachments to reinforce the garrison. The immediate conduct of the defence he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson, and fixed his own headquarters two or three miles from the town. He expressed his astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell should persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him for trying to take Athlone; and mine ought to hang me if I lose it." + Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to his great mortification, that he had not the full authority which the promises made to him at Saint Germains had entitled him to expect. The Lord Lieutenant was in the camp. His bodily and mental infirmities had perceptibly increased within the last few weeks. The slow and uncertain step with which he, who had once been renowned for vigour and agility, now tottered from his easy chair to his couch, was no unapt type of the sluggish and wavering movement of that mind which had once pursued its objects with a vehemence restrained neither by fear nor by pity, neither by *Story's Continuation; Macariæ Excidium; Daniel Macneal to Sir Arthur Rawdon, June 28. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers. † London Gazette, July 6. 1691; Story's Continuation; Macaria Excidium; Light to the Blind. |