The governor, who had at first held high language, begged
piteously
for
quarter, and obtained it.
quarter, and obtained it.
Macaulay
Our aristocracy had therefore long ceased to be
a military class. The nobles of France, of Germany, of Holland, were
generally soldiers. It would probably have been difficult to find in the
brilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at Versailles a single Marquess
or Viscount of forty who had not been at some battle or siege. But the
immense majority of our peers, baronets and opulent esquires had never
served except in the trainbands, and had never borne a part in any
military exploit more serious than that of putting down a riot or of
keeping a street clear for a procession. The generation which had fought
at Edgehill and Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charles
the Second had been almost entirely maritime. During his reign therefore
the sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land service;
and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the Dutch, such
multitudes of men of fashion had gone on board that the parks and the
theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first time
since Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appeared
on the Continent under the command of an English king. A camp, which was
also a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patricians
full of natural intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men
of distinguished bravery have always found in the eyes of women. To
volunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen who
combed their flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed snuffs at
the Saint James's Coffeehouse. William's headquarters were enlivened
by a crowd of splendid equipages and by a rapid succession of sumptuous
banquets. For among the high born and high spirited youths who repaired
to his standard were some who, though quite willing to face a battery,
were not at all disposed to deny themselves the luxuries with which they
had been surrounded in Soho Square. In a few months Shadwell brought
these valiant fops and epicures on the stage. The town was made merry
with the character of a courageous but prodigal and effeminate coxcomb,
who is impatient to cross swords with the best men in the French
household troops, but who is much dejected by learning that he may find
it difficult to have his champagne iced daily during the summer. He
carries with him cooks, confectioners and laundresses, a waggonload of
plate, a wardrobe of laced and embroidered suits, and much rich tent
furniture, of which the patterns have been chosen by a committee of fine
ladies. [67]
While the hostile armies watched each other in Flanders, hostilities
were carried on with somewhat more vigour in other parts of Europe.
The French gained some advantages in Catalonia and in Piedmont. Their
Turkish allies, who in the east menaced the dominions of the Emperor,
were defeated by Lewis of Baden in a great battle. But nowhere were the
events of the summer so important as in Ireland.
From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large scale
was attempted in that kingdom. The area of the island was, during the
winter and spring, not unequally divided between the contending races.
The whole of Ulster, the greater part of Leinster and about one third
of Munster had submitted to the English. The whole of Connaught, the
greater part of Munster, and two or three counties of Leinster were held
by the Irish. The tortuous boundary formed by William's garrisons ran
in a north eastern direction from the bay of Castlehaven to Mallow, and
then, inclining still further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. From
Cashel the line went to Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford, and from
Longford to Cavan, skirted Lough Erne on the west, and met the ocean
again at Ballyshannon. [68]
On the English side of this pale there was a rude and imperfect order.
Two Lords Justices, Coningsby and Porter, assisted by a Privy Council,
represented King William at Dublin Castle. Judges, Sheriffs and
Justices of the Peace had been appointed; and assizes were, after a long
interval, held in several county towns. The colonists had meanwhile
been formed into a strong militia, under the command of officers who had
commissions from the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted of
two thousand five hundred foot, two troops of horse and two troops
of dragoons, all Protestants and all well armed and clad. [69] On the
fourth of November, the anniversary of William's birth, and on the
fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the whole of this force
appeared in all the pomp of war. The vanquished and disarmed natives
assisted, with suppressed grief and anger, at the triumph of the
caste which they had, five months before, oppressed and plundered with
impunity. The Lords Justices went in state to Saint Patrick's Cathedral;
bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; hogsheads of ale and claret were
set abroach in the streets; fireworks were exhibited on College Green; a
great company of nobles and public functionaries feasted at the Castle;
and, as the second course came up, the trumpets sounded, and Ulster King
at Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, William and Mary, by
the grace of God, King and Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
[70]
Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade and
industry had already begun to revive. The brazen counters which bore the
image and superscription of James gave place to silver. The fugitives
who had taken refuge in England came back in multitudes; and, by their
intelligence, diligence and thrift, the devastation caused by two years
of confusion and robbery was soon in part repaired. Merchantmen heavily
laden were constantly passing and repassing Saint George's Channel.
The receipts of the custom houses on the eastern coast, from Cork to
Londonderry, amounted in six months to sixty-seven thousand five hundred
pounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even in the
most prosperous times. [71]
The Irish who remained within the English pale were, one and all,
hostile to the English domination. They were therefore subjected to
a rigorous system of police, the natural though lamentable effect of
extreme danger and extreme provocation. A Papist was not permitted to
have a sword or a gun. He was not permitted to go more than three miles
out of his parish except to the market town on the market day. Lest he
should give information or assistance to his brethren who occupied the
western half of the island, he was forbidden to live within ten miles of
the frontier. Lest he should turn his house into a place of resort
for malecontents, he was forbidden to sell liquor by retail. One
proclamation announced that, if the property of any Protestant should be
injured by marauders, his loss should be made good at the expense of his
Popish neighbours. Another gave notice that, if any Papist who had not
been at least three months domiciled in Dublin should be found there, he
should be treated as a spy. Not more than five Papists were to assemble
in the capital or its neighbourhood on any pretext. Without a protection
from the government no member of the Church of Rome was safe; and the
government would not grant a protection to any member of the Church of
Rome who had a son in the Irish army. [72]
In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt found many
opportunities of taking a sly revenge. Houses and barns were frequently
burned; soldiers were frequently murdered; and it was scarcely possible
to obtain evidence against the malefactors, who had with them the
sympathies of the whole population. On such occasions the government
sometimes ventured on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish than
to an English administration. One of these acts became a favourite theme
of Jacobite pamphleteers, and was the subject of a serious parliamentary
inquiry at Westminster. Six musketeers were found butchered only a few
miles from Dublin. The inhabitants of the village where the crime had
been committed, men, women, and children, were driven like sheep into
the Castle, where the Privy Council was sitting. The heart of one of the
assassins, named Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, was
examined by the Board, acknowledged his guilt, and named some of his
accomplices. He was then removed in custody; but a priest obtained
access to him during a few minutes. What passed during those few minutes
appeared when he was a second time brought before the Council. He had
the effrontery to deny that he had owned any thing or accused any body.
His hearers, several of whom had taken down his confession in writing,
were enraged at his impudence. The Lords justices broke out; "You are
a rogue; You are a villain; You shall be hanged; Where is the Provost
Marshal? " The Provost Marshal came. "Take that man," said Coningsby,
pointing to Gafney; "take that man, and hang him. " There was no gallows
ready; but the carriage of a gun served the purpose; and the prisoner
was instantly tied up without a trial, without even a written order for
the execution; and this though the courts of law were sitting at the
distance of only a few hundred yards. The English House of Commons, some
years later, after a long discussion, resolved, without a division, that
the order for the execution of Gafney was arbitrary and illegal, but
that Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by the circumstances in
which he was placed that it was not a proper subject for impeachment.
[73]
It was not only by the implacable hostility of the Irish that the Saxon
of the pale was at this time harassed. His allies caused him almost as
much annoyance as his helots. The help of troops from abroad was indeed
necessary to him; but it was dearly bought. Even William, in whom
the whole civil and military authority was concentrated, had found it
difficult to maintain discipline in an army collected from many lands,
and composed in great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at free
quarters. The powers which had been united in him were now divided and
subdivided. The two Lords justices considered the civil administration
as their province, and left the army to the management of Ginkell, who
was General in Chief. Ginkell kept excellent order among the auxiliaries
from Holland, who were under his more immediate command. But his
authority over the English and the Danes was less entire; and
unfortunately their pay was, during part of the winter, in arrear. They
indemnified themselves by excesses and exactions for the want of that
which was their due; and it was hardly possible to punish men with
severity for not choosing to starve with arms in their hands. At length
in the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived; arrears
were paid up; rations were plentiful; and a more rigid discipline was
enforced. But too many traces of the bad habits which the soldiers had
contracted were discernible till the close of the war. [74]
In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged James as
King, there could hardly be said to be any law, any property, or any
government. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and Leinster had fled westward
by tens of thousands, driving before them a large part of the cattle
which had escaped the havoc of two terrible years. The influx of food
into the Celtic region, however, was far from keeping pace with the
influx of consumers. The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences
to which every plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed could
hardly be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except
lumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings. Nominal
prices were enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and sixpence, a
quart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any note on the western
coast were Limerick and Galway; and the oppression which the shopkeepers
of those towns underwent was such that many of them stole away with the
remains of their stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though
he had to endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to
put his own price on his goods, and received that price in silver.
Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined.
Every warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken open by
ruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to procure stores for
the public service; and the owner received, in return for bales of cloth
and hogsheads of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans,
which would not in London or Paris have been taken by a beggar.
As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the
Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried away;
and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantity
of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him
chose to give him. The consequence was that, while foreign commodities
were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus,
Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as
nests of pirates. [75]
The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee
had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part of
the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory
war raged along the line which separated the domain of William from
that of James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in
twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English
territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their
own ground. To guard against these incursions was not easy; for the
peasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the
plunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive
away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid inhabitant
of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such a work might
confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamations
of the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate the richest
booty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place. The English
complained that it was no easy matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes,
when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the
bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting.
Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter, with
only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of
banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a
crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the
lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole
with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be
seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among
them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their
spirit was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when
the signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had hid his
arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards some Protestant
mansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity of
Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody islet of firm ground,
surrounded by the vast bog of Allen, harried the county of Wicklow, and
alarmed even the suburbs of Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not
always successful. Sometimes the plunderers fell in with parties of
militia or with detachments from the English garrisons, in situations in
which disguise, flight and resistance were alike impossible. When this
happened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without any ceremony, on
the nearest tree. [76]
At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the winter, no
authority capable of exacting obedience even within a circle of a mile.
Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He had left the supreme
government in the hands of a Council of Regency composed of twelve
persons. The nominal command of the army he had confided to Berwick; but
Berwick, though, as was afterwards proved, a man of no common courage
and capacity, was young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspected
by the world and by himself; [77] and he submitted without reluctance
to the tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord Lieutenant.
Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular at
Limerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had been
entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry was loudest
against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was certain that he was
a Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had
not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament which
had repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder.
[78] The discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom
the cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most
active, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held.
Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and
some prelates of the Roman Catholic Church were present. It was resolved
that the government set up by the Lord Lieutenant was unknown to the
constitution. Ireland, it was said, could be legally governed, in the
absence of the King, only by a Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or by
Lords Justices. The King was absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent.
There was no Lord Deputy. There were no Lords Justices. The Act by
which Tyrconnel had delegated his authority to a junto composed of his
creatures was a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without any
legitimate chief, and might, without violating the allegiance due to
the Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A deputation was
sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a power to which he had
no right, but that nevertheless the army and people of Ireland would
willingly acknowledge him as their head if he would consent to govern by
the advice of a council truly Irish. Berwick indignantly expressed his
wonder that military men should presume to meet and deliberate without
the permission of their general. They answered that there was no
general, and that, if His Grace did not choose to undertake the
administration on the terms proposed, another leader would easily be
found. Berwick very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet in
a new set of hands. [79]
Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send a
deputation to France for the purpose of vindicating their proceedings.
Of the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and the two
Luttrells were members. In the ship which conveyed them from Limerick
to Brest they found a fellow passenger whose presence was by no means
agreeable to them, their enemy, Maxwell. They suspected, and not without
reason, that he was going, like them, to Saint Germains, but on a very
different errand. The truth was that Berwick had sent Maxwell to watch
their motions and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the least
scrupulous of men, proposed to settle the matter at once by tossing the
Scotchman into the sea. But the Bishop, who was a man of conscience,
and Simon Luttrell, who was a man of honour, objected to this expedient.
[80]
Meanwhile at Limerick the supreme power was in abeyance. Berwick,
finding that he had no real authority, altogether neglected business,
and gave himself up to such pleasures as that dreary place of banishment
afforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no man of sufficient weight
and ability to control the rest. Sarsfield for a time took the lead. But
Sarsfield, though eminently brave and active in the field, was little
skilled in the administration of war, and still less skilled in civil
business. Those who were most desirous to support his authority were
forced to own that his nature was too unsuspicious and indulgent for
a post in which it was hardly possible to be too distrustful or too
severe. He believed whatever was told him. He signed whatever was set
before him. The commissaries, encouraged by his lenity, robbed and
embezzled more shamelessly than ever. They sallied forth daily, guarded
by pikes and firelocks, to seize, nominally for the public service, but
really for themselves, wool, linen, leather, tallow, domestic utensils,
instruments of husbandry, searched every pantry, every wardrobe, every
cellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on the property of priests and
prelates. [81]
Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, of
which Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the return of
Tyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, implored
James not to subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable a
viceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he was infirm; he needed much
sleep; he knew nothing of war; he was dilatory; he was partial; he was
rapacious; he was distrusted and hated by the whole nation. The Irish,
deserted by him, had made a gallant stand, and had compelled the
victorious army of the Prince of Orange to retreat. They hoped soon to
take the field again, thirty thousand strong; and they adjured their
King to send them some captain worthy to command such a force. Tyrconnel
and Maxwell, on the other hand, represented the delegates as mutineers,
demagogues, traitors, and pressed James to send Henry Luttrell to
keep Mountjoy company in the Bastille. James, bewildered by these
criminations and recriminations, hesitated long, and at last, with
characteristic wisdom, relieved himself from trouble by giving all the
quarrellers fair words and by sending them all back to have their fight
out in Ireland. Berwick was at the same time recalled to France. [82]
Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with decent
respect. Much as they hated him, they could not question the validity
of his commission; and, though they still maintained that they had
been perfectly justified in annulling, during his absence, the
unconstitutional arrangements which he had made, they acknowledged that,
when he was present, he was their lawful governor. He was not altogether
unprovided with the means of conciliating them. He brought many gracious
messages and promises, a patent of peerage for Sarsfield, some
money which was not of brass, 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. [83]
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. [84]
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 commission did not expressly declare that he was to
be independent 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. [85]
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 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 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 naked, 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 him. 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 Lough Rea, and from Lough Rea back
to Limerick. [86]
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 the 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. [87]
On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar. On
the seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost
surrounded by something between 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 were marched off to Dublin.
Only eight of the conquerors had fallen. [88]
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 Wirtemberg. The whole army
then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the
walls of Athlone. [89]
Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most 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. [90] 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 burned 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. [91] 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 the river. Fifty or
sixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford. [92]
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. [93]
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. [94] On the
twenty-first of June the English were busied in flinging 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 defended it. [95]
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 haste 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 head quarters 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. "
[96]
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 conscience nor by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both physical
and intellectual, the broken old man clung pertinaciously to power. If
he had received private orders not to meddle with the conduct of the
war, he disregarded them. He assumed all the authority of a sovereign,
showed himself ostentatiously to the troops as their supreme chief, and
affected to treat Saint Ruth as a lieutenant. Soon the interference of
the Viceroy excited the vehement indignation of that powerful party in
the army which had long hated him. Many officers signed an instrument by
which they declared that they did not consider him as entitled to their
obedience in the field. Some of them offered him gross personal insults.
He was told to his face that, if he persisted in remaining where he was
not wanted, the ropes of his pavilion should be cut. He, on the other
hand, sent his emissaries to all the camp fires, and tried to make a
party among the common soldiers against the French general. [97]
The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in dreading
and disliking Sarsfield. Not only was he popular with the great body
of his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a knot of retainers whose
devotion to him resembled the devotion of the Ismailite murderers to
the Old Man of the Mountain. It was known that one of these fanatics, a
colonel, had used language which, in the mouth of an officer so high in
rank, might well cause uneasiness. "The King," this man had said, "is
nothing to me. I obey Sarsfield. Let Sarsfield tell me to kill any
man in the whole army; and I will do it. " Sarsfield was, indeed, too
honourable a gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds of
his worshippers. But the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief might not
unnaturally be disturbed by the thought that Sarsfield's honour was
their only guarantee against mutiny and assassination. The consequence
was that, at the crisis of the fate of Ireland, the services of the
first of Irish soldiers were not used, or were used with jealous
caution, and that, if he ventured to offer a suggestion, it was received
with a sneer or a frown. [98]
A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On the
thirtieth of June Ginkell called a council of war. Forage began to be
scarce; and it was absolutely necessary that the besiegers should either
force their way across the river or retreat. The difficulty of effecting
a passage over the shattered remains of the bridge seemed almost
insuperable. It was proposed to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg,
Talmash, and Ruvigny gave their voices in favour of this plan; and
Ginkell, with some misgivings, consented. [99]
It was determined that the attempt should be made that very afternoon.
The Irish, fancying that the English were about to retreat, kept guard
carelessly. Part of the garrison was idling, part dosing. D'Usson was at
table. Saint Ruth was in his tent, writing a letter to his master filled
with charges against Tyrconnel. Meanwhile, fifteen hundred grenadiers;
each wearing in his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinster
bank of the Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that day
year they had, at the command of King William, put green boughs in their
hats on the banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally scattered
among these picked men; but their alacrity was such as gold cannot
purchase. Six battalions were in readiness to support the attack.
Mackay commanded. He did not approve of the plan; but he executed it as
zealously and energetically as if he had himself been the author of it.
The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and several other gallant officers, to
whom no part in the enterprise had been assigned, insisted on serving
that day as private volunteers; and their appearance in the ranks
excited the fiercest enthusiasm among the soldiers.
It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave the
signal. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, and Gustavus Hamilton, the
brave chief of the Enniskilleners, descended first into the Shannon.
Then the grenadiers lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders,
and, with a great shout, plunged twenty abreast up to their cravats in
water. The stream ran deep and strong; but in a few minutes the head of
the column reached dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set foot
on the Connaught shore. The Irish, taken unprepared, fired one confused
volley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. The
conquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls shattered by
a cannonade of ten days. Mackay heard his men cursing and swearing as
they stumbled among the rubbish. "My lads," cried the stout old Puritan
in the midst of the uproar, "you are brave fellows; but do not swear.
We have more reason to thank God for the goodness which He has shown
us this day than to take His name in vain. " The victory was complete.
Planks were placed on the broken arches of the bridge and pontoons
laid on the river, without any opposition on the part of the terrified
garrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty wounded
the English had, in a few minutes, forced their way into Connaught.
[100]
At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he was
met, swept away, trampled down, and almost killed by the torrent of
fugitives. He was carried to the camp in such a state that it was
necessary to bleed him. "Taken! " cried Saint Ruth, in dismay. "It cannot
be. A town taken, and I close by with an army to relieve it! " Cruelly
mortified, he struck his tents under cover of the night, and retreated
in the direction of Galway. At dawn the English saw far off, from the
top of King John's ruined castle, the Irish army moving through the
dreary region which separates the Shannon from the Suck. Before noon the
rearguard had disappeared. [101]
Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been distracted by
factions. It may easily be supposed, therefore, that, after so great a
disaster, nothing was to be heard but crimination and recrimination. The
enemies of the Lord Lieutenant were more clamorous than ever. He and his
creatures had brought the kingdom to the verge of perdition. He would
meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of
men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all
posts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman,
not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor.
Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition.
When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whether
they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them to
go to their supper and to take their rest, for that nothing more would
be done that day. When he had delivered himself up a prisoner, he had
uttered some words which seemed to indicate a previous understanding
with the conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few friends told a very
different story. According to them, Tyrconnel and Maxwell had suggested
precautions which would have made a surprise impossible. The French
General, impatient of all interference, had omitted to take those
precautions. Maxwell had been rudely told that, if he was afraid, he had
better resign his command. He had done his duty bravely. He had stood
while his men fled. He had consequently fallen into the hands of the
enemy; and he was now, in his absence, slandered by those to whom his
captivity was justly imputable. [102] On which side the truth lay it
is not easy, at this distance of time, to pronounce. The cry against
Tyrconnel was, at the moment, so loud, that he gave way and sullenly
retired to Limerick. D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the hurts
inflicted by his own runaway troops, repaired to Galway. [103]
Saint Ruth, now left in undisputed possession of the supreme command,
was bent on trying the chances of a battle. Most of the Irish officers,
with Sarsfield at their head, were of a very different mind. It was,
they said, not to be dissembled that, in discipline, the army of Ginkell
was far superior to theirs. The wise course, therefore, evidently was
to carry on the war in such a manner that the difference between the
disciplined and the undisciplined soldier might be as small as possible.
It was well known that raw recruits often played their part well in a
foray, in a street fight or in the defence of a rampart; but that, on a
pitched field, they had little chance against veterans. "Let most of our
foot be collected behind the walls of Limerick and Galway. Let the rest,
together with our horse, get in the rear of the enemy, and cut off his
supplies. If he advances into Connaught, let us overrun Leinster. If he
sits down before Galway, which may well be defended, let us make a push
for Dublin, which is altogether defenceless. " [104] Saint Ruth might,
perhaps, have thought this advice good, if his judgment had not
been biassed by his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of a
humiliating defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid
river, and had stormed a strong town. He could not but feel that, though
others might have been to blame, he was not himself blameless. He had,
to say the least, taken things too easily. Lewis, accustomed to be
served during many years by commanders who were not in the habit of
leaving to chance any thing which could be made secure by wisdom, would
hardly think it a sufficient excuse that his general had not expected
the enemy to make so bold and sudden an attack. The Lord Lieutenant
would, of course, represent what had passed in the most unfavourable
manner; and whatever the Lord Lieutenant said James would echo. A
sharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be expected. To return
to Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an agony of
distress; to see him shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and turn his
back; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish at some dull
country seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet this might well
be apprehended. There was one escape; to fight, and to conquer or to
perish.
In such a temper Saint Ruth pitched his camp about thirty miles from
Athlone on the road to Galway, near the ruined castle of Aghrim, and
determined to await the approach of the English army.
His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the Irish
soldiers with contemptuous severity. But now that he had resolved
to stake life and fame on the valour of the despised race, he became
another man. During the few days which remained to him he exerted
himself to win by indulgence and caresses the hearts of all who were
under his command. [105] He, at the same time, administered to his
troops moral stimulants of the most potent kind. He was a zealous Roman
Catholic; and it is probable that the severity with which he had treated
the Protestants of his own country ought to be partly ascribed to the
hatred which he felt for their doctrines. He now tried to give to the
war the character of a crusade. The clergy were the agents whom he
employed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole camp was in
a ferment with religious excitement. In every regiment priests were
praying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host and the cup. While the
soldiers swore on the sacramental bread not to abandon their colours,
the General addressed to the officers an appeal which might have moved
the most languid and effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They were
fighting, he said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour.
Unhappy events, too widely celebrated, had brought a reproach on the
national character. Irish soldiership was every where mentioned with a
sneer. If they wished to retrieve the fame of their country, this was
the time and this the place. [106]
The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to
issue seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawn
up on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In
front, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a
breastwork was without difficulty constructed.
On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the fortifications
of Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed his headquarters at
Ballinasloe, about four miles from Aghrim, and rode forward to take a
view of the Irish position. On his return he gave orders that ammunition
should be served out, that every musket and bayonet should be got ready
for action, and that early on the morrow every man should be under arms
without beat of drum. Two regiments were to remain in charge of the
camp; the rest, unincumbered by baggage, were to march against the
enemy.
Soon after six, the next morning, the English were on the way to Aghrim.
But some delay was occasioned by a thick fog which hung till noon
over the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was caused by the
necessity of dislodging the Irish from some outposts; and the afternoon
was far advanced when the two armies at length confronted each other
with nothing but the bog and the breastwork between them. The English
and their allies were under twenty thousand; the Irish above twenty-five
thousand.
Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers. Should
he attack instantly, or wait till the next morning? Mackay was for
attacking instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five the battle
began. The English foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherous
and uneven ground, made their way, sinking deep in mud at every step, to
the Irish works. But those works were defended with a resolution such as
extorted some words of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained
the strongest prejudices against the Celtic race. [107] Again and again
the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the
struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass; but
Talmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire. The fight had
lasted two hours; the evening was closing in; and still the advantage
was on the side of the Irish. Ginkell began to meditate a retreat. The
hopes of Saint Ruth rose high. "The day is ours, my boys," he cried,
waving his hat in the air. "We will drive them before us to the walls of
Dublin. " But fortune was already on the turn. Mackay and Ruvigny, with
the English and Huguenot cavalry, had succeeded in passing the bog at
a place where two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. Saint Ruth at
first laughed when he saw the Blues, in single file, struggling through
the morass under a fire which every moment laid some gallant hat and
feather on the earth. "What do they mean? " he asked; and then he
swore that it was pity to see such fine fellows rushing to certain
destruction. "Let them cross, however;" he said. "The more they are,
the more we shall kill. " But soon he saw them laying hurdles on the
quagmire. A broader and safer path was formed; squadron after squadron
reached firm ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned.
The French general was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ball
carried off his head. Those who were about him thought that it would
be dangerous to make his fate known. His corpse was wrapped in a cloak,
carried from the field, and laid, with all secresy, in the sacred ground
among the ruins of the ancient monastery of Loughrea. Till the fight was
over neither army was aware that he was no more.
a military class. The nobles of France, of Germany, of Holland, were
generally soldiers. It would probably have been difficult to find in the
brilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at Versailles a single Marquess
or Viscount of forty who had not been at some battle or siege. But the
immense majority of our peers, baronets and opulent esquires had never
served except in the trainbands, and had never borne a part in any
military exploit more serious than that of putting down a riot or of
keeping a street clear for a procession. The generation which had fought
at Edgehill and Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charles
the Second had been almost entirely maritime. During his reign therefore
the sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land service;
and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the Dutch, such
multitudes of men of fashion had gone on board that the parks and the
theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first time
since Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appeared
on the Continent under the command of an English king. A camp, which was
also a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patricians
full of natural intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men
of distinguished bravery have always found in the eyes of women. To
volunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen who
combed their flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed snuffs at
the Saint James's Coffeehouse. William's headquarters were enlivened
by a crowd of splendid equipages and by a rapid succession of sumptuous
banquets. For among the high born and high spirited youths who repaired
to his standard were some who, though quite willing to face a battery,
were not at all disposed to deny themselves the luxuries with which they
had been surrounded in Soho Square. In a few months Shadwell brought
these valiant fops and epicures on the stage. The town was made merry
with the character of a courageous but prodigal and effeminate coxcomb,
who is impatient to cross swords with the best men in the French
household troops, but who is much dejected by learning that he may find
it difficult to have his champagne iced daily during the summer. He
carries with him cooks, confectioners and laundresses, a waggonload of
plate, a wardrobe of laced and embroidered suits, and much rich tent
furniture, of which the patterns have been chosen by a committee of fine
ladies. [67]
While the hostile armies watched each other in Flanders, hostilities
were carried on with somewhat more vigour in other parts of Europe.
The French gained some advantages in Catalonia and in Piedmont. Their
Turkish allies, who in the east menaced the dominions of the Emperor,
were defeated by Lewis of Baden in a great battle. But nowhere were the
events of the summer so important as in Ireland.
From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large scale
was attempted in that kingdom. The area of the island was, during the
winter and spring, not unequally divided between the contending races.
The whole of Ulster, the greater part of Leinster and about one third
of Munster had submitted to the English. The whole of Connaught, the
greater part of Munster, and two or three counties of Leinster were held
by the Irish. The tortuous boundary formed by William's garrisons ran
in a north eastern direction from the bay of Castlehaven to Mallow, and
then, inclining still further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. From
Cashel the line went to Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford, and from
Longford to Cavan, skirted Lough Erne on the west, and met the ocean
again at Ballyshannon. [68]
On the English side of this pale there was a rude and imperfect order.
Two Lords Justices, Coningsby and Porter, assisted by a Privy Council,
represented King William at Dublin Castle. Judges, Sheriffs and
Justices of the Peace had been appointed; and assizes were, after a long
interval, held in several county towns. The colonists had meanwhile
been formed into a strong militia, under the command of officers who had
commissions from the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted of
two thousand five hundred foot, two troops of horse and two troops
of dragoons, all Protestants and all well armed and clad. [69] On the
fourth of November, the anniversary of William's birth, and on the
fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the whole of this force
appeared in all the pomp of war. The vanquished and disarmed natives
assisted, with suppressed grief and anger, at the triumph of the
caste which they had, five months before, oppressed and plundered with
impunity. The Lords Justices went in state to Saint Patrick's Cathedral;
bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; hogsheads of ale and claret were
set abroach in the streets; fireworks were exhibited on College Green; a
great company of nobles and public functionaries feasted at the Castle;
and, as the second course came up, the trumpets sounded, and Ulster King
at Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, William and Mary, by
the grace of God, King and Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
[70]
Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade and
industry had already begun to revive. The brazen counters which bore the
image and superscription of James gave place to silver. The fugitives
who had taken refuge in England came back in multitudes; and, by their
intelligence, diligence and thrift, the devastation caused by two years
of confusion and robbery was soon in part repaired. Merchantmen heavily
laden were constantly passing and repassing Saint George's Channel.
The receipts of the custom houses on the eastern coast, from Cork to
Londonderry, amounted in six months to sixty-seven thousand five hundred
pounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even in the
most prosperous times. [71]
The Irish who remained within the English pale were, one and all,
hostile to the English domination. They were therefore subjected to
a rigorous system of police, the natural though lamentable effect of
extreme danger and extreme provocation. A Papist was not permitted to
have a sword or a gun. He was not permitted to go more than three miles
out of his parish except to the market town on the market day. Lest he
should give information or assistance to his brethren who occupied the
western half of the island, he was forbidden to live within ten miles of
the frontier. Lest he should turn his house into a place of resort
for malecontents, he was forbidden to sell liquor by retail. One
proclamation announced that, if the property of any Protestant should be
injured by marauders, his loss should be made good at the expense of his
Popish neighbours. Another gave notice that, if any Papist who had not
been at least three months domiciled in Dublin should be found there, he
should be treated as a spy. Not more than five Papists were to assemble
in the capital or its neighbourhood on any pretext. Without a protection
from the government no member of the Church of Rome was safe; and the
government would not grant a protection to any member of the Church of
Rome who had a son in the Irish army. [72]
In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt found many
opportunities of taking a sly revenge. Houses and barns were frequently
burned; soldiers were frequently murdered; and it was scarcely possible
to obtain evidence against the malefactors, who had with them the
sympathies of the whole population. On such occasions the government
sometimes ventured on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish than
to an English administration. One of these acts became a favourite theme
of Jacobite pamphleteers, and was the subject of a serious parliamentary
inquiry at Westminster. Six musketeers were found butchered only a few
miles from Dublin. The inhabitants of the village where the crime had
been committed, men, women, and children, were driven like sheep into
the Castle, where the Privy Council was sitting. The heart of one of the
assassins, named Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, was
examined by the Board, acknowledged his guilt, and named some of his
accomplices. He was then removed in custody; but a priest obtained
access to him during a few minutes. What passed during those few minutes
appeared when he was a second time brought before the Council. He had
the effrontery to deny that he had owned any thing or accused any body.
His hearers, several of whom had taken down his confession in writing,
were enraged at his impudence. The Lords justices broke out; "You are
a rogue; You are a villain; You shall be hanged; Where is the Provost
Marshal? " The Provost Marshal came. "Take that man," said Coningsby,
pointing to Gafney; "take that man, and hang him. " There was no gallows
ready; but the carriage of a gun served the purpose; and the prisoner
was instantly tied up without a trial, without even a written order for
the execution; and this though the courts of law were sitting at the
distance of only a few hundred yards. The English House of Commons, some
years later, after a long discussion, resolved, without a division, that
the order for the execution of Gafney was arbitrary and illegal, but
that Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by the circumstances in
which he was placed that it was not a proper subject for impeachment.
[73]
It was not only by the implacable hostility of the Irish that the Saxon
of the pale was at this time harassed. His allies caused him almost as
much annoyance as his helots. The help of troops from abroad was indeed
necessary to him; but it was dearly bought. Even William, in whom
the whole civil and military authority was concentrated, had found it
difficult to maintain discipline in an army collected from many lands,
and composed in great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at free
quarters. The powers which had been united in him were now divided and
subdivided. The two Lords justices considered the civil administration
as their province, and left the army to the management of Ginkell, who
was General in Chief. Ginkell kept excellent order among the auxiliaries
from Holland, who were under his more immediate command. But his
authority over the English and the Danes was less entire; and
unfortunately their pay was, during part of the winter, in arrear. They
indemnified themselves by excesses and exactions for the want of that
which was their due; and it was hardly possible to punish men with
severity for not choosing to starve with arms in their hands. At length
in the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived; arrears
were paid up; rations were plentiful; and a more rigid discipline was
enforced. But too many traces of the bad habits which the soldiers had
contracted were discernible till the close of the war. [74]
In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged James as
King, there could hardly be said to be any law, any property, or any
government. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and Leinster had fled westward
by tens of thousands, driving before them a large part of the cattle
which had escaped the havoc of two terrible years. The influx of food
into the Celtic region, however, was far from keeping pace with the
influx of consumers. The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences
to which every plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed could
hardly be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except
lumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings. Nominal
prices were enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and sixpence, a
quart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any note on the western
coast were Limerick and Galway; and the oppression which the shopkeepers
of those towns underwent was such that many of them stole away with the
remains of their stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though
he had to endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to
put his own price on his goods, and received that price in silver.
Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined.
Every warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken open by
ruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to procure stores for
the public service; and the owner received, in return for bales of cloth
and hogsheads of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans,
which would not in London or Paris have been taken by a beggar.
As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the
Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried away;
and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantity
of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him
chose to give him. The consequence was that, while foreign commodities
were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus,
Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as
nests of pirates. [75]
The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee
had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part of
the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory
war raged along the line which separated the domain of William from
that of James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in
twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English
territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their
own ground. To guard against these incursions was not easy; for the
peasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the
plunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive
away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid inhabitant
of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such a work might
confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamations
of the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate the richest
booty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place. The English
complained that it was no easy matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes,
when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the
bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting.
Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter, with
only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of
banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a
crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the
lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole
with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be
seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among
them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their
spirit was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when
the signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had hid his
arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards some Protestant
mansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity of
Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody islet of firm ground,
surrounded by the vast bog of Allen, harried the county of Wicklow, and
alarmed even the suburbs of Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not
always successful. Sometimes the plunderers fell in with parties of
militia or with detachments from the English garrisons, in situations in
which disguise, flight and resistance were alike impossible. When this
happened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without any ceremony, on
the nearest tree. [76]
At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the winter, no
authority capable of exacting obedience even within a circle of a mile.
Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He had left the supreme
government in the hands of a Council of Regency composed of twelve
persons. The nominal command of the army he had confided to Berwick; but
Berwick, though, as was afterwards proved, a man of no common courage
and capacity, was young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspected
by the world and by himself; [77] and he submitted without reluctance
to the tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord Lieutenant.
Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular at
Limerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had been
entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry was loudest
against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was certain that he was
a Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had
not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament which
had repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder.
[78] The discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom
the cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most
active, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held.
Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and
some prelates of the Roman Catholic Church were present. It was resolved
that the government set up by the Lord Lieutenant was unknown to the
constitution. Ireland, it was said, could be legally governed, in the
absence of the King, only by a Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or by
Lords Justices. The King was absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent.
There was no Lord Deputy. There were no Lords Justices. The Act by
which Tyrconnel had delegated his authority to a junto composed of his
creatures was a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without any
legitimate chief, and might, without violating the allegiance due to
the Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A deputation was
sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a power to which he had
no right, but that nevertheless the army and people of Ireland would
willingly acknowledge him as their head if he would consent to govern by
the advice of a council truly Irish. Berwick indignantly expressed his
wonder that military men should presume to meet and deliberate without
the permission of their general. They answered that there was no
general, and that, if His Grace did not choose to undertake the
administration on the terms proposed, another leader would easily be
found. Berwick very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet in
a new set of hands. [79]
Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send a
deputation to France for the purpose of vindicating their proceedings.
Of the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and the two
Luttrells were members. In the ship which conveyed them from Limerick
to Brest they found a fellow passenger whose presence was by no means
agreeable to them, their enemy, Maxwell. They suspected, and not without
reason, that he was going, like them, to Saint Germains, but on a very
different errand. The truth was that Berwick had sent Maxwell to watch
their motions and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the least
scrupulous of men, proposed to settle the matter at once by tossing the
Scotchman into the sea. But the Bishop, who was a man of conscience,
and Simon Luttrell, who was a man of honour, objected to this expedient.
[80]
Meanwhile at Limerick the supreme power was in abeyance. Berwick,
finding that he had no real authority, altogether neglected business,
and gave himself up to such pleasures as that dreary place of banishment
afforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no man of sufficient weight
and ability to control the rest. Sarsfield for a time took the lead. But
Sarsfield, though eminently brave and active in the field, was little
skilled in the administration of war, and still less skilled in civil
business. Those who were most desirous to support his authority were
forced to own that his nature was too unsuspicious and indulgent for
a post in which it was hardly possible to be too distrustful or too
severe. He believed whatever was told him. He signed whatever was set
before him. The commissaries, encouraged by his lenity, robbed and
embezzled more shamelessly than ever. They sallied forth daily, guarded
by pikes and firelocks, to seize, nominally for the public service, but
really for themselves, wool, linen, leather, tallow, domestic utensils,
instruments of husbandry, searched every pantry, every wardrobe, every
cellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on the property of priests and
prelates. [81]
Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, of
which Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the return of
Tyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, implored
James not to subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable a
viceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he was infirm; he needed much
sleep; he knew nothing of war; he was dilatory; he was partial; he was
rapacious; he was distrusted and hated by the whole nation. The Irish,
deserted by him, had made a gallant stand, and had compelled the
victorious army of the Prince of Orange to retreat. They hoped soon to
take the field again, thirty thousand strong; and they adjured their
King to send them some captain worthy to command such a force. Tyrconnel
and Maxwell, on the other hand, represented the delegates as mutineers,
demagogues, traitors, and pressed James to send Henry Luttrell to
keep Mountjoy company in the Bastille. James, bewildered by these
criminations and recriminations, hesitated long, and at last, with
characteristic wisdom, relieved himself from trouble by giving all the
quarrellers fair words and by sending them all back to have their fight
out in Ireland. Berwick was at the same time recalled to France. [82]
Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with decent
respect. Much as they hated him, they could not question the validity
of his commission; and, though they still maintained that they had
been perfectly justified in annulling, during his absence, the
unconstitutional arrangements which he had made, they acknowledged that,
when he was present, he was their lawful governor. He was not altogether
unprovided with the means of conciliating them. He brought many gracious
messages and promises, a patent of peerage for Sarsfield, some
money which was not of brass, 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. [83]
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. [84]
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 commission did not expressly declare that he was to
be independent 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. [85]
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 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 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 naked, 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 him. 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 Lough Rea, and from Lough Rea back
to Limerick. [86]
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 the 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. [87]
On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar. On
the seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost
surrounded by something between 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 were marched off to Dublin.
Only eight of the conquerors had fallen. [88]
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 Wirtemberg. The whole army
then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the
walls of Athlone. [89]
Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most 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. [90] 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 burned 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. [91] 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 the river. Fifty or
sixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford. [92]
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. [93]
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. [94] On the
twenty-first of June the English were busied in flinging 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 defended it. [95]
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 haste 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 head quarters 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. "
[96]
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 conscience nor by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both physical
and intellectual, the broken old man clung pertinaciously to power. If
he had received private orders not to meddle with the conduct of the
war, he disregarded them. He assumed all the authority of a sovereign,
showed himself ostentatiously to the troops as their supreme chief, and
affected to treat Saint Ruth as a lieutenant. Soon the interference of
the Viceroy excited the vehement indignation of that powerful party in
the army which had long hated him. Many officers signed an instrument by
which they declared that they did not consider him as entitled to their
obedience in the field. Some of them offered him gross personal insults.
He was told to his face that, if he persisted in remaining where he was
not wanted, the ropes of his pavilion should be cut. He, on the other
hand, sent his emissaries to all the camp fires, and tried to make a
party among the common soldiers against the French general. [97]
The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in dreading
and disliking Sarsfield. Not only was he popular with the great body
of his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a knot of retainers whose
devotion to him resembled the devotion of the Ismailite murderers to
the Old Man of the Mountain. It was known that one of these fanatics, a
colonel, had used language which, in the mouth of an officer so high in
rank, might well cause uneasiness. "The King," this man had said, "is
nothing to me. I obey Sarsfield. Let Sarsfield tell me to kill any
man in the whole army; and I will do it. " Sarsfield was, indeed, too
honourable a gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds of
his worshippers. But the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief might not
unnaturally be disturbed by the thought that Sarsfield's honour was
their only guarantee against mutiny and assassination. The consequence
was that, at the crisis of the fate of Ireland, the services of the
first of Irish soldiers were not used, or were used with jealous
caution, and that, if he ventured to offer a suggestion, it was received
with a sneer or a frown. [98]
A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On the
thirtieth of June Ginkell called a council of war. Forage began to be
scarce; and it was absolutely necessary that the besiegers should either
force their way across the river or retreat. The difficulty of effecting
a passage over the shattered remains of the bridge seemed almost
insuperable. It was proposed to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg,
Talmash, and Ruvigny gave their voices in favour of this plan; and
Ginkell, with some misgivings, consented. [99]
It was determined that the attempt should be made that very afternoon.
The Irish, fancying that the English were about to retreat, kept guard
carelessly. Part of the garrison was idling, part dosing. D'Usson was at
table. Saint Ruth was in his tent, writing a letter to his master filled
with charges against Tyrconnel. Meanwhile, fifteen hundred grenadiers;
each wearing in his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinster
bank of the Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that day
year they had, at the command of King William, put green boughs in their
hats on the banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally scattered
among these picked men; but their alacrity was such as gold cannot
purchase. Six battalions were in readiness to support the attack.
Mackay commanded. He did not approve of the plan; but he executed it as
zealously and energetically as if he had himself been the author of it.
The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and several other gallant officers, to
whom no part in the enterprise had been assigned, insisted on serving
that day as private volunteers; and their appearance in the ranks
excited the fiercest enthusiasm among the soldiers.
It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave the
signal. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, and Gustavus Hamilton, the
brave chief of the Enniskilleners, descended first into the Shannon.
Then the grenadiers lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders,
and, with a great shout, plunged twenty abreast up to their cravats in
water. The stream ran deep and strong; but in a few minutes the head of
the column reached dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set foot
on the Connaught shore. The Irish, taken unprepared, fired one confused
volley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. The
conquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls shattered by
a cannonade of ten days. Mackay heard his men cursing and swearing as
they stumbled among the rubbish. "My lads," cried the stout old Puritan
in the midst of the uproar, "you are brave fellows; but do not swear.
We have more reason to thank God for the goodness which He has shown
us this day than to take His name in vain. " The victory was complete.
Planks were placed on the broken arches of the bridge and pontoons
laid on the river, without any opposition on the part of the terrified
garrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty wounded
the English had, in a few minutes, forced their way into Connaught.
[100]
At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he was
met, swept away, trampled down, and almost killed by the torrent of
fugitives. He was carried to the camp in such a state that it was
necessary to bleed him. "Taken! " cried Saint Ruth, in dismay. "It cannot
be. A town taken, and I close by with an army to relieve it! " Cruelly
mortified, he struck his tents under cover of the night, and retreated
in the direction of Galway. At dawn the English saw far off, from the
top of King John's ruined castle, the Irish army moving through the
dreary region which separates the Shannon from the Suck. Before noon the
rearguard had disappeared. [101]
Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been distracted by
factions. It may easily be supposed, therefore, that, after so great a
disaster, nothing was to be heard but crimination and recrimination. The
enemies of the Lord Lieutenant were more clamorous than ever. He and his
creatures had brought the kingdom to the verge of perdition. He would
meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of
men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all
posts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman,
not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor.
Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition.
When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whether
they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them to
go to their supper and to take their rest, for that nothing more would
be done that day. When he had delivered himself up a prisoner, he had
uttered some words which seemed to indicate a previous understanding
with the conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few friends told a very
different story. According to them, Tyrconnel and Maxwell had suggested
precautions which would have made a surprise impossible. The French
General, impatient of all interference, had omitted to take those
precautions. Maxwell had been rudely told that, if he was afraid, he had
better resign his command. He had done his duty bravely. He had stood
while his men fled. He had consequently fallen into the hands of the
enemy; and he was now, in his absence, slandered by those to whom his
captivity was justly imputable. [102] On which side the truth lay it
is not easy, at this distance of time, to pronounce. The cry against
Tyrconnel was, at the moment, so loud, that he gave way and sullenly
retired to Limerick. D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the hurts
inflicted by his own runaway troops, repaired to Galway. [103]
Saint Ruth, now left in undisputed possession of the supreme command,
was bent on trying the chances of a battle. Most of the Irish officers,
with Sarsfield at their head, were of a very different mind. It was,
they said, not to be dissembled that, in discipline, the army of Ginkell
was far superior to theirs. The wise course, therefore, evidently was
to carry on the war in such a manner that the difference between the
disciplined and the undisciplined soldier might be as small as possible.
It was well known that raw recruits often played their part well in a
foray, in a street fight or in the defence of a rampart; but that, on a
pitched field, they had little chance against veterans. "Let most of our
foot be collected behind the walls of Limerick and Galway. Let the rest,
together with our horse, get in the rear of the enemy, and cut off his
supplies. If he advances into Connaught, let us overrun Leinster. If he
sits down before Galway, which may well be defended, let us make a push
for Dublin, which is altogether defenceless. " [104] Saint Ruth might,
perhaps, have thought this advice good, if his judgment had not
been biassed by his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of a
humiliating defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid
river, and had stormed a strong town. He could not but feel that, though
others might have been to blame, he was not himself blameless. He had,
to say the least, taken things too easily. Lewis, accustomed to be
served during many years by commanders who were not in the habit of
leaving to chance any thing which could be made secure by wisdom, would
hardly think it a sufficient excuse that his general had not expected
the enemy to make so bold and sudden an attack. The Lord Lieutenant
would, of course, represent what had passed in the most unfavourable
manner; and whatever the Lord Lieutenant said James would echo. A
sharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be expected. To return
to Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an agony of
distress; to see him shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and turn his
back; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish at some dull
country seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet this might well
be apprehended. There was one escape; to fight, and to conquer or to
perish.
In such a temper Saint Ruth pitched his camp about thirty miles from
Athlone on the road to Galway, near the ruined castle of Aghrim, and
determined to await the approach of the English army.
His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the Irish
soldiers with contemptuous severity. But now that he had resolved
to stake life and fame on the valour of the despised race, he became
another man. During the few days which remained to him he exerted
himself to win by indulgence and caresses the hearts of all who were
under his command. [105] He, at the same time, administered to his
troops moral stimulants of the most potent kind. He was a zealous Roman
Catholic; and it is probable that the severity with which he had treated
the Protestants of his own country ought to be partly ascribed to the
hatred which he felt for their doctrines. He now tried to give to the
war the character of a crusade. The clergy were the agents whom he
employed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole camp was in
a ferment with religious excitement. In every regiment priests were
praying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host and the cup. While the
soldiers swore on the sacramental bread not to abandon their colours,
the General addressed to the officers an appeal which might have moved
the most languid and effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They were
fighting, he said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour.
Unhappy events, too widely celebrated, had brought a reproach on the
national character. Irish soldiership was every where mentioned with a
sneer. If they wished to retrieve the fame of their country, this was
the time and this the place. [106]
The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to
issue seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawn
up on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In
front, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a
breastwork was without difficulty constructed.
On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the fortifications
of Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed his headquarters at
Ballinasloe, about four miles from Aghrim, and rode forward to take a
view of the Irish position. On his return he gave orders that ammunition
should be served out, that every musket and bayonet should be got ready
for action, and that early on the morrow every man should be under arms
without beat of drum. Two regiments were to remain in charge of the
camp; the rest, unincumbered by baggage, were to march against the
enemy.
Soon after six, the next morning, the English were on the way to Aghrim.
But some delay was occasioned by a thick fog which hung till noon
over the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was caused by the
necessity of dislodging the Irish from some outposts; and the afternoon
was far advanced when the two armies at length confronted each other
with nothing but the bog and the breastwork between them. The English
and their allies were under twenty thousand; the Irish above twenty-five
thousand.
Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers. Should
he attack instantly, or wait till the next morning? Mackay was for
attacking instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five the battle
began. The English foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherous
and uneven ground, made their way, sinking deep in mud at every step, to
the Irish works. But those works were defended with a resolution such as
extorted some words of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained
the strongest prejudices against the Celtic race. [107] Again and again
the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the
struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass; but
Talmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire. The fight had
lasted two hours; the evening was closing in; and still the advantage
was on the side of the Irish. Ginkell began to meditate a retreat. The
hopes of Saint Ruth rose high. "The day is ours, my boys," he cried,
waving his hat in the air. "We will drive them before us to the walls of
Dublin. " But fortune was already on the turn. Mackay and Ruvigny, with
the English and Huguenot cavalry, had succeeded in passing the bog at
a place where two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. Saint Ruth at
first laughed when he saw the Blues, in single file, struggling through
the morass under a fire which every moment laid some gallant hat and
feather on the earth. "What do they mean? " he asked; and then he
swore that it was pity to see such fine fellows rushing to certain
destruction. "Let them cross, however;" he said. "The more they are,
the more we shall kill. " But soon he saw them laying hurdles on the
quagmire. A broader and safer path was formed; squadron after squadron
reached firm ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned.
The French general was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ball
carried off his head. Those who were about him thought that it would
be dangerous to make his fate known. His corpse was wrapped in a cloak,
carried from the field, and laid, with all secresy, in the sacred ground
among the ruins of the ancient monastery of Loughrea. Till the fight was
over neither army was aware that he was no more.
