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.
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. 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. The town, which was surrounded by
ramparts of earth, lay partly in Leinster and partly in Connaught.
The English uarter, 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. 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.
During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon.
On the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five in the
afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade
in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering
his countrymen to the onset with his latest breath. Such were the
gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in
the time of his utmost need, the armies of his deadliest enemies.
The example was not lost. The grenades fell thick. The assailants
mounted by hundreds. The Irish gave way and ran towards the bridge.
There the press was so great that some of the fugitives were crushed
to death in the narrow passage, and others were forced over the
parapets into the waters which roared among the mill wheels below.
In a few hours Ginkell had made himself master of the English
quarter of Athlone; and this success had cost him only twenty men
killed and forty wounded.
But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the
Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge was so narrow that a few resolute
men might keep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were
strongly guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle.
That part of the Connaught shore where the river was fordable was
defended by works, which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the
murmurs of a powerful party, forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the
care of Maxwell. Maxwell had come back from France a more unpopular
man than he had been when he went thither. It was rumoured that he
had, at Versailles, spoken opprobriously of the Irish nation; and he
had, on this account, been, only a few days before, publicly
affronted by Sarsfield. On 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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ome 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.
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. 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." 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 he 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. 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.
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. 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 ecresy, 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. To conceal his death from the private
soldiers might perhaps have been prudent. To conceal it from his
lieutenants was madness. The crisis of the battle had arrived; and
there was none to give direction. Sarsfield was in command of the
reserve. But he had been strictly enjoined by Saint Ruth not to stir
without orders; and no orders came. Mackay and Ruvigny with their
horse charged the Irish in flank. Talmash and his foot returned to
the attack in front with dogged determination. The breastwork was
carried. The Irish, still fighting, retreated from inclosure to
inclosure. But, as inclosure after inclosure was forced, their
efforts became fainter and fainter. At length they broke and fled.
Then followed a horrible carnage. The conquerors were in a savage
mood. For a report had been spread among them that, during the early
part of the battle, some English captives who had been admitted to
quarter had been put to the sword. Only four hundred prisoners were
taken. The number of the slain was, in proportion to the number
engaged, greater than in any other battle of that age. But for the
coming on of a moonless night, made darker by a misty rain, scarcely
a man would have escaped. The obscurity enabled Sarsfield, with a
few squadrons which still remained unbroken, to cover the retreat.
Of the conquerors six hundred were killed, and about a thousand
wounded.
The English slept that night on the field of battle. On the
following day they buried their companions in arms, and then marched
westward. The vanquished were left unburied, a strange and ghastly
spectacle. Four thousand Irish corpses were counted on the field of
battle. A hundred and fifty lay in one small inclosure, a hundred
and twenty in another. But the slaughter had not been confined to
the field of battle. One who was there tells us that, from the top
of the hill on which the Celtic camp had been pitched, he saw the
country, to the distance of near four miles, white with the naked
bodies of the slain. The plain looked, he said, like an immense
pasture covered by flocks of sheep. As usual, different estimates
were formed even by eyewitnesses. But it seems probable that the
number of the Irish who fell was not less than seven thousand. Soon
a multitude of dogs came to feast on the carnage. These beasts
became so fierce, and acquired such a taste for human flesh, that it
was long dangerous for men to travel this road otherwise than in
companies.
The beaten army had now lost all the appearance of an army, and
resembled a rabble crowding home from a fair after a faction fight.
One great stream of fugitives ran towards Galway, another towards
Limerick. The roads to both cities were covered with weapons which
had been flung away. Ginkell offered sixpence for every musket. In a
short time so many waggon loads were collected that he reduced the
price to twopence; and still great numbers of muskets came in.
The conquerors marched first against Galway. D'Usson was there, and
had under him seven regiments, thinned by the slaughter of Aghrim
and utterly disorganized and disheartened. The last hope of the
garrison and of the Roman Catholic inhabitants was that Baldearg
O'Donnel, the promised deliverer of their race, would come to the
rescue. But Baldearg O'Donnel was not duped by the superstitious
veneration of which he was the object. While there remained any
doubt about the issue of the conflict between the Englishry and the
Irishry, he had stood aloof. On the day of the battle he had
remained at a safe distance with his tumultuary army; and, as soon
as he had learned that his countrymen had been put to rout, he fled,
plundering and burning all the way, to the mountains of Mayo. Thence
he sent to Ginkell offers of submission and service. Ginkell gladly
seized the opportunity of breaking up a formidable band of
marauders, and of turning to good account the influence which the
name of a Celtic dynasty still exercised over the Celtic race. The
negotiation however was not without difficulties. The wandering
adventurer at first demanded nothing less than an earldom. After
some haggling he consented to sell the love of a whole people, and
his pretensions to regal dignity, for a pension of five hundred
pounds a year. Yet the spell which bound his followers to hire was
not altogether broken. Some enthusiasts from Ulster were willing to
fight under the O'Donnel against their own language and their own
religion. With a small body of these devoted adherents, he joined a
division of the English army, and on several occasions did useful
service to William.
When it was known that no succour was to be expected from the hero
whose advent had been foretold by so many seers, the Irish who were
shut up in Galway lost all heart. D'Usson had returned a stout
answer to the first summons of the besiegers; but he soon saw that
resistance was impossible, and made haste to capitulate. The
garrison was suffered to retire to Limerick with the honours of war.
A full amnesty for past offences was granted to the citizens; and it
was stipulated that, within the walls, the Roman Catholic priests
should be allowed to perform in private the rites of their religion.
On these terms the gates were thrown open. Ginkell was received with
profound respect by the Mayor and Aldermen, and was complimented in
a set speech by the Recorder. D'Usson, with about two thousand three
hundred men, marched unmolested to Limerick.
At Limerick, the last asylum of the vanquished race, the authority
of Tyrconnel was supreme. There was now no general who could pretend
that his commission made him independent of the Lord Lieutenant; nor
was the Lord Lieutenant now so unpopular as he had been a fortnight
earlier. Since the battle there had been a reflux of public feeling.
No part of that great disaster could be imputed to the Viceroy. His
opinion indeed had been against trying the chances of a pitched
field, and he could with some plausibility assert that the neglect
of his counsels had caused the ruin of Ireland.
He made some preparations for defending Limerick, repaired the
fortifications, and sent out parties to bring in provisions. The
country, many miles round, was swept bare by these detachments, and
a considerable quantity of cattle and fodder was collected within
the walls. There was also a large stock of biscuit imported from
France. The infantry assembled at Limerick were about fifteen
thousand men. The Irish horse and dragoons, three or four thousand
in number, were encamped on the Clare side of the Shannon. The
communication between their camp and the city was maintained by
means of a bridge called the Thomond Bridge, which was protected by
a fort. These means of defence were not contemptible. But the fall
of Athlone and the slaughter of Aghrim had broken the spirit of the
army. A small party, at the head of which were Sarsfield and a brave
Scotch officer named Wauchop, cherished a hope that the triumphant
progress of Ginkell might be stopped by those walls from which
William had, in the preceding year, been forced to retreat. But many
of the Irish chiefs loudly declared that it was time to think of
capitulating. Henry Luttrell, always fond of dark and crooked
politics, opened a secret negotiation with the English. One of his
letters was intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but many who
blamed his perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it was idle to
prolong the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was
lost. His only hope was that he might be able to prolong the
struggle till he could receive from Saint Germains permission to
treat. He wrote to request that permission, and prevailed, with some
difficulty, on his desponding countrymen to bind themselves by an
oath not to capitulate till an answer from James should arrive.
A few days after the oath had been administered, Tyrconnel was no
more. On the eleventh of August he dined with D'Usson. The party was
gay. The Lord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load which
had bowed down his body and mind; he drank; he jested; he was again
the Dick Talbot who had diced and revelled with Grammont. Soon after
he had risen from table, an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech
and sensation. On the fourteenth he breathed his last. The wasted
remains of that form which had once been a model for statuaries were
laid under the pavement of the Cathedral; but no inscription, no
tradition, preserves the memory of the spot.
As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who had
superintended the Irish finances while there were any Irish finances
to superintend, produced a commission under the great seal of James.
This commission appointed Plowden himself, Fitton and Nagle, Lords
justices in the event of Tyrconnel's death. There was much murmuring
when the names were made known. For both Plowden and Fitton were
Saxons. The commission, however, proved to be a mere nullity. For it
was accompanied by instructions which forbade the Lords justices to
interfere in the conduct of the war; and, within the narrow space to
which the dominions of James were now reduced, war was the only
business. The government was, therefore, really in the hands of
D'Usson and Sarsfield. |