CHAPTER II
De Ginkel Besieges Athlone—Memorable Resistance of the Irish Garrison—The Battle at the Bridge—St. Ruth’s Fatuous Obstinacy—Town Taken by Surprise
ST. RUTH had been advised by the Irish officers of his staff not to attempt the defence of the “Englishtown” of Athlone, on the Leinster bank of the Shannon; but, rather, to confine himself to the defence of the Connaught side, as Governor Grace had done so successfully in the preceding year. He paid no attention to their counsel, considering, after reflection, that the Williamite army should be met and beaten back from the Englishtown, and believing that the bridge, which, in the event of abandonment, must be destroyed, might prove useful in future military operations. Accordingly, Colonel John Fitzgerald was appointed governor of this portion of Athlone, and, with a very insufficient force, prepared to do his duty. Ginkel, his well-fed ranks, according to Macaulay, “one blaze of scarlet,” and provided with the finest artillery train ever seen in Ireland, appeared before Athlone on the morning of June 19th. His advance was most gallantly disputed and retarded by a detachment of Irish grenadiers, selected by Governor Fitzgerald, for that important duty. He took command of them in person, and they fought so bravely and obstinately, that the enemy were delayed in their progress for several hours, so that the Irish garrison was well prepared to receive them, when they finally appeared within gunshot of the walls. The attack on Englishtown began immediately, Ginkel planting such of his cannon as had already come up with great judgment; and Fitzgerald replied to his fire with the few and inefficient pieces he possessed. But his Irish soldiers performed prodigies of heroism. Their deeds of unsurpassed valor are thus summed up by Mr. O’Callaghan in an epitaph which he suggested, in his “Green Book,” should be engraved on a memorial stone in the locality of the action to be revered by the Irish people of all creeds and parties:
“Be it remembered that, on the 19th and 20th of June, 1691, a little band, of between three hundred and four hundred Irishmen, under Colonel Fitzgerald, contested against an English army of about 26,000 men, under Lieutenant-General Ginkel, the passes leading to, and the English town of, Athlone. And though the place had but a slender wall, in which the enemy’s well-appointed and superior artillery soon made a large breach, and though its few defenders were worn down by forty-eight hours’ continual exertion, they held out till the evening of the second day, when, the breach being assaulted by a fresh body of 4,000 Dutch, Danish, and English troops, selected from above 26,000 men, who fought in successive detachments, against but three hundred or four hundred, with no fresh troops to relieve them, these gallant few did not abandon the breach before above two hundred of their number were killed or disabled. Then, in spite of the enemy, the brave survivors made their way to the bridge over the Shannon, maintained themselves in front of it till they demolished two arches behind them, and finally retired across the river by a drawbridge into the Irish town, which was preserved by their heroism till the coming up, soon after, of the Irish main army under Lieutenant-General St. Ruth.”
Having at last attained possession of Englishtown, Baron De Ginkel proceeded without delay to bombard the Connaught, and stronger, section of Athlone. His cannonade knocked a portion of the grim old castle to pieces, and did considerable other damage, but produced no depressing effect on the resolute Irish garrison, commanded by two such heroes as Colonel John Fitzgerald and the veteran Colonel Grace, who acted as a volunteer. The experienced Dutch general, fearing the appearance on the scene of St. Ruth, with a relieving army, became a prey to anxiety. Impressed by the spirit displayed by the Irish troops, he knew there was little chance of forcing the mutilated bridge by a direct assault, and he looked for some means of flanking the place, either by a ford or a bridge of boats. He did not have, at first, sufficient material for the latter, so he “demonstrated” with detachments of horse, toward Lanesborough, east of Athlone, and Banagher west of it. The vigilance of the Irish patrols at both points baffled his design.
Meanwhile, St. Ruth, who had been on the march from Limerick for some days, at the head of 15,000 men, if we are to believe King James’s Memoirs, appeared beyond the Shannon and went into camp on a rising ground about a mile and a half from the town. He was soon made aware of the condition of affairs, and strengthened the castle garrison. He also had an earthen rampart constructed to protect the bridge and ford. The latter was practicable at low water only, and the summer of 1691 was exceptionally dry. The river had never been known to be so shallow within the memory of living man. This fact alone should have warned the French general to be exceptionally vigilant. He retired the brave Fitzgerald from the governorship, to which he appointed General Wauchop—a good soldier, but not an Irishman—and the French officers, Generals D’Usson and De Tesse, were made joint commandants in the town. The apologists for St. Ruth’s mistakes in front of Athlone claim that the ill-fated chief gave orders to the French commandants to level all the useless old walls near the bridge, but that his orders were neglected. As is usual in such cases, disobedience led to tragical results. Foiled in his attempt at flank operations, Ginkel determined to assault the partially destroyed bridge across the Shannon, which, under cover of a tremendous cannon fire, he did. But it was defended with Spartan tenacity. Attack after attack failed. Movable covered galleries were tried, and these contained planks wherewith to restore the broken arches. Not less than nine English batteries, armed with heavy guns, rained death on the Irish army, but still it stood unmoved, although losing heavily. Under cover of the fire of nearly fifty great guns, the English pontoniers, protected also by their galleries, succeeded in laying planks across the broken arches. They accounted their work done, when suddenly out of the Irish trenches leaped eleven men clad in armor, led by Sergeant Custume, or Costy, who, according to Sullivan, called on them “to die with him for Ireland.” They rushed upon the bridge and proceeded to tear away the planks. Instantly, all the English cannon and muskets sent balls and bullets crashing upon them. The whole eleven fell dead—shattered by that dreadful fire. Some planks still remained upon the arches. Eleven more Irish soldiers leaped from their works, and, following the example of their fallen comrades, gained the bridge and sought to throw the planks into the river. Nine of these heroes were killed before their work was accomplished. But the planks were floating down the Shannon, and two heroic survivors of twenty-two Homeric heroes regained the Irish lines! Pity it is that their names have not come down to us. Aubrey de Vere, in his fine poem, commemorating the exploit, tells us that St. Ruth, who, with Sarsfield, witnessed the glorious deed, rose in his stirrups and swore he had never seen such valor displayed in the Continental wars. Chaplain Story, with incredible meanness, tries to steal the glory of this deed from the Irish army by saying that the heroes were “bold Scots of Maxwell’s regiment.” The slander has been sufficiently refuted by O’Callaghan, Boyle, and other writers. Maxwell was a Scotchman, but he commanded Irish troops exclusively, and there was not a single Scotch battalion in the service of King James in Ireland from first to last. For further information on this point, the reader can consult O’Callaghan’s “Green Book” and “History of the Irish Brigades,” and also Dalton’s “King James’s Irish Army List,” which gives the roster of the field, line, and staff officers of each Irish regiment, including Maxwell’s. The defence of the bridge occurred on the evening of June 28. On the morning of the 29th another attempt was to have been made, but, owing to some miscalculation, was deferred for some hours. St. Ruth was ready for it when it came, and, after another murderous struggle at the bridge, where the English and their allies were led by the Scottish General Mackay, the assailants were again beaten off, their covered gallery destroyed, and their bridge of boats, which they bravely attempted to construct in face of the Irish fire, broken up. St. Ruth commanded the Irish army in person and displayed all the qualities of a good general. Success, however, would seem to have rendered him over-confident. The conflict over, he led his main body back to camp, and is said to have given a ball and banquet at his quarters—a country house now in a neglected condition and popularly known as “St. Ruth’s Castle.” The Roscommon peasants still speak of it as “the owld house in which the French general danced the night before he lost Athlone.”
By some unaccountable fatality, St. Ruth, instead of leaving some veteran troops to occupy the works near the bridge, committed them to new and untrained regiments, which were placed under the command of Acting Brigadier Maxwell. The latter, who has been—unjustly, perhaps—accused of treason by Irish writers, would seem to have shared the fatal over-confidence of St. Ruth. Therefore, no extraordinary precautions were adopted to prevent a surprise—something always to be anticipated when a baffled enemy grows desperate. Colonel Cormac O’Neill, of the great Ulster family of that ilk, happened to be on duty at the defences of the river front during the night and morning of June 29-30, and noticed suspicious movements among the English troops occupying the other side of the Shannon. Becoming alarmed, he immediately communicated his suspicions to Maxwell, observing, at the same time, that he would like a supply of ammunition for his men. Maxwell sneered and asked, “Do your men wish to shoot lavrocks (larks)?” However, O’Neill’s earnest manner impressed him somewhat, and, in the gray of the morning, he visited the outer lines, and, from what he saw, at once concluded that De Ginkel had some serious movement in contemplation. He sent immediately to St. Ruth for a regiment of veteran infantry, at the same time giving his reasons for the request. St. Ruth, it is said, sent back a taunting reply, which reflected on Maxwell’s courage. We are told that Sarsfield remonstrated with St. Ruth, who declared he did not believe Ginkel would make an attempt to surprise the town, while he was so near with an army to relieve it. English historians say that, upon this, Sarsfield apostrophized British valor and remarked that there was no enterprise too perilous for it to attempt. The discussion—if, indeed, it ever took place—was cut short by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon in the town. “Athlone is surprised and taken!” Sarsfield is credited with having said, as he observed the untrained fugitives running from the Irish trenches. “Impossible!” St. Ruth is represented to have replied, “Ginkel’s master should hang him if he attempts the capture of the place, and mine should hang me if I were to lose it!” But the uproar from the city soon showed the Frenchman that something terrible had occurred. When too late, he gave orders to rectify his mistake. The English were already in the works and could not be dislodged. Maxwell’s men had fled in disorder, most of them being surprised in their sleep, and the general and some of his officers became prisoners of war. It was the most complete and successful surprise recorded in military annals, except, perhaps, that of Mannheim by General, afterward Marshal, Ney, in 1799. It would seem that Ginkel, by the advice of Mackay, and other officers, looked for a ford, and found it by the aid of three Danish soldiers who were under sentence of death, and were offered their lives if they succeeded. They found the ford, and the Irish, seeing them approach the bank of the river fearlessly, concluded they were deserters and refrained from firing. After them plunged in sixty armored English grenadiers, led by Captain Sandys, a noted military dare-devil, and these were followed by the main body under Mackay, another experienced commander. The hour was six in the morning of June 30, and, after one of the bravest defences of which we have record, Athlone, through the infatuation of St. Ruth, was in English hands before noon on that eventful day. And so it came to pass, that after a conflict of more than a year, the defensive line of the Shannon was, at last, broken. It is estimated by most historians that Ginkel’s total loss amounted to 1,200 men and that of St. Ruth was somewhat greater, owing to the surprise. Among those killed in St. Ruth’s army were two colonels, named McGinness, Colonel MacMahon, Colonel O’Gara, Colonel Richard Grace, who fell in defence of the bridge on the 29th, and the French adjutant-general. Few officers of note fell on the English side. Ginkel, during the siege, “expended 50 tons of gunpowder, 12,000 cannon balls, 600 bombshells, and innumerable tons of stone, hurled from the mortars, when the shells were exhausted.” After the capture, the English found only a mass of ruins, and it took De Ginkel several days to put the place in some kind of repair.