| [40] | It is worthy of remark, that while Taylor represents the atrocities perpetrated by the soldiery of the Prince, under his own eye, as revolting as those of Douglas's troops, he endeavors to palliate in the Prince what he execrates in the general. This is to be regretted in a historian otherwise remarkable for candor and impartiality. |
| [41] | As the siege of 1690 did not affect that part of the city in the County Clare, there is no necessity for further allusion to it here, beyond stating that the bridge leading to it was called Thomond Bridge. The other was called the City Bridge. King's Island is about two miles in length. |
| [42] | Story's map exhibits thirty-six guns and four mortars on the part of the besiegers, and but seven on that of the besieged. But as the fort on King's Island is represented to have caused great injury to William's right, it is certain that there must have been guns on it; hence the writer, and he thinks not without reason, has hazarded the assertion in the text. |
| [43] | See Haverty's History of Ireland, page 643—giving a Williamite authority for this estimate. This work came to my notice too late to make some corrections which, to a critical reader, might seem important. |
| [44] | McGeoghagen's History. |
| [45] | It is stated by some of the annalists that he lost two soldiers, who fell behind, but the text is in accordance with the Abbé's account of this adventure. |
| [46] | The Duke of Berwick, at page 69 of his Memoirs, gives the width of the breach at 100 toises, or 600 French feet,—the toise being six French, or six and a half English feet—and as he was present at the siege, his estimate is here adopted. Moreover, the breach, as exhibited on a map in Story's Impartial History, lays bare a great portion of the city, and shows the disposition of the Irish troops within it, which a breach of thirty-six feet—the width generally accepted—could not exhibit. |
| [47] | See preceding footnote. |
| [48] | William afterwards declared before Parliament, that the cause of abandoning the siege was the continual rain that kept his trenches filled with water, but the Duke of Berwick asserts that not a drop had fallen during the time specified in the text. |
| [49] | McGeoghegan's History of Ireland, Preliminary Discourse, p. 24. |