THE garrison of Limerick was beginning to despair of any farther succor from France, and murmurs against the viceroy became loud and deep, when runners arrived from the southwestern coast, announcing that a French fleet had been sighted off the Kerry coast, and that it was, probably, steering for the estuary of the Shannon. This was in the first week of May, and, on the 8th of that month, the French men-of-war cast anchor in the harbor of Limerick. On board was Lieutenant-General St. Ruth, with Major-General D’Usson, Major-General De Tesse, and other officers. He brought with him, in the ships, provisions, a supply of indifferent clothing, and a quantity of ammunition, but no reinforcements of any kind. The general, however, had a large personal staff and a retinue of servants and orderlies. He was received, on landing, by Tyrconnel, Sarsfield, Sheldon, and other army leaders. He and his officers attended pontifical High Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, where Te Deum was chanted. Macaulay, a somewhat imaginative authority, informs us that St. Ruth was disappointed, if not disgusted, by the conditions then existing in Limerick. He had been accustomed to command troops perfectly uniformed and equipped. The Irish army was poorly dressed and indifferently armed. He had seen the splendid legions of Mountcashel in Savoy, dressed scrupulously and bearing the best arms of that day, and he was quite unprepared to behold the undeniable poverty of the brave defenders of Athlone and Limerick. But he was a practical soldier, and at once set about what an American general would call “licking his army into shape.” Dissatisfied with the cavalry mounts, he resorted to a ruse to supply the deficiency. The “gentry” of the surrounding districts were summoned to King’s Island to deliberate on the question of national defence. They came in large numbers—every man, as was the custom of the times, mounted on a strong and spirited horse. When all had assembled, St. Ruth, through an interpreter, addressed them in spirited words. One of the chief needs of the hour was cavalry horses. The gentlemen were invited to dismount and turn over their horses to the public service. This most of them did cheerfully, while others were chagrined. However, St. Ruth gained his point, and the Irish troopers were as well mounted as any in the world.
The new French general, although much given to pleasure, was a man of extraordinary energy. He gave balls to honor the country gentlemen and their families, and the French uniform became very familiar in all the aristocratic Catholic circles of Munster and Connaught. St. Ruth participated in the dancing and feasting, but was always “up betimes,” and away on horseback, attended by his staff and interpreters, to inspect the posts held by the Irish along the Shannon and Suck. It was during one of those rides, tradition says, he noticed the hill of Kilcommodan, rising above the little hamlet of Aughrim, near Ballinasloe, and, casting a glance at the position, exclaimed to his officers, in French, “That is the choicest battleground in all Europe!” We shall hear more about Aughrim, and what there befell Monsieur St. Ruth and the Irish army.
That brave army, at Limerick, Athlone, and Galway, was put through a course of drilling, such as it had never received before, under the orders of the ardent and indefatigable Frenchman. He repressed disorder with an iron hand, and made such examples, under martial law, as seemed necessary. It is said he was severe to his officers and contemptuous to the rank and file of his army, but these assertions come mainly from Chaplain Story and chroniclers of his class. The haughty Irish aristocrats would have run St. Ruth through the body with their swords if he had dared to be insulting toward them. He was necessarily strict, no doubt, and this strictness bore glorious fruit when the reorganized army again took the field. One of the chief embarrassments of the time was lack of money. Lauzun, while in Ireland, had played into the hands of the English by crying down King James’s “brass money,” as it was called, issued on the national security. The poor devoted Irish soldiers took it readily enough, but the trading and commercial classes, always sensitive and conservative where their interests are affected, were slow to take the tokens in exchange for their goods. King Louis had promised a large supply of “good money,” but, somehow, it was not forthcoming, except in small parcels, which did little good. We may be sure, however, that St. Ruth, accustomed to Continental forced loans, did not stand on ceremony, and, under his vigorous régime, the Irish army was better armed, better fed, and better clad than it had been since the outbreak of the war. Old Tyrconnel ruled Ireland nominally. The real ruler, after he had, by repeated representations and solicitations, obtained unrestricted military command, was St. Ruth himself. Unhappily for Ireland, he slighted Tyrconnel, who was a very proud man, and did not get along smoothly with Sarsfield, whose sage advice, had he taken it, would have saved him from a fatal disaster.
Baron De Ginkel, commander-in-chief for William, marched with an army computed at 19,000 men from Dublin to open the campaign against the Irish on the line of the Shannon, on May 30, 1691. On June 7, he reached the fort of Ballymore, held by a small Irish force under Lieutenant-Colonel Ulick Burke, and summoned it to surrender. Burke answered defiantly, and Ginkel immediately opened upon his works. A detached post, held by a sergeant and a few men, was defended desperately and caused the Williamites serious loss. It was finally captured, and De Ginkel, with inexcusable cruelty, hanged the brave sergeant, for doing his duty, as O’Callaghan says, on the shallow pretext that he had defended an untenable position. Colonel Burke, nothing daunted, continued his defence of Ballymore, although Ginkel threatened him with the unfortunate sergeant’s fate. The fire of eighteen well-served pieces of heavy artillery speedily reduced the fort to a ruin. The Irish engineer officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, was killed, and many men had also fallen. Burke hung out a flag of truce and demanded the honors of war if he were to surrender the place. Ginkel refused and called for immediate submission. The utmost time he would grant was two hours, and he agreed to allow the women and children to depart within that period. Once he proceeded to storm the position, he said, the garrison need expect no quarter. Colonel Burke declined to be intimidated and the work of destruction began anew—the women and children still remaining in the beleaguered fort. The latter was situated near the town of the same name, in the County Westmeath, on a peninsula which jutted into a small loch, or lake, and was too far from support to make a successful defence. It stood about midway between Mullingar and Athlone on the road from Dublin. Finally, Ginkel managed to assail it on the water front, breaches were made, and further resistance was useless. Therefore, Governor Burke finally surrendered. He and his command were made prisoners of war, and, in the sinister words of Story, the four hundred women and children, destitute of food, shelter, and protection, were “set at liberty.” What subsequently became of them is not stated. Colonel Burke was exchanged and fell in battle, at Aughrim, soon afterward. Seven days were occupied by De Ginkel in again putting Ballymore into a state of defence. He then resumed his march on Athlone, and, on June 18, was joined at Ballyburn Pass by the Duke of Wurtemburg and Count Nassau, at the head of 7,000 foreign mercenaries, and these, according to O’Callaghan, the most painstaking of historical statisticians, brought his force up to “between 26,000 and 27,000 men of all arms.”
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.