Mortality Among Officers of Rank on Both Sides—Acknowledged English Loss at Aughrim—English and Irish Comments on Conduct of Battle
BESIDES St. Ruth, the chief officers killed on the Irish side were, according to Story’s account, General Lord Kilmallock, General Lord Galway, Brigadier-General Connel (O’Connell), Brigadier-General W. Mansfield Barker, Brigadier-General Henry M. J. O’Neill, Colonel Charles Moore, his lieutenant-colonel and major; Colonel David Bourke, Colonel Ulick Bourke, Colonel Connor McGuire, Colonel James Talbot, Colonel Arthur, Colonel Mahony, Colonel Morgan, Major Purcell, Major O’Donnell, Major Sir John Everard, with several others of superior rank, “besides, at least, five hundred captains and subordinate officers.” This latter statement has been challenged by Irish historians, who claim that non-commissioned officers were included in the list. Story omitted from the number of superior officers slain the name of Colonel Felix O’Neill, Judge-Advocate-General of the Irish army, whose body was found on the field. Of the less than five hundred Irish prisoners taken, twenty-six were general or field officers, including General Lord Duleek, General Lord Slane, General Lord Bophin, General Lord Kilmaine, General Dorrington, General John Hambleton (Hamilton), Brigadier-General Tuite, Colonel Walter Bourke, Colonel Gordon O’Neill, Colonel Butler, Colonel O’Connell (ancestor of Daniel O’Connell), Colonel Edmund Madden, Lieutenant-Colonel John Chappel, Lieutenant-Colonel John Butler, Lieutenant-Colonel Baggot, Lieutenant-Colonel John Border, Lieutenant-Colonel McGinness, Lieutenant-Colonel Rossiter, Lieutenant-Colonel McGuire, Major Patrick Lawless, Major Kelly, Major Grace, Major William Bourke, Major Edmund Butler, Major Edmund Broghill, Major John Hewson, “with 30 captains, 25 lieutenants, 23 ensigns, 5 cornets, 4 quartermasters, and an adjutant.”
Chaplain Story, to whom, with all his faults, we are much indebted for the details of this momentous battle—one of the few “decisive battles” of the world—says: “We [the English and their allies] lost 73 officers, who were killed in this action, with 111 wounded, as appears by the inserted lists [vide his History of the “Wars in Ireland”] of both horse and foot, given in two days after by the general’s command, and sent to the king.” The lists referred to acknowledged, also, 600 soldiers killed and 906 wounded. The allied losses were, no doubt, underestimated for political effect in England, which had been taught that one Englishman could kill any number of Irishmen without much fear of a fatal result to himself. And this superstition was useful, we believe, to the morale of the British soldiers of the period, whose stomachs failed them so notably when they were “up against” the defences of Limerick, as will be seen hereafter. Captain Taylor, a Williamite writer, who was present at the battle and published a graphic account of it, says that the loss of the allies (British, Dutch, Danes, Germans, and Huguenots) was little less than that of the Irish, most of the latter having fallen in the retreat after the death of General St. Ruth. Of the Anglo-Dutch troopers, there were killed by the Irish cavalry at the pass of Urachree, in the early part of the fight, 202, and wounded 125, thus showing the superior strength, reach of arm, and dexterity of the Irish horsemen. In hand-to-hand conflicts, whether mounted or on foot, the Irish soldiery, in whatever service, ever excelled, with sword or battle-axe, pike or bayonet. Clontibret and the Yellow Ford, Benburb and Fontenoy, Almanza and Albuera, Inkerman and Antietam bear witness to the truth of this assertion. As a charging warrior, the Irishman has never been surpassed, and, no matter how bloodily repulsed, an Irish regiment or an Irish army is ever willing to try again. There may be soldiers as brave as they, but none are braver, even when they fight in causes with which they have no natural sympathy. It may be set down as a military axiom that the Irish soldier is, by force of untoward circumstances, frequently a mercenary, but rarely, or never, a coward.
The principal officers who fell on the English side, at Aughrim, were Major-General Holztapfel, who commanded Lord Portland’s horse at Urachree; Colonel Herbert, killed in the main attack on the Irish centre; Colonel Mongatts, who died among the Irish ditches while trying to rally his routed command; Major Devonish, Major Cornwall, Major Cox, and Major Colt. Many other officers of note died of their wounds at the field hospital established on the neighboring heights of Garbally—now converted into one of the most delightful demesnes in Europe; and some who survived the field hospital died in the military hospitals of Athlone and Dublin. Those who fell in the battle were buried on the field, with the usual military honors.
Captain Parker, who fought in the English army in this battle, and who has left a narrative, frequently quoted by O’Callaghan, Haverty, Boyle, and other historians, says: “Our loss was about 3,000 men in killed and wounded,” and, as he was in the thick of the fight and came out unwounded, he had full opportunity, after the battle closed, to verify his figures. He certainly could have no object in exaggerating the English loss, for the tendency of all officers is to underrate the casualties in their army. And Captain Parker says, further: “Had it not been that St. Ruth fell, it were hard to say how matters would have ended, for, to do him justice, notwithstanding his oversight at Athlone, he was certainly a gallant, brave man, and a good officer, as appeared by the disposition he made of his army this day.... His centre and right wing [after his fall] still held their ground, and had he lived to order Sarsfield down to sustain his left wing, it would have given a turn to affairs on that side”—“or,” O’Callaghan says in comment, “in other words, have given the victory to the Irish.”
Lord Macaulay—anti-Irish as all his writings prove him to have been—says in his “History of England”: “Those [the Irish] 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.” He then quotes Baurnett, Story, and, finally, the London “Gazette,” of July, 1691, which said: “The Irish were never known to fight with more resolution.”
In his interesting, but partial, “Life of William III,” published in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Mr. Harris, a fierce anti-Jacobite, says: “It must, in justice, be confessed that the Irish fought this sharp battle with great resolution, which demonstrates that the many defeats before this sustained by them can not be imputed to a national cowardice with which some, without reason, impeached them; but to a defect in military discipline and the use of arms, or to a want of skill and experience in their commanders. And now, had not St. Ruth been taken off, it would have been hard to say what the consequence of this day would have been.”
Now we will give a few comments of the Irish historians upon this Hastings of their country: O’Halloran, who was born about the time the battle was fought, and who, as a native of Limerick, must have been, at least, as familiar with soldiers who fought in the Williamite wars as we are with the Union and Confederate veterans, in Vol. I, page 106, of his “History of Ireland,” replying to some slurs cast by the Frenchman, Voltaire, on the Irish people, says: “He should have recollected that, at the battle of Aughrim, 15,000 Irish, ill paid and worse clothed, fought with 25,000 men highly appointed and the flower of all Europe, composed of English, Dutch, Flemings, and Danes, vieing with each other. That, after a most bloody fight of some hours, these began to shrink on all sides, and would have received a most complete overthrow but for the treachery of the commander of the Irish horse, and the death of their general [St. Ruth] killed by a random shot.”
On pages 532-533 of the same work, the historian says: “Sir John Dalrymple tells us that [at Aughrim] the priests ran up and down amongst the ranks, swearing some on the sacrament, encouraging others, and promising eternity to all who should gallantly acquit themselves to their country that day. Does he mean this by way of apology for the intrepidity of the Irish, or to lessen the applause they were so well entitled to on that day? Have they required more persuasions to fight the battles of foreign princes than the native troops, or are they the only soldiers who require spiritual comfort on the day of trial? I never thought piety was a reproach to soldiers, and it was, perhaps, the enthusiasm of Oliver’s troops that made them so victorious. This battle was, certainly, a bloody and decisive one. The stake was great, the Irish knew the value of it, and, though very inferior to their enemies in numbers and appointments, and chagrined by repeated losses, yet it must be owned they fought it well. Accidents which human wisdom could not foresee, more than the superior courage of their flushed enemies, snatched from them that victory, which already began to declare in their favor. Their bones yet (1744) lie scattered over the plains of Aughrim, but let that justice be done to their memories which a brave and generous enemy never refuses.”
Abbé McGeoghegan, who wrote about 1745, and was chaplain of the Franco-Irish Brigade, says in his “History of Ireland,” page 603: “The battle began at one o’clock, with equal fury on both sides, and lasted till night. James’s infantry performed prodigies of valor, driving the enemy three times back to their cannon.”