Rev. Thomas Leland, an Irish Protestant divine, who published a history of Ireland about 1763, after describing the catastrophe which befell St. Ruth, says: “His [St. R.’s] cavalry halted, and, as they had no orders, returned to their former station. The Irish beheld this retreat with dismay; they were confounded and disordered. Sarsfield, upon whom the command devolved, had been neglected by the proud Frenchman ever since their altercation at Athlone. As the order of battle had not been imparted to him, he could not support the dispositions of the late general. The English, in the meantime, pressed forward, drove the enemy to their camp, pursued the advantage until the Irish, after an engagement supported with the fairest prospect of success, while they had a general to direct their valor, fled precipitately.”
The Right Rev. Dr. Fitzgerald, Episcopalian bishop, in his “History of Limerick,” published some sixty years ago, says: “It [Aughrim] was the bravest battle ever fought on Irish soil.” The bishop, evidently, had not read the lives of Art MacMurrough, Hugh O’Neill, Hugh O’Donnell, and Owen Roe O’Neill, when he penned the words.
“Such,” writes O’Callaghan, at the conclusion of his account of it, in the “Green Book,” page 230, “was the battle of Aughrim, or Kilconnell, as the French called it, from the old abbey to the left of the Irish position; a battle unsuccessful, indeed, on the side of the Irish, but a Chæronea, or a Waterloo, fought with heroism and lost without dishonor.”
A. M. Sullivan, in his fascinating “Story of Ireland” (American edition, page 458), says, or rather, quotes from a Williamite authority: “The Irish infantry were so hotly engaged that they were not aware either of the death of St. Ruth or of the flight of the cavalry, until they themselves were almost surrounded. A panic and confused flight were the result. The cavalry of the right wing, who were the first in action that day, were the last to quit the ground.... St. Ruth fell about sunset [8.10], and about 9, after three hours’ [nearer four hours’] hard fighting, the last of the Irish army [who were not killed, wounded, or captured] had left the field.”
John Boyle, in his “Battlefields of Ireland,” quotes Taylor, an English military author who fought at Aughrim, as saying: “Those [the Irish dead] were nearly all killed after the death of St. Ruth, for, up to that, the Irish had lost scarcely a man;” and, says he, further, “large numbers were murdered, after surrender and promise of quarter, by order of General Ginkel, and among those, so murdered, in cold blood, were Colonel O’Moore and that most loyal gentleman and chivalrous soldier, Lord Galway.” This same able writer, in concluding his graphic story of the famous battle, remarks, with indignant eloquence: “It is painful to speculate on the cause that left the Irish army without direction after the death of St. Ruth. Many have endeavored to explain it, but all—as well those who doubt Sarsfield’s presence on the field as those who maintain the contrary—are lost in conjecture, and none who participated in the battle, and survived it, has placed the matter beyond speculation. So leaving that point as time has left it, what appears most strange in the connection is the absence of all command at such a conjuncture. The disposition of the Irish troops, though dexterous, was simple. The day was all but won. The foiling of Talmash (Mackay) would have been the completion of victory. A force sufficient was on his front; a reserve more than ample to overwhelm him was on its way to the ground—nay, drawn up and even ready for the word. The few British troops that held a lodgment in the hedges, at the base of the hill, were completely at the mercy of those above them. It required no omniscient eye to see this, nor a voice from the clouds to impel them forward, and, surely, no military etiquette weighed a feather in opposition to the fate of a nation. Any officer of note could have directed the movement, and many of experience and approved courage witnessed the crisis. Yet, in this emergency, all the hard-won laurels of the day were tarnished, and land and liberty were lost by default! Nor can the rashness of St. Ruth, his reticence as to his plans, his misunderstanding with Sarsfield, nor the absence of the latter, justify the want of intrepid action among those present. This stands unexplained and inexplicable, nor will the flippant appeal to Providence, whose ways are too frequently offered as an excuse for human misconduct, answer here. The want of ammunition at such a moment was, no doubt, of some import, but the concurrence of events too plainly indicates that Aughrim was won by the skill of St. Ruth and the gallantry of his troops, and that it was lost through want of decision in his general officers, at a moment the most critical in the nation’s history.”
De Ginkel’s army remained in the neighborhood of the field of battle long enough to give it an opportunity of burying all of the Irish dead, were it so disposed. The country-people remained away, in terror of their lives and poor belongings—particularly cattle—until decomposition had so far advanced as to make the task of sepulture particularly revolting. And thus it came to pass that nearly all the Irish slain were left above ground, “exposed to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; many dogs frequenting the place afterward, and growing so fierce by feeding upon man’s flesh that it became dangerous for any single man to pass that way. And,” continues Story in his narrative so frequently quoted, “there is a true and remarkable story of a greyhound [meaning the large, rapacious, and ferocious, Irish Wolf Dog that existed in those days, although extinct since the last century] belonging to an Irish officer: the gentleman was killed and stripped in the battle, whose body the dog remained by night and day, and tho’ he fed on other corps [es] with the rest of the dogs, yet he would not allow them, or anything else, to touch that of his master. When all the corps [es] were consumed, the other dogs departed, but he used to go in the night to the adjacent villages for food, and presently to return again to the place where his master’s bones were only then left; and thus he continued till January following, when one of Colonel Foulk’s soldiers, being quartered nigh hand, and going that way by chance, the dog, fearing he came to disturb his master’s bones, flew upon the soldier, who, being surprised at the suddenness of the thing, unslung his piece, then upon his back, and killed the poor dog.”
Ireland’s national poet, Thomas Moore, in the beautiful words, set to that weirdly mournful air: “The Lamentation of Aughrim,” thus pours out in deathless melody the heart of his unfortunate country:
“Forget not the field where they perished,—
The truest; the last of the brave—
All gone and the bright hopes we cherished