"From Limerick that day bould Sarsfield dashed away, Until he came to Cullen where their artillery lay; The Lord cleared up the firmament, the moon and stars shone bright, And for the Battle of the Boyne be had revenge that night."
Poor John Banim inserted these stirring lines in his romance of the Boyne Water as belonging to an old ballad; we suspect them to have been his own composition. Whoever might have given Sarsfield information—a rapparee was as likely as the Frenchman mentioned by the chaplain—he crossed Thomond-bridge at the head of five hundred horse on Sunday night as soon as it was sufficiently dark, and the party moved up as noiselessly as they could along the western bank of the Shannon to Killaloe, or Killalow, as Rev. Mr. Story spells it. There they crossed the river and penetrated among the Tipperary mountains, over which the Keeper and the "Mother of Mountains" towered in pride. Among the hills they spent the rest of the night and the whole of the next day, being kept aware of the movements of the convoy which meantime was working its slow way along the Cashel road. Toward evening Sarsfield and a few who were most in his confidence, lying among the dry grass and fern of the hill-pass since called Lacken-na-Gapple (Lagan-na-Capal, "Hollow of the Horses"), were inspecting the last stage of the convoy. At that hour the train had passed the village of Cullen, and were about taking their rest on and about the road leading up to the grassy platform on which stood the old fortalice of Ballyneedy. This was about five miles from the mountain pass where the Jacobite general was on the watch. He waited as patiently as he could till the sun had sunk some time behind the Galteigh mountains, and the watch-fires began to glimmer from the encampment.
The watch-word that night among the wearied men and their sentinels was SARSFIELD, an ill-omened coincidence. How the party conspiring their destruction found it out is not so very apparent; but when the officers were asleep in the waste castle, and the soldiers by their wagons, Sarsfield's men sang out the password to the sentinel placed in advance of the village, to the sentinels in the village, and to the sentinels immediately in advance of the unconscious groups. There the commander thundered out "Sarsfield is the word, and Sarsfield is the man." Deafening shouts came from the rushing horsemen, and of the awakened slumberers some were slain gallantly resisting, a few escaped, and a few others got quarter. The spoils consisted or eight pieces of heavy battering-cannon, five mortars with their carriages, a hundred and fifty-three wagons of ammunition, twelve carts loaded with biscuit, eighteen tin boats for the passage of rivers, and all the cart and cavalry horses.
The commander, wisely judging that troops were at the moment marching from Limerick to interrupt his plans, had the cannons charged to the mouth and set in the earth, muzzle downward. [{713}] These he surrounded with the wagons and their contents, and skifully laid trains of powder were not neglected. The successful party then withdrawing to a safe distance—they needed a wide berth, taking the quantity of powder into account—set fire at once to the lines of powder, and at one and the same moment all the contents of the great guns and the ammunition-carts were ignited. There was an intolerable blaze, a roar and its reverberations; accompanied by a blowing up in the air of pieces of metal and blazing wood, and the combined effect was sublime and terrible beyond conception. The darkest recesses of the mountain glens were lighted up as in the summer noon, and the shock was felt for many miles in every direction. Sir John Lanier, who was hastening when too late to protect the convoy, saw the blaze and heard the terrible explosion at several miles distance, and comprehended the terrible disaster in a moment. The concussion was perceptible even in William's camp at a distance of about thirteen miles, and it is probable that the general who had "askt" Manus O'Brien about the prey of cartel, felt (to use a provincialism) very lewd of himself. Sir John Lanier directed his squadron of five hundred horse to the left to intercept the Irish party, but it was not his fortune to meet with them, and Sarsfield recrossed the Shannon without the loss of a man.
The Rev. Mr. Story relates that no one was made prisoner at Ballyneedy "only a lieutenant of Colonel Earle's, who being sick in a house hard by, was stripped and brought to Sarsfield, who used him very civilly."
While the Irish chief is snatching a short relaxation after his successful sortie, and all within the walls are filled with a momentary joy for the signal benefit, let us introduce a slight sketch of the career of the brave Earl of Lucan, whose memory is still held in love and veneration by the great mass of the Irish people, and of whom no disrespectful word is ever pronounced by the descendants of the brave men against whom he often waged battle.
SARSFIELD'S CAREER.
The first of the name known in Ireland was Thomas Sarsfield, standard-bearer to King Henry II. In the reign of Charles I., Patrick, the then representative of the family, married Anne, daughter of Ruaighré (Roger) O'Moore, and their children were William and the subject of our sketch Patrick, who succeeded to the estate on the death of his brother. "He had received his education in one of the French military colleges, and saw some early campaigns in the armies of Louis XIV. His first commission was that of ensign in the regiment of Monmouth in France, after which he obtained a lieutenancy in the Royal Guards of England." He commanded for James in one of those skirmishes which took place with William's Dutch troops on their march from Torquay. At the commencement of the Irish campaigns his estates produced £2,000 annual revenue, so that it did not inconvenience him much to raise a. company of horse. We shall not here touch on his achievements during the war in Ireland, as these have found, or will naturally find their places in the course of our narrative. On arriving in Paris after the treaty of Limerick, "he was received with kindness and distinction by the ex-king of England and Louis XIV."
"The former appointed him colonel of his body guards, and his most Christian majesty bestowed on him the rank of lieutenant-general in the French armies. He might have obtained a marshal's staff had his life been spared. He fought under Luxembourg at Steenkirk in 1692, . . . . and on the 29th of July, 1693, a little more than one year and a half after his voluntary banishment from his own country, he was killed in the command of a division at the great battle of Landen. It was a soldier's death on a glorious and memorable field.