On the 19th of the month King William had another providential escape. He was riding slowly up toward Cromwell's fort, when, as he was entering a gap, an officer stayed him about some business. Within a second or two after the pause of the horse's feet, a cannon-ball swept through the spot where he and his horse would have been but for the interruption.
All this time the people within the walls were in ill-condition, their diet consisting of beans, or very coarse bread, and the enemy's mortars throwing bombs and carcasses among them with little interruption. These things disturbed them much, as Mr. Story says, for they had not seen the like before. The round or oval iron carcasses which flashed forth through it's holes a fierce and inextinguishable fire for some eight or ten minutes was nearly as terrible as the bomb. Still they doggedly held on, and made no complaint; Sarsfield's energy and hopeful spirits kept up their courage. The chaplain relates with a sort of remorseful feeling how his party and himself enjoyed the burning of a part of the town one night by the bombs and red-hot balls, "which made me reflect upon our profession of soldiery not to be overcharged with good nature."
HOW LIMERICK AS ASSAILED AND DEFENDED.
By the 27th of the month, a twelve yards breach being made in the wall of Irishtown, and William looking on from Cromwell's fort, the grenadiers, supported on either side by Dutch, Danes, and Brandenburghers, on hearing a signal of three cannon-shots, sprang out of their trenches, and cheering loudly, dashed forward to the glacis. [Footnote 205] They were hotly received from the covered way, whose occupants mounting the banquette, and resting their muskets on the edge of the glacis, poured a shower of balls among them; and the guns on the ramparts, great and small, volleying fast and fiercely, made wide lanes among the brave fellows. However, the guns from Cromwell's fort, enfilading the ramparts, soon silenced the engines of death stationed there, and the grenadiers, undaunted by the thinning of their ranks, gained the glacis, sprang into the covered way, and after a terrible struggle forced the defenders from that post, from their trenches in the ditch, and over the breach into the city.
[Footnote 205: For the behoof of young renders not conversant with the outworks of besieged towns, a few explanatory words are given. Outside the strong walls is a wide and deep, dry ditch. The sloping side from which the wall rises is the scarp, the opposite slope is the counterscarp, its upper line meeting with the platform called the covered way. This covered way is about thirty feet wide, its outward boundary being the face of the glacis or sloping plane, this last so situated that men marching along it to attack the fortress are in the direct range of the guns. The level of the glacis is higher than that of the covered way by seven or eight feet. The defenders standing on a small terrace called the banquette at the base of the glacis, and resting their muskets on its edge, can fire on the advancing foe.]
The guns on the ramparts to the right of the breach being silenced, the firing from the Danes and Dutch on the flanks of the storming party did considerable damage to those on the ramparts and in the ditch, but the guns of a fort constructed in King's Island opened on the foreigners, killed many, and afforded some relief to the defenders. While these were mowing each other down at a distance, the grenadiers, driving their opponents across the breach, cheered lustily, and flung in their hand-grenades, whose bursting and destructive iron shower were ill calculated to recall the self-possession of the fugitives. But the pikes and bayonets of their follows in shelter, now levelled full at their breasts, were [{716}] as much to be dreaded as what they expected from behind. Over the breach and inward dashed Lord Drogheda's grenadiers, but a battery snugly placed in front of the yawning breach on stones, timber, earth, and other stuff, all at once belched out a storm of grape upon them, and after struggling for some time, a second discharge sent them back over the ruins and into the ditch.
But no dastard feeling was to be found among the survivors. Re-enforced by new comrades who had yet done nothing, they returned once more to the assault, flung their grenades, and cleared the tumbled masses of lime and stone. Undaunted by the havoc made among them by a fresh discharge, they rushed on the battery, effectually silenced it, and now looked on the capture of the town as certain. But here they were met by fresh and untired foes, who being kept to that moment in inaction by Sarsfield, now rushed on from either side, and a dreadful struggle commenced, the badly armed defenders showering volleys of stones where more effective weapons were not at command, the mere townsmen and their wives and daughters mingling fiercely in the desperate fray. Those who had pushed on the furthest were slain to a man, neither asking nor receiving quarter, and the others, after effecting everything in the power of energy and dauntless courage, were for the second time driven forth from the rescued city.
"From the walls and every place (we quote our chaplain) they so pestered us on the counterscarp (properly the covered way), that after nigh three hours resisting bullets, stones (broken bottles from the very women who boldly stood in the breach, and were nearer our men than their own), and whatever ways could be thought on to destroy us, our ammunition being spent, it was judged safest to return to our trenches. When the work was at the hottest, the Brandenburgh regiment, who behaved themselves very well, were got upon the black battery, where the enemie's powder hapned to take fire, and blew up a great many of them, the men, faggots, stones, and whatnot, flying into the air with a most terrible noise."
In some Jacobite memoirs mention is made of a sortie made by Sarsfield and his driving the wearied assaulters to their camp, and their rescuing many of the enemy from an hospital which had taken fire. The exploit is overlooked by the chaplain, who thus concludes his short account of the day:
"The king stood nigh Cromwell's fort all the time, and the business being over, he went to his camp very much concerned, as indeed was the whole army, for you might have seen a mixture of anger and sorrow in every bodie's countenance."