Sir Char. Ere you depart me, ghost, I here demand
You’d let me know your last divine command!’
The ghost says that the young man must die in the battle; that it will go ill for him if he die in the wrong cause; and, therefore, that he had best go over to the Protestants—which poor Sir Charles (not without many sighs for Jemima) consents to do. He goes off then, saying—
‘I’ll join my countrymen, and yet proclaim
Nassau’s great title to the crimson plain.’
In Act V., that desertion turns the fate of the day. Sarsfield enters with his sword drawn, and acknowledges his fate. ‘Aughrim,’ exclaims Lord Lucan,
‘Aughrim is now no more, St. Ruth is dead,
And all his guards are from the battle fled.
As he rode down the hill he met his fall,
And died a victim to a cannon ball.’
And he bids the Frenchman’s body to
‘——lie like Pompey in his gore,
Whose hero’s blood encircles the Egyptian shore.’
‘Four hundred Irish prisoners we have got,’ exclaims an English General, ‘and seven thousand lyeth on the spot.’ In fact, they are entirely discomfited, and retreat off the stage altogether; while, in the moment of victory, poor Sir Charles Godfrey enters, wounded to death, according to the old gentleman’s prophecy. He is racked by bitter remorse; he tells his love of his treachery, and declares ‘no crocodile was ever more unjust.’ His agony increases, the ‘optic nerves grow dim and lose their sight, and all his veins are now exhausted quite;’ and he dies in the arms of his Jemima, who stabs herself in the usual way.
And so every one being disposed of, the drums and trumpets give a great peal, the audience huzzas, and the curtain falls on Ginckle and his friends exclaiming—
‘May all the gods th’ auspicious evening bless,
Who crowns Great Britain’s arrums with success!’