Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/51

] The Irish, ashamed of their conduct at the battle of the Boyne, and seeing their Saxon masters once more rapidly recovering their ascendancy in the island, one and all, men and officers, determined on here making a stand to the death. They did not owe their spirit to their French allies, for Lauzun and his officers ridiculed the idea of defending the place, which they regarded as most miserably fortified. Tyrconnel joined them in that opinion; but Sarsfield encouraged his countrymen, and exhorted them to cast up breast-works of earth, which, in our times—as at Hamburg and Sebastopol—have convinced military men that they are far more impervious to cannon than stone or brick-walls. He could not convince the French, who had lost all faith in Irish prowess, and who pined to return to France from the miseries and privations of Ireland; nor Tyrconnel, who was old, and completely dispirited by the action of the Boyne.

William III, at the Battle of the Boyne.

He and the French drew off with the French forces into Galway, and Boisseleau, a Frenchman, who did sympathise with the Irish, and Sarsfield, were left to defend the place They had yet twenty thousand men, who were animated by a new spirit, and were destined to make the defence of Limerick as famous as that of Londonderry.

Limerick stood partly on an island in the Shannon; and to take that part it was necessary to have boats, for only a single bridge connected the two parts of the town, or the two towns, as they were called—the English and the Irish,