Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/62

48 south-west, where the troops of James still held their ground, the condition of things was as appalling as can be conceived. In the north the protestants kept a tight hand on the native Irish; they refused them the possession of any arms; they forbade them to proceed more than three miles from their own dwellings, except to attend market; or for more than five papists to assemble together on any occasion or pretence. They forbade them to approach the frontier within ten miles, to prevent them holding intelligence with the enemy. If outrages were committed, they were visited with unsparing severity. But if the north was strict and yet struggling, the south was in a fearful state of calamity. The soldiers traversed the country, levying contributions of cattle and provisions wherever they could find them. They were no better than so many bandits and rapparees, who swarmed over the desolated region, carrying violence, and terror, and spoliation wherever they came. There was no money but James's copper trash, bearing high nominal values. Provisions and clothes, where they were to be had, fetched the most incredible prices; and merchants feared to approach the ports, because they were in as much danger of wholesale robbery as the shopkeepers and farmers on land.

In the Irish camp the utmost licence, disorder, and destitution prevailed. The duke of Berwick was elected to command during the absence of Tyrconnel in France; but his power was a mere fiction, and he let things take their course. Sarsfield was the only officer who had any real influence with the soldiers. But early in the spring Tyrconnel returned, bringing some supplies of money and clothing; and in April a fleet also arrived, bringing arms, ammunition, flour, and provisions. With these came what was much needed—two general officers—Saint Ruth and D'Usson. Saint Ruth was a general of considerable experience. He had lately served in Savoy, and had the prestige of victory but he was vain and cruel, was mortally hated by the Huguenots for his persecutions of them, and was called by them "the hangman." His very name, therefore, was a guarantee for the Huguenot troops in the English service fighting to the utmost. He was astonished, and disgusted at the dirty, ragged, and disorderly crew which bore the name of the Irish army; but he began actively to repress their licence, and to drill them into some discipline.

On the 6th of June Ginckell took the field against him with a body of efficient troops, reinforced by some excellent regiments from Scotland, and having now under his command Talmache and Slackay, two brave officers. At the head of the French refugees was the marquis Ruvigny, the brother-in-law of the Late general Caillemot, who fell at the Boyne. On the 7th Ginckell reached Ballymore, and compelled the fortress there, containing a garrison of one thousand men, to surrender, and sent all the prisoners to Dublin. Having placed the fortress, which stood on an island in the lake, in good defence, he marched forward, and, on the 18th, sate down before the very strongly-fortified town of Athlone. On his march he had been joined by the duke of Würtemberg and his Danish division.

Athlone stood on the Shannon, the river cutting it in two. The stream there was deep and rapid, and was spanned by a bridge on which stood two mills, worked by the current below, and on the Connaught side was a strong fort, called King John's Fort, with a tower seventy feet high, and flanking the river for a distance of two hundred feet. The town on the Leinster side, where Ginckell was, was defended by bold earthen ramparts, the most indestructible of any kind by cannon. Ginckell, however, lost no time in attacking it. On the 20th his cannon were all in order for bombarding, and he opened a terrible fire on the town. Under cover of his fire the troops rushed to the walls, and the French refugees were the first to mount a breach, and one of them, flinging his grenade, fell with a shout of triumph. His example was quickly followed. The assailants sprang over the walls in hundreds, clearing the way with hand grenades; and the Irish giving way, there was a hot pursuit along the bridge, by which they sought to escape into the other half of the town. The crush and confusion there was such, that many of the flying Irish were trodden under foot, and others were forced over the parapets of the bridge, and perished in the Shannon. The near side of the town was in Ginckell's possession, with the loss of only twenty men killed and forty wounded.

The cannonade was continued on the bridge and on the town across the river, and the next day it was repeated with increased effect from batteries thrown up along the river bank. The next morning it was discovered that the mills were greatly damaged; one, indeed, had taken fire, and its little garrison of sixty men had perished in it. A great part of the fort had also been beaten down. The French officers had constructed a tête du pont at the end of the bridge to assist the fort, had broken down some of the arches, and made the conquest of a passage by the bridge next to impossible. To add to the difficulty of the enterprise, St. Ruth had hastened from Limerick with an army superior in numbers to that of Ginckell. But this force was more imposing in appearance than formidable in reality. Saint Ruth, calculating on the difficulty of the passage, imagined that he could hold the place with little loss till the autumnal rains drove the English from the field through sickness. He therefore ordered D'Usson to attend to the defence of the passage, and fixed his camp about three miles from the town.

There was a weak spot, however, which was pointed out to Ginckell—a ford at some little distance from the bridge. It is true that a force was posted to guard this ford, commanded by Maxwell, an officer who had recently been to St. Germains with dispatches from the duke of Berwick, and was put into command at this ford by Tyrconnel in defiance of Saint Ruth—the interference of Tyrconnel in military affairs, much to the disgust of Saint Ruth, being as constant as if he were commander-in-chief as well as lord-lieutenant. Sarsfield soon became aware of the design of Ginckell to attempt this ford, and warned Saint Ruth of it. But the vanity of that officer made him treat the warning with scorn. "What!" said he, "attempt the ford; they dare not do it and I so near." Warned again, he exclaimed, "Monsieur! Ginckell's master ought to hang him for attempting to take Athlone, and mine ought to hang me if I let him." Sarsfield, who knew better what the enemy dare do, said as he withdrew, "He does not know the English."

Ginckell himself, after reconnoitering the ford and the breastwork opposite, had no great stomach for the attempt. He continued the cannonade on the fort and town till the