Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/293

Sarsfield were ready if necessary to give more than Sarsfield got from them is Sarsfield's condemnation; and he was blamed even by friendly writers, such as O'Kelly, for not making better terms for the Irish. But, after all, the point is academic. If the less generous conditions were not kept, what likelihood is there that terms more generous would have been observed? Sarsfield succeeded so far as this, that he forced from the English a treaty which they could not break without forfeiting their honour, nor keep without forfeiting their inclination. The treaty made was broken, as all the world knows, and Ireland would have been only a theoretic gainer by three or four extra clauses, which would have been equally ill observed. Yet there is this to be added that in such a treaty every Irishman should have known that fear and not honour was the true guarantee; and the State Papers furnish evidence that the ink was scarcely dry on the treaty before the rulers of Ireland were planning to disregard its provisions. Sarsfield handed over his country tied and bound by those articles which secured to himself and his army the right to avoid submission by accepting a foreign service. Eleven thousand men of his fourteen thousand volunteered to follow him to France, setting the example of that disastrous 281