While he doubted, or affected to doubt, other couriers arrived, whose report was confirmed by the sound of cannon and musketry. The delay, short as it was, had been fatal. The troops were now ordered under arms. The drums beat, and the trumpets sounded to horse; and in a short time some regiments were on their march towards the town. They were in time to check the progress of the British corps that had followed the disorderly garrison in their retreat. The pursuit was given up. The British drew back into the town, and the Irish returned to their camp.

Athlone had been carried by surprise. St. Ruth was now deeply sensible of the folly he had been guilty of, in not having more carefully provided for its defence. If common attention had been paid to this important post, it could not have been taken. Ginckle would have been forced to retreat; the British frontier would have been every where beaten in; and with such a vast body of irregulars at St. Ruth commanded, supported by a successful army, the result of the campaign would have been decidedly in his favour, without the risk of battle.

The Irish officers saw the error that had been committed, and which was the less excusable, as they had given the general notice of what was likely to happen. They felt that they were

sacrificed to the levity of a vain foreigner, who had been placed in a command over them to which he had no claim. They had done their duty; never was fortress more ably or bravely defended; and the successes they had won, the fruit of their blood and labour, had been thrown away, as things of no value, by the pampered minion of a foreign court; whose sole concern in the war was his pay or his paltry reputation, while they were contending for the estates of their ancestors, their lives, and native land. These were the bitter reflections of the Irish officers, after the disaster at Athlone, as we find in the letters of some of them.

CHAP. XII.

BATTLE OF AUGHRIM.

ST. RUTH, notwithstanding the coxcombry of his character, was too much a man of talent not to profit by the lesson which he had been taught at Athlone. He had come to Ireland with an opinion of his own superiority over all William's officers, and a notion that it was felt and acknowledged by them. He had an equal contempt for the Irish troops as for the British officers. He had taken up the idea, then, and long after prevalent, that, though capable of being transformed into good troops upon the Continent, the Irish were, in their own country, and under their own officers, the worst military in Europe. Like his countryman Voltaire, who repeats the same notion, he did not trouble himself to inquire into the causes of such a phenomenon ; he was satisfied to assume the fact.

But the defence of Athlone made him suspect that he might be mistaken. He saw that the Irish had done their duty, and that he had not done his. He had been in the habit of

treating his soldiers not only with open and undisguised contempt, but with great cruelty. He hanged them in multitudes, and for the slightest offences; and numbers deserted to their homes in consequence of his severity. He carried himself to his superior officers with a cold and supereilious courtesy; and those of inferior rank were subjects of his ridicule and amusement.

All this was changed at once by the event at Athlone. He felt that, instead of the high superiority he imagined himself to enjoy over his own officers and the enemy's, he had become the object of ridicule to both armies. His manner towards his officers and soldiers underwent an almost instantaneous alteration. He courted a friendly and familiar intercourse with the former, was condescending and polite to his generals, and affected the gay good humour with the men which he knew to be so acceptable to the Irish. The day after the taking of Athlone, July 1. 1691, he broke up from camp, and marched westward towards Ballinasloe.

If the conduct of St. Ruth was changed, so was that of Ginckle also in a considerable degree. The change in both generals was somewhat of the same character, and derived very Ginckle had suc

much from the same source.

ceeded at Athlone; but the defence made by

ing soon took fire, and the soldiers, not being able to escape, were burnt.

Seven great batteries now played incessantly upon the town. There was no intermission of the fire day or night. On the 26th of June, thirty waggons loaded with powder, and one hundred carts of cannon-balls, arrived in the British camp from Dublin, to supply the ammunition which had been expended. The interior of the town was reduced to ruins. Nothing remained standing but the walls; and these preserved their position only by being continually repaired. The Irish laboured incessantly to repair the breaches in the walls; but this was a task of almost certain destruction; the workmen fell as fast as they came to their work: others followed; and these again were swept away; and still there were found men willing to labour at this task of death.

The night afforded no protection; for it was the month of June, and the weather exceedingly clear; and the fire of the guns and mortars added a splendid illumination.

The town returned the fire of the besiegers with great spirit, notwithstanding the immense superiority of the British in number and weight of metal. And it now seemed as if all that could be accomplished by the fire of gun and mortar was done; and the British were nothing advanced towards the capture of the place. The