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deemed hazardous, his army reduced to twenty CHAP. thousand, and the season advanced, yet William, probably relying on the retreat of the French, and surrendry of the Irish, began his approaches to this formidable post on the ninth of August.

The Irish troops retired fighting, as the English advanced, through grounds intersected with hedges, until they came to a narrow pass between two bogs, terminated by an old fort built by Ireton, and communicating with the town by three different lanes, in which the cavalry were arranged in the middle, the infantry on both sides under cover of hedges. After some resistance they were driven from this ground; and field-pieces were mounted, to annoy the garrison, on Ireton's fort and another advantageous post adjacent. The success of the king was seconded by the exertions of his Dutch general, Ginckle, who secured a ford three miles from the town, whence he had driven the enemy: but the answer of Boileau to his summons was, that he was "determined to merit the good opinion of the prince of Orange by a vigorous defence." Informed by a French deserter of the state of William's encampment, who had taken post within cannon shot of the town, without the usual precautions, and of the approach of his battering artillery under a slight es'cort, the governor directed the fire from the fortress against the tent of the king, who was thence obliged to remove to another spot, and permitted Sarsfield to undertake an expedition, with a chosen body of cavalry, to intercept the convoy of cannon, Sars

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CHAP. field, crossing the Shannon at Kallaloe, twelve miles from Limerick, and marching by devious roads, surprised the escort, carelessly encamped seven miles from William's army, killed or dispersed the whole party, and fixing the cannon, filled with powder, with their mouths in the ground, fired them by a train which he left burning on his retreat. The tremendous explosion, by which the cannon were burst to pieces, announced the deed to Sir John Lanier, who had been sent with five hundred horse to prevent such a disaster, but had executed so slowly his orders, that he only arrived in sight of Sarsfield's party when the business was accomplished, and made a futile attempt to intercept its return.

While the besieged were aroused to a resolution of desperate resistance by the defeat of an escort, whose safe arrival would have ensured the reduction of their city; and while discontent pervaded the English army, murmurs, and suspicions of treachery entertained against Lanier and others; William alone, long accustomed to variety of fortune, magnanimous, and not easily elated by prosperous, nor dejected by adverse events, preserved a composure unaccountable to his soldiers. With two cannon of convoy, which had escaped the general wreck, and some brought from Waterford, he furnished his batteries, and opened his trenches on the eighteenth of August. After an incessant hostility of attack and defence, maintained on both sides with the fiercest resolution, a breach was effected twelve yards in length, and an assault was ordered on the

the

twenty

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twenty-seventh, against the counterscarp and two CHAP. towers on each side the breach. Five hundred grenadiers, leaping from the farthest angle of the trenches, ran toward the counterscarp, and, dislodging the enemy in the midst of a tremendous fire, pursued even to the breach, and many of them actually entered the town, while the Irish fled in confusion from the walls. But those, who had been thus too impetuously carried forward by their ardour within the city, were overwhelmed by the rallying foe, so that few could effect their retreat unwounded, while the regiments, destined to support them, had, according to orders, halted at the counterscarp. The Irish rushed with fury to the breach and elsewhere to the walls; the women mingling with the men and throwing stones at the assailants. A regiment of Brandenburghers drove the besieged from a battery, but were unfortunate in their success, for most of them were slain by an accidental explosion. After an incessant fire of great and small arms for three hours, when five hundred of William's men were killed, and above a thousand desperately wounded, he ordered a retreat. On the following day, demanding a truce for the interment of the dead, he was haughtily refused by the governor. The English were ardent for another assault; but the king, fearing farther loss and delay in an advanced season, in a country where the roads might soon be rendered impassable to artillery by rain, ordered the siege to be raised; and his troops retired slowly without molestation. Here too as at Athlone,

the

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CHAP the army was attended by a mournful train of protestants, abandoning their dwellings, destitute of shelter for themselves and children, and exposed to the indiscriminate ravages of the soldiery, but a soldiery restrained to rules of better conduct by the presence of their king, who was severely attentive to salutary discipline,

Character of

Some catholic writers, in their zeal against heresy, William. have most shamefully traduced the conduct of William, by charging him with deeds of cruelty in his retreat from. Limerick, as contrary to his wellknown character as to facts the best authenticated. While his army lay at Clonmel, he proceeded to Waterford, and embarked for England at Duncannon, leaving the command of his forces to count Solmes and Ginckle, and the care of his civil government to two lords justices, lord Sidney and Thomas Coningsby, with a blank in their commission to be filled up by a third name. Thus ended in Ireland the personal command of this great prince, the main object of whose ambition was the independence of Europe, and who, as the friend of mankind, is known by indubitable records to have been favoured privately with the alliance of even the Pope against James, whose narrowness of soul would, in the indulgence of his bigotry for Roman forms of religion, have permitted France to enslave all the neighbouring nations. The character of William, which is justly revered by the protestants of Ireland, and ought to be reverenced even by such catholics as are sensible of the value of political free

dom,

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dom, is thus truly given by Somerville in his Politi- CH A P. cal Transactions. "In the character of William we, turn our eyes to sterling merit, naked and unadorned; to stern integrity, incorruptible patriotism, undaunted magnanimity, unshaken fidelity; but no splendid dress or gaudy trapping to arrest the attention of the superficial observer. A deliberate effort of the understanding is necessary to perceive and estimate its deserts.."

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