Chapter 17

During this first siege of Limerick the garrison numbered some twenty thousand, by no means well armed. William's besieging army was about forty thousand, with forty cannon and mortars. His loss was between three and four thousand, while the loss of the defenders was about half that number.

William, presently arriving in England, sent reinforcements to his generals in Ireland, under Lord Churchill, afterwards famous as the Duke of Marlborough. Tyrconnell had meantime followed his runaway king to France, as was involved in a maze of contradictory designs, the one clear principle of which was the future advantage of Tyrconnell. Louis XIV, who had reasons of his own for wishing to keep the armies of William locked up in Ireland, was altogether willing to advise and help a continuance of hostilities in that country. James seems to have recognized his incapacity too clearly to attempt anything definite, or, what is more probable, was too irresolute by nature even to determine to give up the fight. Tyrconnell himself sincerely wished to make his peace with William, so that he might once more enjoy the revenues of his estates. The Irish army was thoroughly determined to hold out to the end.

With these conflicting desires and designs, no single-hearted and resolute action was possible. Matters seem to have drifted till about January, 1691, when Tyrconnell returned; "but he brought with him no soldiers, very few arms, little provision and no money." A month later a messenger came direct to Sarsfield, then with the army at Galway, from Louis XIV, promising reinforcements under the renowned soldier Saint Ruth. This letter to a great extent revealed the double part Tyrconnell had been playing at the French court, and did much to undermine his credit with the better elements in the Irish army.

The French fleet finally arrived at Limerick in May, 1691, under Saint Ruth, bringing a considerable quantity of provisions for the Irish army; but it is doubtful whether this arrival added any real element of strength to the army. The Irish army, soon after this, was assembled at Athlone, to defend the passage of the Shannon. Much vigorous fighting took place, but Ginkell, William's general, finally captured that important fortress in June. The road to Galway was now open, and Ginkell's army prepared to march on that important city, the strongest place in Connacht. Saint Ruth prepared to resist their approach, fixing his camp at Aughrim, The Hill of the Horses, some eighteen miles from Athlone and thirty-five from Galway. We may once more tell the story in the words of an eye-witness:

"Aughrim was then a ruined town, and the castle was not much better, situated in a bottom on the north side of the hill, where the Irish army encamped. The direct way from Ballinasloe was close by the castle, but there was another way about, on the south-east side of the hill. The rest of the ground fronting the camp was a marsh, passable only for foot. The army of Ginkell appeared in sight of Aughrim on July 12th. The Irish army, composed of about ten thousand foot, two thousand men-at-arms, and as many light horse, was soon drawn up by Saint Ruth in two lines; the cavalry on both wings flanking the foot; and having placed Chevalier de Tessé on the right wing of the horse, and Sarsfield on the left, and giving their several posts to the rest of the chief commanders, Saint Ruth obliged himself to no certain place, but rode constantly from one side to another to give the necessary orders where he saw occasion. Ginkell being now come up at so near a distance that his guns and other battering engines might do execution, he ordered them to be discharged, and as he had a vast number of them he made them play incessantly on the Irish army, hoping by that means to force them from the hill, which was of great advantage. But the Irish, encouraged by the presence and conduct of Saint Ruth, kept their ground and beat the English as often as they advanced towards them. The fight continued from noon till sunset, the Irish foot having still the better of the enemy; and Saint Ruth, observing the advantage of his side, and that the enemy's foot were much disordered, was resolved, by advancing with the cavalry, to make the victory complete, when an unlucky shot from one of the terrible new engines, hitting him in the head, made an end of his life, and took away the courage of his army. For Ginkell, observing the Irish to be in some disorder, gave a notable conjecture that the general was either killed or wounded, whereupon he commanded his army to advance. The Irish cavalry, discouraged by the death of Saint Ruth, and none of the general officers coming to head them in his place, gave back, and quitted the field. The foot who were engaged with the enemy, knowing nothing of the general's death or the retreat of the cavalry, continued fighting till they were surrounded by the whole English army; so that the most of them were cut off, and no quarter given but to a very few; the rest, by favor of the night then approaching, for Saint Ruth was killed about sunset, made their escape."

To this we may add the testimony of the runaway monarch: "The Irish behaved with great spirit. They convinced the English they had to do with men no less resolute than themselves. Never assault was made with greater fury nor sustained with greater obstinacy. The Irish foot repulsed the enemy several times, particularly in the center. They even looked upon the victory as certain.... The Irish lost four thousand men. The loss of the English was not much inferior."

The army of Ginkell, thus in possession of the key of Connacht, advanced upon its most important city, arriving before Galway a few days after the battle of Aughrim. Galway, however, was full of divided counsels, and speedily surrendered, so that Limerick alone remained. Limerick was greatly weakened, now that Galway, and with Galway the whole of Connacht to which alone Limerick could look for supplies, was in the hands of the enemy. Ginkell turned all his efforts in the direction of Limerick, appearing before the city and pitching his camp there on August 25, 1691. Beginning with the next day, our narrator tells us, "he placed his cannon and other battering engines, which played furiously night and day without intermission, reducing that famous city almost to ashes. No memorable action, however, happened till the night between September 15 and 16, when he made a bridge of boats over the Shannon, which being ready by break of day, he passed over with a considerable body of horse and foot on the Connacht side of the river, without any opposition. This so alarmed Sheldon, who commanded the cavalry at that time, that without staying for orders, he immediately retired to a mountain a good distance from Limerick, and marched with such precipitation and disorder, that if a hundred of the enemy's horse had charged him in the rear, they would in all likelihood have defeated his whole party, though he had near upon four thousand men-at-arms and light horse; for the man, if he was faithful, wanted either courage or conduct, and the party were altogether discouraged to be under his command. But Ginkell did not advance far, and after showing himself on that side of the bridge, returned back into his camp the same day. Yet Sheldon never rested till he came, about midnight, fifteen miles from the Shannon, and encamped in a fallow field where there was not a bit of grass to be had: as if he had designed to harass the horses by day and starve them by night.... Ginkell, understanding that the Irish horse was removed to such a distance, passed the river on the twenty-third day with the greatest part of his cavalry, and a considerable body of foot, and encamped half-way between Limerick and the Irish horse camp, whereby he hindered all communication between them and the town. On the twenty-fourth, the captains within Limerick sent out a trumpet, desiring a parley," and as a result of this parley, a treaty was ultimately signed between the two parties, Limerick was evacuated, and the war came to an end. This was early in October, 1691.

The war had, therefore, lasted nearly four years, a sufficient testimony to the military qualities of the Irish, seeing that throughout the whole period they had matched against them greatly superior numbers of the finest troops in Europe, veterans trained in continental wars, and at all points better armed and equipped than their adversaries.

What moves our unbounded admiration, however, is to see the troops displaying these qualities of valor not only without good leadership, but in face of the cowardice of the English king, and of duplicity amounting to treachery on the part of his chief adherents. Foremost among these time-servers was Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, whose name shows him to have sprung from one of the Norman families, and we see here the recurrence of a principle which had worked much harm in the eight years' war of the preceding generation. The Duke of Ormond, sprung from the Norman Butlers, was then the chief representative of the policy of intrigue, and many of the reverses of both these wars are to be attributed to the same race.

It is tragical to find the descendants of the old Norman barons, who at any rate were valiant fighters, descending thus to practices quite unworthy; yet we can easily understand how the fundamental injustice of the feudal principle on which they stood, not less than the boundless abuse of that already bad principle under the first Stuarts, could not fail to undermine their sense of honor and justice, preparing them at length for a policy of mere self-seeking, carried on by methods always doubtful, and often openly treacherous.

The old tribal chieftains lived to fight, and went down fighting into the night of time. Owen Roe O'Neill, last great son of a heroic race, splendidly upheld their high tradition and ideal. No nobler figure, and few more gifted captains, can be found in the annals of those warlike centuries. The valor of Cuculain, the wisdom of Concobar, the chivalry of Fergus--all were his, and with them a gentle and tolerant spirit in all things concerning religion, very admirable in an age when so many men, in other things not lacking in elements of nobility, were full of bitter animosity, and zealous to persecute all those who differed from them concerning things shrouded in mystery.

It may be said, indeed, that Owen Roe is in this only a type of all his countrymen, who, though they suffered centuries of persecution for a religious principle, never persecuted in return. Their conduct throughout the epoch of religious war and persecution was always tolerant and full of the sense of justice, contrasting in this, and contrasting to their honor, with the conduct of nearly every other nation in Christendom.

The history of Ireland, for the half century which followed this war, offers few salient features for description. The Catholics during all this time were under the ban of penal laws. The old tribal chiefs were gone. The Norman lords were also gone. The life of the land hardly went beyond the tilling of the fields and the gathering of the harvests. And even here, men only labored for others to enter into their labor. The right of private taxation, confirmed by law, and now forfeited by the feudal lords, was given as a reward to the adherents of the dominant party in England, and their yearly exactions were enforced by an armed garrison. The more vigorous and restless elements of our race, unable to accept these conditions of life, sailed in great numbers to the continent, and entered the armies of many European powers. It is estimated that, during the half century after the Treaty of Limerick, fully half a million Irishmen fell in the service of France alone.

XV.

CONCLUSION.

A.D. 1750-1901.

The Treaty of Limerick, signed when the army of Sarsfield came to terms with the besiegers, guaranteed equal liberty to all Ireland, without regard to difference of religion. There is no doubt that William of Nassau, scion of a race which had done much for liberty, a house that had felt the bitterness of oppression, would willingly have carried this treaty out in a spirit of fidelity and honor. But he was, helpless. The dominant powers in England and Ireland were too strong for him, and within the next few years the treaty was violated in letter and spirit, and the indigenous population of Ireland was disarmed, deprived of civil rights, reduced to servitude.

It is best, wherever possible, to secure the word of witnesses who cannot be suspected of prejudice or favor. We shall do this, therefore, in describing the condition of Ireland during the eighteenth century. We find the Lord Chancellor of England declaring, during the first half of that period, that "in the eye of the law no Catholic existed in Ireland." The Lord Chief Justice affirms the same doctrine: "It appears plain that the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The law, therefore, as created by England for Ireland, deprived of all civil, religious, intellectual and moral rights four-fifths of the whole population, and gave them over as a lawful prey to the remaining fifth: a band of colonists and adventurers, who favored the policy of the party then dominant in England. This was the condition of the law. We shall see, presently, what was its result on the life of the nation. It should be a warning, for all time, of the dangers which arise when one nation undertakes to govern another. For it must be clearly understood that the Sovreign and Parliament of England believed that in this they stood for honor and righteousness, and had a true insight into the spirit and will of the Most High. It was, indeed, on this superior knowledge of the divine will that they based their whole policy; for what else is the meaning of legal discrimination against the holders of a certain form of faith?

In the second half of the eighteenth century, in 1775, the Congress of the United States sent its sympathy in these words to the people of Ireland: "We know that you are not without your grievances; we sympathize with you in your distress, and we are pleased to find that the design of subjugating us has persuaded the administration to dispense to Ireland some vagrant rays of ministerial sunshine. Even the tender mercies of the government have long been cruel to you. In the rich pastures of Ireland many hungry parasites are fed, and grow strong to labor for her destruction."

Three years later, in 1778, Benjamin Franklin wrote thus to the Irish people: "The misery and distress which your ill-fated country has been so frequently exposed to, and has so often experienced, by such a combination of rapine, treachery and violence as would have disgraced the name of government in the most arbitrary country in the world, has most sincerely affected your friends in America, and has engaged the most serious attention of Congress."

It must be assumed that the men who drew up the Declaration of Independence knew the value of words, and that when they spoke of misery and cruelty, of rapine, treachery and distress, they meant what they said. Franklin's letter brings us to the eve of the Volunteer Movement, of which much has been said in a spirit of warm praise, but which seems to have wrought evil rather than good. This Movement, at first initiated wholly by the Scottish and English colonists and their adherents, was later widened so as to include a certain number of the indigenous population; and an armed force was thus formed, which was able to gain certain legislative favors from England, with the result that a Parliament sitting in Dublin from 1782 to 1799 passed laws with something more resembling justice than Ireland was accustomed to.

But this Parliament was in no sense national or representative. It was wholly composed of the Scottish and English colonists and their friends, and the indigenous population had no voice in its deliberations. It is, therefore, the more honor to Henry Grattan that we find him addressing that Parliament thus: "I will never claim freedom for six hundred thousand of my countrymen while I leave two million or more of them in chains. Give the Catholics of Ireland their civil rights and their franchise; give them the power to return members to the Irish Parliament, and let the nation be represented." At this time, therefore, four-fifths of the nation had neither civil rights nor franchise,--because they differed from the dominant party in England as to the precedence of the disciples of Jesus.

It may be supposed, however, that, even without civil or religious rights, the fate of the people of Ireland was tolerable; that a certain measure of happiness and well-being was theirs, if not by law, at least by grace. The answer to this we shall presently see. The Volunteer Movement, as we saw, included certain elements of the indigenous population. The dominant party in England professed to see in this a grave danger, and determined to ward off that danger by sending an army to Ireland, and quartering troops on the peasants of all suspected districts. We must remember that the peasants, on whom a hostile soldiery was thus quartered, had no civil rights as a safeguard; that the authorities were everywhere bitterly hostile, full of cowardly animosity towards them.

The result we may best describe in the words of the English generals at the head of this army. We find Sir Ralph Abercrombie speaking thus: "The very disgraceful frequency of great crimes and cruelties, and the many complaints of the conduct of the troops in this kingdom--Ireland--has too unfortunately proved the army to be in a state of licentiousness that renders it formidable to everyone except the enemy." Sir Ralph Abercrombie declared himself so frightened and disgusted at the conduct of the soldiers that he threw up his commission, and refused the command of the army.

General Lake, who was sent to take his place, speaks thus: "The state of the country, and its occupation previous to the insurrection, is not to be imagined, except by those who witnessed the atrocities of every description committed by the military,"--and he gives a list of hangings, burnings and murders.

Finally, we have the testimony of another English soldier, Sir William Napier, speaking some years later: "What manner of soldiers were these fellows who were let loose upon the wretched districts, killing, burning and confiscating every man's property? ... We ourselves were young at the time; yet, being connected with the army, we were continually among the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their experiences: and well remember, with horror, to this day, the tales of lust, of bloodshed and pillage, and the recital of their foul actions against the miserable peasantry, which they used to relate."

The insurrection against this misery and violence, which began in May, 1798, and its repression, we may pass over, coming to their political consequences. It is admitted on all hands that the morality and religion of England reached their lowest ebb at this very time; we are, therefore, ready to learn that the Act of Union between England and Ireland, which followed on the heels of this insurrection, was carried by unlimited bribery and corruption. The Parliament of Ireland, as we know, was solely composed of Protestants, the Catholics having neither the right to sit nor the right to vote; so that the ignominy of this universal corruption must be borne by the class of English and Scottish settlers alone.

The curious may read lists of the various bribes paid to secure the passage of the Act of Union in 1800, the total being about six million dollars--a much more considerable sum then than now. And it must be remembered that this entire sum was drawn from the revenues of Ireland, besides the whole cost of an army numbering 125,000 men, which England maintained in Ireland at the time the Act was passed. What the amenities of the last three years of the eighteenth century cost Ireland we may judge from these figures: in 1797, while the hangings, burnings and torturings which brought about the insurrection of the following year were in an early stage, the national debt of Ireland was under $20,000,000; three years later that debt amounted to over $130,000,000. It is profitless to pursue the subject further. We may close it by saying that hardly can we find in history a story more discreditable to our common humanity than the conduct of England towards Ireland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The French Revolution wrought a salutary change of heart in the governing class in England, for it must in justice be added that the tyranny of this class was as keenly felt by the "lower orders" in England as in Ireland itself. It is fairly certain that only the Reform Bill and the change of sovreigns which shortly followed prevented an insurrection of the peasants and servile classes in England which would have outdone in horrors the French Revolution itself. The Reform Bill was the final surrender of the baronial class in England; a surrender rather apparent than real, however, since most of the political and all the social power in the land still remains in the hands of the same class.

Through the salutary fear which was inspired by the horrors of the French Revolution, and perhaps through a certain moral awakening, the governing classes in England came to a less vicious mind in their dealings with Ireland. They were, therefore, the more ready to respond to the great national movement headed by Daniel O'Connell, with his demand that Irishmen might all equally enjoy civil and political rights, regardless of their form of faith. In 1829, as the result of this great movement, the Catholics were finally relieved of the burden of penal laws which, originally laid on them by the Tudors, were rendered even more irksome and more unjust by Cromwell and William of Nassau,--men in other things esteemed enlightened and lovers of liberty.

Thus the burden of persecution was finally taken away. To those who imposed it, the system of Penal Laws will remain a deep dishonor. But to those who bore that burden it has proved a safeguard of spiritual purity and faith. The religion of the indigenous race in Ireland was saved from the degeneration and corruption which ever besets a wealthy and prosperous church, and which never fails to engender hypocrisy, avarice and ambition. In England, the followers of the Apostles exercise the right to levy a second tax on the produce of all tilled lands, a second burden imposed upon the conquered Saxons. As a result, the leaders of the church live in palaces, while the people, the humbler part of their congregation; have sunk into practical atheism. In France, the reaction against a like state of things brought the church to the verge of destruction, and led the masses to infidelity and materialism. The result to the moral life of the people is too well known to need remark. Not less evil consequences have flowed from the enriching of the church in other lands. That wealth has always carried with it the curse, so prophetically pronounced, against those who trust in riches. For the ministers of religion, in a supreme degree, the love of money has been the root of evil.

We may, therefore, see in the spirituality and unworldliness of the native church in Ireland a result of all the evil and persecution the church suffered during almost three hundred years. From this purification by fire it comes that the people of Ireland are almost singular throughout Christendom in believing sincerely in the religion of gentleness and mercy--the kingdom which is not of this world.