United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In a few days Ginckel followed him, and inflicted on his army a terrible defeat at the battle of Aughrim. With that, however, we have nothing to do at present, but proceed to follow the fortunes of Rapin. Rapin entered Athlone with his regiment, and conducted himself with his usual valour. Ginckel remained only a few days in the place, in order to repair the fortifications.
The siege of Limerick brought the campaign to a close, and, so far, the Irish had no reason to be disheartened. They had besieged and nearly annihilated the army of Schomberg at Dundalk. They had fought a sturdy battle on the Boyne, and had proved themselves a match for William's best troops. They had decisively repulsed the attacks upon Athlone and Limerick.
Nor was he a great general. He had been principally occupied in France in hunting and hanging the poor Protestants of Dauphiny and the Cevennes. He had never fought a pitched battle; and his incapacity led to the defeat of the Irish at Athlone, and afterwards at Aughrim. St. Ruth treated his English adversaries with as much contempt as he did his Irish followers.
The minds of the people were poisoned by agitators, and they would pay nobody either rent or any other just debt except on compulsion. Beyond Athlone the tone of public opinion improved very rapidly, and in Roscommon, once a disturbed county, I found plenty of people ready to laugh with me at the spectre vert. There was nothing the matter in that county.
Indeed, from his earliest youth he was made to feel an intense, uneasy consciousness of supposed defects. Later he went to school at Athlone and at Edgeworthstown, and was in every school trick, either as an actor or a victim. On leaving the school at Edgeworthstown, Oliver entered Dublin University as a sizar, "at once studying freedom and practising servitude."
A number of English anglers stroll about with long salmon rods, or float their little barks on the broad bosom of the Erne, the population looking dreamily on from the long bridge over the river, which, like the Shannon at Athlone, flows through the heart of the town.
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.
Priest's nieces, but sure he's in heaven, And his failins is nothin' to me. And we still might get on without doctors, If they'd let the ould Island alone; And if purple-men, priests, and tithe-proctors Were crammed down the great gun of Athlone.
What Enniskillen and Derry had been, in the previous year, to the Williamite party in the north, cities of refuge, and strongholds of hope, these two towns upon the Shannon had now become, by the fortune of war, to King James's adherents. On the 17th of July, General Douglas appeared before Athlone, and summoned it to surrender.
Athlone with a part of this body invested Dinant, while Coehorn with the remainder advanced to Givet. He forthwith began to batter and bombard the place, which in three hours was on fire, and by four in the afternoon wholly destroyed, with the great magazine it contained. Then the two generals joining their forces returned to Namur without interruption.
Word Of The Day