A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History: Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process
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The word was given to fire, which was performed so effectually that a considerable number of the rebels dropped.... Nothing daunted they pressed over, fresh men succeeding those that were killed or wounded.... The fight was for some time renewed and continued with sword in hand and the butt end of the musket.... The action continued hot and dubious for at least three hours ... till the enemy wholly drew off. A great slaughter was made of them ... there could not be much less than 3,000 killed.
One of the Williamite officers, a Dane, wrote in a report to his king:
The very women, prone as they are to violent passions, have since then become more furious ... they caused as much, indeed more, damage than the garrison by throwing huge stones on the assailants, of whom a great number thus perished.
It was clear there would be no quick end to this war.
Episode 113
ATHLONE AND AUGHRIM: JUNE–JULY 1691
Saturday the 30th: in the morning we observed there was great silence in the enemy’s works and day appearing we could not perceive any body in them.... Immediately the word was carried ... that the rebels had raised the siege and stole away in the dead of night.
So John Stevens, an English Jacobite, described how the ‘rebels’, the Williamites, withdrew from their attempt to seize the city of Limerick in August 1690. King William returned to direct affairs from London. The Jacobites, holding the River Shannon and all the land to the west of it, and delighted by their recent success, refused offers of a compromise peace.
William appointed Godard van Reede, Baron de Ginkel, as his commander in Ireland. It was a wise choice. Campaigning was a miserable affair during the persistent rains of winter. On 27 December Ginkel wrote: ‘The enemy are burning all before us, and the Rapparees are so great a number that we can find neither forage nor cover, which hinders much our march.’ Named from their main weapon, a short pike known in Irish as a rapaire, the rapparees were Irish skirmishers. They did much to frustrate Ginkel’s attempts to bring the war in Ireland to a conclusion.
As well as reinforcements and fresh supplies sent by Louis XIV, the Jacobites acquired a new commander, Charles Chaumont, the Marquis de Saint-Ruth. St Ruth had no fewer than 16,000 foot-soldiers, 3,000 cavalry and 2,000 dragoons to stop Ginkel—with a smaller force—from taking Athlone, a town at a vital crossing of the Shannon.
Ginkel launched the heaviest bombardment ever in Irish history on the night of 21 June 1691. For ten days, without let-up, the town and Jacobite fortifications were pounded and reduced to rubble. John Stevens was in the thick of the fighting in defence of the bridge over the Shannon:
Sunday the 28th: continued playing incessantly.... The great and small shot never ceased firing.... The enemy bent thirty pieces of cannon and all their mortars in that way, so that what with the fire and what with the balls and bombs flying so thick that spot was a mere Hell on Earth, and so many cannon and mortars incessantly playing on it there seemed to be no likelihood of any man coming off alive.... We had very many men killed here.... And I think this was the hottest place that ever I saw in my time of service.
But how was the Shannon, the largest river in these islands, to be crossed? In spite of the artillery barrage, attempts to seize the bridge at Athlone failed, as the Rev. George Story recorded:
We labour hard to gain the bridge, but what we got there was inch by inch as it were, the enemy sticking very close to it, though great numbers of them were slain by our guns.
Ginkel decided to test a ford below Athlone. On 7 June he sent three Danes under sentence of death for mutiny to try the crossing in return for their lives. Yes, they reported—after wading across and back—the river was fordable. On 30 June 1691 the assault began. A church bell gave the signal for the grenadiers to enter the water, which came up to their chests. Each man had been given a golden guinea to whet his courage.
The Jacobites, caught from behind, were completely taken by surprise. In less than half an hour Athlone fell to King William’s army. St Ruth pulled back sixteen miles to the south-west, near to the village of Aughrim. There he prepared a set-piece battle on the limestone Galway plain. His plan was to lure the Williamites into a treacherous bog in front of his line.
At first these tactics seemed to work. A thick mist enveloped Ginkel’s army as it moved out of Ballinasloe on Sunday 12 July. Ginkel’s Huguenots were drawn into the bog, cut off and slaughtered, while the Danes strove in vain to relieve them. The Irish pikemen stood firm even when, it was reported, ‘the blood flowed into their shewse’, and Ulster Jacobites, led by Gordon O’Neill, spiked a battery of Williamite guns. In anticipation of a speedy victory, St Ruth cried out: ‘Le jour est à nous, the day is ours, mes enfants!’
At that moment a cannon-ball, fired at extreme range, took off his head. This chance incident created total confusion in the Jacobite ranks. Guided by members of the Trench family, French Protestants who had settled in Co. Galway, Ginkel sent his cavalry by a causeway over the bog. As these horsemen made a devastating assault over this narrow stretch of dry ground, the Jacobite cavalry—the flower of the Old English gentry of Ireland—turned tail and abandoned their foot-soldiers to their fate.
Episode 114
LIMERICK: A SECOND SIEGE AND A TREATY
Fought on the plains of Galway on Sunday 12 July 1691, the Battle of Aughrim was the bloodiest battle ever fought on Irish soil. The French commander, the Marquis de Saint-Ruth, three major-generals, seven brigadiers, twenty-two colonels, seventeen lieutenant-colonels and over seven thousand other ranks were killed. When news of this victory for King William’s army, commanded by Baron de Ginkel, spread north, the Protestants of Ulster set bonfires ablazing, as they would do year after year thereafter.
The French and the Irish Jacobites—supporters of James II, the deposed king now in France—decided to make a last stand in Limerick city. Patrick Sarsfield took over command from the Duke of Tyrconnell, King James’s dying Lord Deputy. An intense contest ensued. The Siege of Derry two years earlier was the longest siege in this war and the most decisive. But this second siege of Limerick was a far more extensive affair, and was conducted on a scale never again equalled in Irish history.
The Rev. George Story, an English chaplain in Ginkel’s army, described what happened in his journal:
September the 8th, our new Batteries were all ready; one to the left of ten Field-pieces, to shoot red hot Ball; another to the right of 25 Guns, all 24 and 18 Pounders; and in the Center were placed eight Mortars.... These stood altogether upon the North-east of the Town nigh the Island: then there were 8 Guns of 12 pound Ball each, planted at Mackay’s fort; and some also towards the River on the South-west, where the Danes were posted.
Those fell to work all at a time, and put the Irish into such a fright, that a great many of them wish’d themselves in another place, having never heard such a Noise before, or I hope never shall in that Kingdom. One of the great Mortars had a shell burst in her, flinging the Mortar and Carriage from the Flooring; which is demonstration, that the firing of the Fuse before you give fire to the Mortar, is neither the readiest nor the safest way, but this was the method of all our Foreign Bombadeers....We threw Bombs, Fireballs and Carcasses all day long, and our Guns were discharged almost without ceasing; by which there appeared a considerable Breach in the Wall.
This furious bombardment continued without let-up for the next fortnight. Then Ginkel decided to storm the gaping breach in the walls, as George Story records:
September the 22d ... For our Granadeers were so very forward, and despised all Dangers to that degree, that they put the whole Body to flight in despight of their Forts, Cannon, and all other Advantages, and pursued them so close, that a French Major who commanded at Thoumond Gate, fearing our mens entring the Town with their own, he ordered the Draw-bridg to be pluck’d up, and left the whole Party to the Mercy of our Souldiers.
By raising the drawbridge at Thomond Gate, that French officer left Jacobites stranded outside to certain slaughter:
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sp; Those that were left behind, pressing the others forward, [threw] them down over the Fall of the Draw-bridg: then the rest cried out for Quarter, holding up their Handkerchiefs, and what else they could get: but before killing was over, they were laid in Heaps upon the Bridg higher than the Ledges of it; so that they were either all killed or taken.... The number of the dead is said to be six hundred, amongst whom we may reckone over hundred fifty four that were drowned in being forced over the Fall of the Draw-bridg.
On the following day Ginkel wrote to William’s representatives in Dublin to assure them that it was impossible for him to take the city of Limerick by assault. He told them how vigorously the Irish had defended themselves the previous day: ‘They do not fear fire and were very steady in the charge.’ That same day, however, the French and the Irish held a council of war and agreed to ask Ginkel for a capitulation and a ceasefire. The ensuing discussions were conducted with great courtesy—helped, no doubt, by a boatload of Bordeaux wine brought over for the Williamite officers by Patrick Sarsfield. By 3 October 1691 terms had been agreed and both sides signed what became known as the Treaty of Limerick.
The articles of the treaty appeared lenient. But it was one thing for a Dutch general to sign a generous treaty to end a war. It was quite another for the Protestant gentlemen in the Westminster and Dublin parliaments to agree to those terms. With very good reason, the Treaty of Limerick was to become known as the ‘Broken Treaty’, and it embittered relations between the Irish and the English for more than two centuries.
Episode 115
THE WILD GEESE
On 5 October 1691 a great French fleet entered the Shannon below Limerick. Only two days earlier, the defeated Jacobites had signed the Treaty of Limerick. Patrick Sarsfield, their leader, fell silent and then said: ‘Too late, our honour is pledged.... We must keep our plighted troth.’
All things considered, the treaty signed with Baron de Ginkel, King William III’s general, was a fair one. Those officers and men who had surrendered and were to remain in Ireland would be pardoned. They would keep their property, provided they gave an oath of allegiance to King William and Queen Mary. If they were gentlemen, they could ride with a sword and a case of pistols and keep a gun in their houses. Catholics all over Ireland were to have freedom of worship. The same terms applied to civilians in the western counties under Jacobite control at the time of the ceasefire.
Those Jacobites who preferred to join the armies of Louis XIV could leave for France. Within a short time some 5,000 had sailed away from Limerick with the French fleet. Ginkel actually agreed to pay for the ships to take the rest, and around another 7,000 Jacobite soldiers thereupon opted to leave for France. Sarsfield was with those who crowded aboard vessels for the last sailing on 22 December.
Here in Cork harbour there was room enough for the Jacobite soldiers—but not for all their wives and children. The historian Macaulay later penned a memorable description:
... there still remained at the waterside a great multitude clamouring piteously to be taken on board. As the last boats pulled off there was a rush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were dragged out into the depth, clung till their fingers were cut through and perished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail arose from the shore and excited unwanton passion in hearts steeled by hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern Cromwellian ... could not hear unmoved the bitter cry, in which poured forth all the rage and sorrow of a conquered nation.
Certainly Colonel Charles O’Kelly, one of Sarsfield’s officers, recorded this departure as a tragic moment in the island’s history:
And now, alas! The saddest day is come that ever appeared above the horizon of Ireland; the sun was darkened and covered over with a black cloud, as if unwilling to behold such a woeful spectacle; there needed no rain to bedew the earth; for the tears of the disconsolate Irish did abundantly moisten their native soil, to which they were that day to bid the last farewell. Those who resolved to leave it never hoped to see it again; and those who made the unfortunate choice to continue therein, could at the same time have nothing in prospect but contempt and poverty, chains and imprisonment, and in a word, all the miseries that a conquered nation could naturally expect from the power and malice of implacable enemies.
One anonymous poet in his long lament expressed in Gaelic the sorrow of many. In translation, one verse reads:
Farewell, Patrick Sarsfield, wherever you may roam,
You crossed the seas to France and left empty camps at home,
To plead our cause before many a foreign throne
Though you left ourselves and poor Ireland overthrown.
The Jacobite exiles soon became known as the ‘Wild Geese’. Unlike the myriads of white-fronted, barnacle and brent geese which fly in from the north every autumn, very few of these Jacobite Wild Geese ever returned to Ireland.
Meanwhile Ginkel took his copy of the Treaty of Limerick with him to London. There he explained to the Privy Council that one clause had been mistakenly left out. That was the article which extended the terms of the treaty to the civilian population under the protection of the Jacobite army. To his horror, the Privy Council refused to allow the ‘missing clause’ to be reinserted. This was the first step towards the mutilation of the treaty. King William willingly signed the treaty himself. Others were not so willing.
A contemporary broadsheet entitled A smart poem on the generous articles of Limerick and Galway put forward the view that Ginkel had been outwitted by the Jacobite negotiators:
Hard fate that still attends our Irish war,
The conquerors lose, the conquered gainers are;
Their pen’s the symbol of our sword’s defeat,
We fight like heroes but like fools we treat.
Soon it became clear that members of both the Westminster and Dublin parliaments would refuse to accept the Treaty of Limerick.
The outcome of this ‘Broken Treaty’ was a succession of acts passed by both parliaments which collectively would become known as the Penal Laws.
Episode 116
THE PENAL LAWS
Whereas, it is Notoriously known, that the late Rebellions in this Kingdom have been Contrived, Promoted and Carried on by Popish Archbishops, Bishops, Jesuits, and other Ecclesiastical persons of the Romish Clergy. And forasmuch as the Peace and Publick Safety of this Kingdom is in Danger ... which said Romish Clergy do, not only endeavour to withdraw his Majesty’s Subjects from their Obedience but do daily stir up, and move Sedition, and Rebellion, to the great hazard of the Ruine and Desolation of this Kingdom ...
So began a bill put forward in the Irish parliament to exile monks, friars, Jesuits and the Catholic hierarchy in 1695. Because the Emperor Leopold of Austria, then in alliance with Britain against Louis XIV of France, objected to it, the bill was set aside. Once the war was over in 1697, however, it was passed triumphantly into law. Other penal laws against Catholics followed rapidly, one after another.
The initiative for this anti-Catholic legislation had been taken in England. As early as 1691 Westminster passed a law that no MP could sit in the Irish parliament or hold public office who had not sworn against transubstantiation—that is, the actual turning of bread and wine at the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ. No Catholic could take such an oath, since it denied the validity of the Mass.
William viewed the strident demand for further laws against Catholics with some distaste. But in the spring of 1702 the king’s horse tripped on a molehill; William was thrown to the ground, breaking his collarbone, and died shortly afterwards from complications arising from his injury. Anne, the Protestant daughter of James II, was now queen.
No longer held back by William of Orange, and encouraged by Queen Anne, both parliaments set about drafting fresh laws to restrict the rights of Catholics. The 1704 ‘Act to prevent the further growth of popery’ was the crowning piece of this legislation. It represented the final dismantling of the terms agreed betwe
en the forces of King James and those of King William at Limerick in 1691.
These laws—known as the Penal Code—were enacted over a long period—thirty-nine years in fact. The final penal law, depriving Catholics of the vote, did not enter the statute book until 1728. The principal laws can be summarised as follows:
• No Catholic could buy land.
• No Catholic could have a lease on a farm for longer than thirty-one years. The rent was to be at least two-thirds of the holding’s yearly value.
• When a Catholic died, his estate was not be inherited by the eldest son, but would be divided equally among all the sons. If one son became a Protestant, he could inherit the entire estate.
• No Catholic could become a barrister, a solicitor, a judge or a member of a grand jury.
• Catholics could not sit in parliament or vote in elections.
• Catholics could not hold public office—for example, a Catholic could not be a civil servant, a sheriff, or a member of a town council.
• Catholics could neither send their children abroad to be educated nor establish schools at home.
• Catholics could not be guardians of orphans.
• Catholics could not carry arms, join the army, or own a horse worth more than £5.
• Catholics were excluded from living in many important provincial towns.