twenty thousand strong, remained at Limerick. The chief command there
was entrusted to Boisseleau, who understood the character of the Irish
better, and consequently, judged them more favourably, than any of his
countrymen. In general, the French captains spoke of their unfortunate
allies with boundless contempt and abhorrence, and thus made themselves
as hateful as the English, [747]

Lauzun and Tyrconnel had scarcely departed when the advanced guard of
William's army came in sight. Soon the King himself, accompanied by
Auverquerque and Ginkell, and escorted by three hundred horse, rode
forward to examine the fortifications. The city, then the second in
Ireland, though less altered since that time than most large cities in
the British isles, has undergone a great change. The new town did not
then exist. The ground now covered by those smooth and broad pavements,
those neat gardens, those stately shops flaming with red brick, and gay
with shawls and china, was then an open meadow lying without the walls.
The city consisted of two parts, which had been designated during
several centuries as the English and the Irish town. The English town
stands on an island surrounded by the Shannon, and consists of a knot
of antique houses with gable ends, crowding thick round a venerable
cathedral. The aspect of the streets is such that a traveller who
wanders through them may easily fancy himself in Normandy or Flanders.
Not far from the cathedral, an ancient castle overgrown with weeds and
ivy looks down on the river. A narrow and rapid stream, over which, in
1690, there was only a single bridge, divides the English town from the
quarter anciently occupied by the hovels of the native population. The
view from the top of the cathedral now extends many miles over a level
expanse of rich mould, through which the greatest of Irish rivers winds
between artificial banks. But in the seventeenth century those banks had
not been constructed; and that wide plain, of which the grass, verdant
even beyond the verdure of Munster, now feeds some of the finest cattle
in Europe, was then almost always a marsh and often a lake, [748]

When it was known that the French troops had quitted Limerick, and that
the Irish only remained, the general expectation in the English camp was
that the city would be an easy conquest, [749] Nor was that expectation
unreasonable; for even Sarsfield desponded. One chance, in his opinion,
there still was. William had br