ought with him none but small guns.
Several large pieces of ordnance, a great quantity of provisions and
ammunition, and a bridge of tin boats, which in the watery plain of the
Shannon was frequently needed, were slowly following from Cashel. If the
guns and gunpowder could be intercepted and destroyed, there might be
some hope. If not, all was lost; and the best thing that a brave and
high spirited Irish gentleman could do was to forget the country which
he had in vain tried to defend, and to seek in some foreign land a home
or a grave.

A few hours, therefore, after the English tents had been pitched before
Limerick, Sarsfield set forth, under cover of the night, with a strong
body of horse and dragoons. He took the road to Killaloe, and crossed
the Shannon there. During the day he lurked with his band in a wild
mountain tract named from the silver mines which it contains. Those
mines had many years before been worked by English proprietors, with the
help of engineers and labourers imported from the Continent. But, in the
rebellion of 1641, the aboriginal population had destroyed the works and
massacred the workmen; nor had the devastation then committed been since
repaired. In this desolate region Sarsfield found no lack of scouts or
of guides; for all the peasantry of Munster were zealous on his side.
He learned in the evening that the detachment which guarded the English
artillery had halted for the night about seven miles from William's
camp, on a pleasant carpet of green turf under the ruined walls of an
old castle that officers and men seemed to think themselves perfectly
secure; that the beasts had been turned loose to graze, and that even
the sentinels were dozing. When it was dark the Irish horsemen quitted
their hiding place, and were conducted by the people of the country to
the place where the escort lay sleeping round the guns. The surprise was
complete. Some of the English sprang to their arms and made an attempt
to resist, but in vain. About sixty fell. One only was taken alive. The
rest fled. The victorious Irish made a huge pile of waggons and pieces
of cannon. Every gun was stuffed with powder, and fixed with its mouth
in the ground; and the whole mass was blown up. The solitary prisoner,
a lieutenant, was treated with great civility by Sarsfield. "If I had
failed in this attempt," said the gallant Irishman, "I should have been
off to France." [750]

Intelligence had been carried to William's head q