was so narrow that a few resolute men might
keep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were strongly
guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle. That part of
the Connaught shore where the river was fordable was defended by works,
which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the murmurs of a powerful
party, forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell had
come back from France a more unpopular man than he had been when he
went thither. It was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spoken
opprobriously of the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been,
only a few days before, publicly affronted by Sarsfield. [94] On the
twenty-first of June the English were busied in flinging up batteries
along the Leinster bank. On the twenty-second, soon after dawn, the
cannonade began. The firing continued all that day and all the following
night. When morning broke again, one whole side of the castle had been
beaten down; the thatched lanes of the Celtic town lay in ashes; and one
of the mills had been burned with sixty soldiers who defended it. [95]

Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During several
days there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait passage. The
assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by inch. The courage of the
garrison was sustained by the hope of speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at
length completed his preparations; and the tidings that Athlone was
in danger had induced him to take the field in haste at the head of an
army, superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of
military strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general seems to
have thought that the bridge and the ford might easily be defended, till
the autumnal rains and the pestilence which ordinarily accompanied them
should compel the enemy to retire. He therefore contented himself with
sending successive detachments to reinforce the garrison. The immediate
conduct of the defence he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson,
and fixed his own head quarters two or three miles from the town. He
expressed his astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell
should persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him
for trying to take Athlone; and mine ought to hang me if I lose it."
[96]

Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to his great
mortification, that he had not the full authority which the promises
made to him at