the upholders of the rebellion, and the unfilial children of their king.

It is not our purpose here to recount the days when those two armed forces of James and William went up and down the land, rich already with the blood of so many thousands of her sons, slain for conscience' sake, and by the sword of England, and now again to be saturated with that of another generation, ever faithful to their Church, and obedient to the command of the unworthy ruler who claimed their services. From the Boyne to the Shannon, and Athlone to Limerick, spite the lack of discipline and want of equipments, short of artillery, their best leaders discouraged by the blundering faintheartedness of the king, the brave Irish never for a moment tarnished their name for heroism and undaunted bravery.

The second siege of Limerick closed the public career of the last Catholic king of England, in 1691, with the surrender of the gallant Sarsfield, and then began another period of martyrdom for the children of the saints. The depths of infamy to which the English government sank from the day of the Treaty of Limerick can only be conceived by those who read, as we here give them, the particulars of the treaty, and then consider the manner in which each and all of its provisions were so outrageously trampled on by that nation whose leaders, having deliberately denied their fealty to God, felt doubly sure in denying it to their fellow-subjects.

TREATY OF LIMERICK

IN THE

REIGN OF WILLIAM III.

1691.

WHEN James II abdicated the throne of England, he retired to France to solicit the aid of Louis XIV to enable him to secure the possession of Ireland, where he was still acknowledged as their lawful sovereign. On the 12th of March, 1689, James landed at Kinsale, with about twelve hundred of his own subjects, in the pay of France, and one hundred and ninety French officers. He was received with open arms, and the whole country seemed to be devoted to him; for, although the Protestants in the North had declared for the new government, their strength and number were inconsiderable, when compared with the forces of the Lord-Deputy Tyrconnel. This minister had disarmed all the other Protestants in one day, and assembled an army of thirty thousand foot and eight thousand calvary.* Addresses were poured in upon James from all orders of the people. Even the established clergy, among the rest, filled a conspicuous part in congratulating him upon his arrival.

James continued to govern Ireland, without any interruption from William, till the 13th of August, † when Schomberg landed at Belfast with an English army of ten thousand men. To oppose him, James collected his

Smollett, i, 36.

Leland, vol. iii, b. 6, c. 6.

Treaty of Limerick in the Reign of William III. 469

forces, amounting to thirty thousand men, at Drogheda.* Schomberg, who had arrived at Dundalk, thought it prudent to advance no farther; and, instead of reducing Ireland, after having lost one-half of his army by sickness, he, at the end of the campaign, was under the necessity of entrenching himself against an enemy which he had been taught in England to despise, and of confining his operations to the protection of the northern province. †

On the 14th of June, 1690, William landed with reënforcements at Carrickfergus. The distracted state of England, and the formidable preparations of France, inclined him to a vigorous prosecution of the war in Ireland. t

He advanced toward Dublin with an army of thirtysix thousand men. James collected his forces, amounting to thirty-three thousand, at Drogheda, and, by an unaccountable infatuation, rejected the advice of his general officers to act on the defensive against William, who would then have to contend, at the same time, against a threatened foreign invasion of Britain, the insurrection which his own subjects were plotting, and the difficulty of maintaining his Irish army in an unfriendly country, without provisions or succors.

Though William obtained a decided victory at the Boyne, the Irish army had fought with courage and obstinacy, and in consequence of having at one time repulsed the centre of the English army, were able to retire in good order, with the loss of only fifteen hundred men. The subsequent defeat of General Douglas before Athlone, and of William himself before Limerick, left James, at the end of the campaign, in possession of nearly one-half of Ireland, and well supported by an army inured to war, and commanded by able and experienced generals. William experienced still greater embarrassments on the continent and in England. A victory had

* Leland.

+ Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

been gained by Luxemburgh, in Flanders, over Prince Waldeck and the confederate army; Tourville had defeated the united fleets of England and Holland, and great dejection and discontent were visible among William's British subjects.

The king having returned to England in the autumn of 1690, General Ginkel, with an army inferior to that of St. Ruth, who now commanded the Irish forces, commenced the campaign by the capture of the fort of Baltimore. Having afterward taken Athlone, and defeated St. Ruth at the battle of Aughrim, he laid siege to Limerick on the 25th August, 1691. The fortifications had been strengthened since William was repulsed before it, in the preceding year; the garrison was healthy, well supplied, and in numbers equal to the assailants, and strong succors were daily expected from France.* The besiegers, on the other hand, were too few for the undertaking, the season of the year was far advanced, and they had no expectations of receiving any reënforcements. Week after week passed away without Ginkel obtaining any advantage over the besieged; at length he made a lodgment on the west of the Shannon. But, notwithstanding this success, it was debated whether the siege should be carried on, or converted into a blockade: such were the difficulties foreseen in reducing the city. It was dangerous for the besiegers to continue. in their present station on the approach of winter, and hazardous to divide an army sufficient only for assailing the town on one side; and yet the only effectual way of reducing it was to invest it on all sides, by cutting off the garrison from all intercourse with the county of Clare.†

William, in the meantime, was so sensible of the necessity of obtaining the surrender of the Irish army, in order to secure his newly-acquired throne and the success of the revolution, that he sent instructions to the lords

* Leland.

t Ibid.

justices to issue a proclamation offering to the Catholics still more liberal terms than those which they afterward accepted; and he gave Ginkel urgent directions to terminate the war on any conditions.* Fortunately, however, for William and the revolutionary party, but most unfortunately, as events have since proved, for the Catholics, the garrison of Limerick beat a parley on the twenty-ninth day of the siege. A cessation of three days was granted, on the last day of which, the Irish generals proposed terms of capitulation. They required an act of indemnity for all past offences, with a full enjoyment of the estates they possessed before the present revolution, freedom for the Catholic worship, with an establishment of one Roman Catholic ecclesiastic in each parish. They also required that the Catholics should be declared fully quali fied for every office, civil and military; that they should be admitted into all corporations, and that the Irish army should be kept up and paid in the same manner with the king's other troops, provided they were willing to serve. Ginkel refused to accede to their proposal; but, being desired to offer such terms as he could grant, he proposed conditions which were accepted by the garrison, and which are contained in the following civil articles.

Three days after they were signed, the French fleet arrived in Dingle Bay.

THE CIVIL ARTICLES OF LIMERICK, EXACTLY PRINTED FROM THE LETTERS-PATENT, WHEREIN THEY ARE RATIFIED AND EXEMPLIFIED BY THEIR MAJESTIES, UNDER THE GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND.

"Gulielmus et Maria Dei gratia, Angliæ, Scotia, Francia et Hiberniæ, rex et regina, fidei defensores, etc., omnibus ad quos presentes literæ nostræ pervenerint salutem. Inspeximus

*Leland, vol. iii, b. 6, c. 6, and Harris's "Life of William," p. 732. This was called the secret proclamation, because, though printed, it never was published, in consequence of the lords-justices being informed of the inclination of the garrison to treat for their surrender.