Sarsfield is the name ...

Sarsfield’s Ride.

From ” The Story of Ireland.” By A. M. Sullivan.

Early on the 9th of August, 1690, William drew from his encampment at Caherconlish, and, confident of an easy victory; sat down before Limerick. That day he occupied himself in selecting favourable sites for batteries to command the city, and in truth, owing to the formation of the ground, the city was at nearly every point nakedly exposed to his guns. He next sent in a summons to surrender, but De Boisselean courteously replied that “he hoped he should merit his opinion more by a vigorous defence than a shameful surrender of a fortress which he had been entrusted with.” [Memoirs of King James the Second.]

The siege now began. William’s bombardment, however, proceeded slowly; and the Limerick gunners, on the other hand, were much more active and vigorous than he had expected. On, Monday, the 11th, their fire compelled him to shift his field train entirely out of range; and on the next day, as if intent on following up such practice, their balls fell so thickly about his own tent, killing several persons, that he had to shift his own quarters also. But in a day or two he meant to be in position to pay back these attentions with heavy interest, and to reduce those old walls despite all resistance. In fine, there was coming up to him from Waterford a magnificent battering train, together with immense stores of ammunition, and, what was nearly as effective for him as the siege train, a number of pontoon boats of tin or sheet copper, which would soon enable him to pass the Shannon where he pleased. So he took very coolly the resistance so far offered from the city. For in a day more Limerick would be absolutely at his mercy

So thought William ; and so seemed the inevitable fact. But there was a bold heart and an active brain at work at that very moment, planning a deed destined to immortalise its author to all time, and to baffle William’s now all-but-accomplished designs on Limerick!

On Sunday, the 10th, the battering train and its convoy had reached Cashel. On Monday, the 11th, they reached a place called Ballyneety, within nine or ten miles of the Williamite camp. The country through which they had passed was all in the hands of their own garrisons or patrols, yet they had so important and precious a charge that they had watched it jealously so far; but now they were virtually at the camp - only a few miles in its rear and so the convoy, when night fell, drew the siege train and the vast line of ammunition waggons, the pontoon boats and store-loads into a field close to an old ruined castle, and, duly posting night sentries, gave themselves to repose.

That day an Anglicised Irishman, one Manus O’Brien, a Protestant landholder in the neighbourhood of Limerick, came into the Williamite camp with a piece of news. Sarsfield, at the head of 500 picked men, had ridden off the night before on some mysterious enterprise in the direction of Killaloe; and the informer, from Sarsfield’s character judged rightly that something important was afoot, and earnestly assured the Williamites that nothing was too desperate for that commander to accomplish.

The Williamite officers made little of this. They thought the fellow was only anxious to make much of a trifle by way of securing favour for himself Besides they knew of nothing in the direction of Killaloe that could affect them. William, at length, was informed of the story He, too, failed to discern what Sarsfield could be at; but his mind anxiously reverting to his grand battering train - albeit it was now but a few miles off - he, to make safety doubly sure, ordered Sir John Lanier to proceed at once with 500 horse to meet the convoy. By some curious chance, Sir John - perhaps deeming his night ride quite needless - did not greatly hurry to set forth. At two o’clock, Tuesday morning, instead of nine o’clock on Monday evening, he rode leisurely off. His delay of five hours made all the difference in the world, as we shall see.

It was indeed true that Sarstield, on Sunday night, had secretly quitted his camp on the Clare side, at the head of a chosen body of his best horsemen; and true enough also that it was upon an enterprise worthy of his reputation he had set forth. In fine, he had heard of the approach of the siege train, and had planned nothing less than its surprise, capture, and destruction!

On Sunday night he rode to Killaloe, distant 12 miles above Limerick on the river. The bridge here was guarded by a party of the enemy; but, favoured by the darkness, he proceeded further up the river, until he came to a ford near Ballyvally, where he crossed the Shannon, and passed into Tipperary county. The country around him now was all in the enemy’s hands; but he had one with him as a guide on this eventful occasion, whose familiarity with the locality enabled Sarsfield to evade all the Williamite patrols, and but for whose services it may be doubted if his ride this night had not been his last. This was Hogan, the Rapparee chief, immortalised in local traditions as “Galloping Hogan.” By paths and passes known only to riders “native to the sod,” he turned into the deep gorges of Silver Mines, and ere day had dawned was bivouacked in a wild ravine of the Keeper mountains. Here he lay perdu all day on Monday.

When night fell there was anxious tightening of horsegirths and girding of swords with Sarsfield’s 500. They knew the siege train was at Cashel on the previous day, and must by this time have reached near to the Williamite lines. The midnight ride before them was long, devious, difficult, and perilous; the task at the end of it was crucial and momentous indeed. Led by their trusty guide, they set out southward, still keeping in by-ways and mountain roads.

Meanwhile, as already mentioned, the siege train and convoy had that evening reached Ballyneety, where the guns were parked and the convoy bivouacked. It was three o’clock in the morning when Sarsfield, reaching within a mile or two of the spot, learnt from a peasant that the prize was now not far off ahead of him.

And here we encounter a fact which gives the touch of true romance to the whole story! It happened, by one of those coincidences that often startle us with their singularity, that the pass-word with the Williamite convoy on that pight was “Sarsfield!” That Sarsfield obtained the pass-word before he reached the halted convoy is also unquestionable, though how he came by this information is variously stated. The painstaking historian of Limerick states that from a woman, wife of a sergeant in the Williamite convoy, unfeelingly left behind on the road by her party in the evening, but most humanely and kindly treated by Sarsfield’s men, the word was obtained. [Lenihan’s “History of Limerick,” p. 232.]

Riding softly to within a short distance of the place indicated, he halted, and sent out a few trusted scouts to scan the whole position narrowly. They returned reporting that besides the sentries there were only a few score troopers drowsing beside the watch fires on guard; the rest of the convoy being sleeping in all the immunity of fancied safety.

Sarsfield now gave his final orders - silence or death, till they were in upon the sentries; then, forward like a lightning flash upon the guards. One of the Williamite sentries fancied he heard the beat of horse-hoofs approaching him; he never dreamt of foes; be thought it must be one of their own patrols. And, truly enough, through the gloom he saw the figure of an officer, evidently at the head of a body of cavalry, whether phantom or reality he could not tell.

The sentry challenged, and, still imagining he had friends, demanded the “word.” Suddenly, as if from the spirit land, and with a wild, weird shout that startled all the sleepers, the “phantom troop” shot past like a thunderbolt; the leader crying, as he drew his sword, “Sarsfield is the word, and Sarsfield is the man!” The guards dashed forward, the bugles screamed the alarm, the sleepers rushed to arms, but theirs was scarcely an effort. The broadswords of Sarsfield’s 500 wore in their midst; and to the affrighted gaze of the panic-stricken victims that 500 seemed thousands!

Short, desperate, and bloody, was that scene - so short, so sudden, so fearful, that it seemed like the work of incantation. In a few minutes the whole of the convoy were cut down or dispersed; and William’s splendid siege train was in Sarsfield’s hands! But his task was as yet only half accomplished. Morning was approaching; William’s camp was barely eight or ten miles distant, and thither some of the escaped had hurriedly fled.

There was scant time for the important work yet to be done. The siege guns and mortars were* *filled with powder, and each muzzle buried in the earth; upon and around the guns were piled the pontoon boats, the contents of the ammunition waggons, and all the stores of various kinds, of which there was a vast quantity. A train of powder was laid to this huge pyre, and Sarsfield, removing all the wounded Williamites to a safe distance, drew off his men, halting them while the train was being fired.

There was a flash that lighted all the heavens, and showed with dazzling brightness the country for miles around. Then the ground rocked and heaved beneath the gazers’ feet, as with a deafening roar that seemed to rend the firmament that vast mass burst into the sky; and as suddenly all was gloom again.

The sentinels on Limerick walls heard the awful peal. It rolled like a thunderstorm away by the heights of Cratloe, and wakened sleepers amidst the hills of Clare. William heard it too; and he at least needed no interpreter of that fearful sound. He knew in that moment that his splendid siege train had perished, destroyed by a feat that only one man could have so planned and executed; an achievement destined to surround with unfading glory the name of Patrick Sarsfield!

Sir John Lanier’s party, coming up in no wise rapidly, saw the flash, that, as they said, gave broad daylight for a second, and felt the ground shake beneath them as if by an earthquake, and then their leader found he was just in time to be too late. Rushing on, he sighted Sarsfield’s rear-guard; but there were memories of the Irish cavalry at the Boyne in no way encouraging him to force an encounter.

From the Williamite camp two other powerful bodies of horse were sent out instantly on the explosion being heard, to surround Sarsfield and cut him off from the Shannon. But all was vain, and on Tuesday evening he and his Five Hundred rode into camp amidst a scene such as Limerick had not witnessed for centuries. The whole force turned out; the citizens came with laurel boughs to line the way; and as he marched in amidst a conqueror’s ovation, the gunners on the old bastions across the river gave a royal salute to him whom they all now hailed as the saviour of the city!

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