Part I, Chap. I,]

Writing some weeks later more fully from Limerick, he says, "J'en meurs de honte." He admits that it would have been no easy matter to win the battle, at best. "Mais il est vray aussi," he adds, "que les Irlandois ne firent pas la moindre resistance, et plierent sans tirer un seul coup." Zurlauben, Colonel of one of the finest regiments in the French service, wrote to the same effect, but did justice to the courage of the Irish horse, whom La Hoguette does not mention.

There is at the French War Office a letter hastily scrawled by Boisseleau, Lauzun's second in command, to his wife after the battle. He wrote thus: "Je me porte bien, ma chere feme. Ne t'inquieste pas de moy. Nos Irlandois n'ont rien fait qui vaille. Ils ont tous lache le pie."

Desgrigny writing on the 10/20th of July, assigns several reasons for the defeat. "La première et la plus forte est la fuite des Irlandois qui sont en verite des gens sur lesquels il ne faut pas compter du tout." In the same letter he says: "Il n'est pas naturel de croire qu'une armee de vingt cinq mille hommes qui paroissoit de la meilleure volonte du monde, et qui a la veue des ennemis faisoit des cris de joye, dut etre entierement defaite sans avoir tire l'epee et un seul coup de mousquet. Il y a en tel regiment tout entier qui a laisse ses habits, ses armes, et ses drapeaux sur le champ de bataille, et a gagne les montagnes avec ses officiers."

I looked in vain for the despatch in which Lauzun must have given Louvois a detailed account of the battle.]

"David, we thought, succeeded Saul, When William rose on James's fall; But now King Thomas governs all."

In another are these lines:

"When Charles did seem to fill the throne, This tyrant Tom made England groan."

A third says:

"Yorkshire Tom was rais'd to honour, For what cause no creature knew; He was false to the royal donor And will be the same to you."]

"If a Marquess needs must steer us, Take a better in his stead, Who will in your absence cheer us, And has far a wiser head."]

"Let him with his blue riband be Tied close up to the gallows tree For my lady a cart; and I'd contrive it, Her dancing son and heir should drive it."]