Part 15 (1/2)
The battle which broke at five o'clock the next morning was a desperate one. Roused at last from his coldness St. Ruth appealed in the most moving terms to the officers and men to fight for their religion, their liberties, their honour. His appeal was gallantly responded to. A low stone breast-work had been raised upon the hillside in front of the Irish, and against this Ginkel's veterans again and again advanced to the attack, and again and again were beaten back, broken and, in one instance, chased down the hill on to the plain. St. Ruth broke into vehement enthusiasm. ”The day,” he cried, waving his hat in the air, ”is ours, gentlemen!” A party of Huguenot cavalry, however, were presently seen to be advancing across the bog so as to turn the flank of the Irish army. It seemed to be impossible that they could get through, but the ground was firmer than at first appeared, and some hurdles thrown down in front of them formed a sort of rude causeway. St. Ruth flew to the point of danger. On his way he was struck by a cannon ball which carried off his head, and the army was thus left without a general. Sarsfield was at some distance with the reserve. There was no one to give any orders. The breast-work was carried. The Irish fought doggedly, retreating slowly from enclosure to enclosure. At last, left to themselves, with no one to direct or support them, they broke and fled down the hill. Then followed a hideous butchery. Few or no prisoners were taken, and the number of the slain is stated to have been ”in proportion to the number engaged greater than in any other battle of that age.” An eye-witness who looked from the hill the next day said that the country for miles around was whitened with the naked bodies of the slain. It looked, he remarked with grim vividness, like an immense pasture covered with flocks of sheep!
[Ill.u.s.tration: INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS.]
XLIV.
THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.
Nothing was now left but Limerick. Galway had yielded immediately after the day of Aughrim, its garrison claiming and obtaining the right of marching out with all the honours of war. Tyrconnel was dying, and had long lost, too, what little reputation he had ever had as a soldier.
Sarsfield, however, stood firm to the last. Fresh reinforcements were hoped for from France, but none came until too late to be of any use.
The town was again invested and besieged. An English fleet held the mouth of the Shannon so as to prevent any relief from coming to its aid.
From the middle of August to the end of September the siege went on, and the walls, always weak, were riddled with shot and sh.e.l.l. Still it showed no symptoms of submission. Ginkel, who was in command of William's army, dreaded the approach of autumn, and had instructions from his master to finish the campaign as rapidly as possible, and with this end in view to offer good and honourable terms to the Irish. An armistice accordingly was agreed to for three days, and before the three days ended the famous ”Articles of Limerick” were drawn up and signed by Sarsfield on the one hand, and the Lords Justices, who had just arrived in camp from Dublin, on the other.
The exact purport of these articles, and the extent to which they were afterwards mutilated and perverted from their original meaning has been hotly disputed, and is too large and complicated a question to enter into here at any length. Suffice it to say, that they engaged that the Roman Catholics of Ireland should enjoy the same privileges as they had previously enjoyed in the reign of Charles II.; that they should be free to follow the same trades and professions as before the war, and that all who were in arms, having a direct commission from King James, ”with all _such as were under their protection_” should have a free pardon and be left in undisputed owners.h.i.+p of their lands and other possessions.
It is over the clause placed in italics that controversy has waxed fiercest. That it was in the first draft is admitted; that it was not in the doc.u.ment itself is equally certain. Had it been intentionally or accidentally excluded? is the question. William's own words were that it had been ”casually omitted by the writer.” The evidence seems clear, yet historians, who on other matters would hardly question his accuracy, seem to think that in this instance he was mistaken. That his own mind was clear on the point there can be little doubt, seeing that he made the most honourable efforts to get the clause in question carried into effect. In this he failed. Public opinion in England ran furiously against the Irish Catholics, and the Parliament absolutely refused to ratify it. The essential clause was accordingly struck out, and the whole treaty soon became an absolute dead letter.
On the other hand, the military one, which was drawn up at the same time and signed by the two generals, was carried honourably into effect. By its terms it was agreed that such Irish officers and soldiers as desired to go to France should be conveyed there, and in the meantime should remain under the command of their own officers. Ginkel made strenuous efforts to enlist the Irish troops in his master's service. Few, however, agreed to accept his offer. A day was fixed for the election to be made, and the Irish troops were pa.s.sed in review. All who would take service with William were directed to file off at a particular spot; all who pa.s.sed it were held to have thrown in their lot with France. The long procession was watched with keen interest by the group of generals looking on, but the decision was not long delayed. The vast majority unhesitatingly elected exile, only about a thousand agreeing to take service with William.
The most piteous part of the story remains. Sarsfield, with the soldiers under him who had elected to go to France, withdrew into Limerick, and the next day proceeded to Cork, where they were to embark. The news had, in the meanwhile, spread, and the roads were covered with women rus.h.i.+ng to see the last of husbands, brothers, sons. Wives, mothers, and children followed the departing exiles to the water's edge, imploring with cries of agony not to be left behind. In the extremity of his pity Sarsfield proclaimed that his soldiers might take their wives and families with them to France. It was found utterly impossible, however, to do so, since no transport could be provided for such a mult.i.tude.
Room was found for a few families, but the beach was still crowded with those who had perforce to be left behind. As the boats pushed off the women clung desperately to them, and several, refusing to let go, were dragged out of their depth and drowned. A wild cry went up as the s.h.i.+ps began to move. The crowd rushed frantically along the sh.o.r.e from headland to headland, following them with their eyes as long as they remained in sight. When the last s.h.i.+p had dropped below the horizon, and the dull autumn dusk had settled down over sea and sh.o.r.e, they dispersed slowly to their desolate homes. Night and desolation must indeed have seemed to have settled down for good upon Ireland.
XLV.
THE PENAL CODE.
We are now upon the brink of a century as full of strange fortunes for Ireland as any that had preceded it, but in which those fortunes were destined to take a widely different turn. In the two preceding ones revolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the rule rather than the exception. In this one from the beginning down to within a couple of years of its close when a rebellion--which, in most impartial historians' opinion, might with a little care have been averted--broke the peace of the century, hardly a symptom of any disposition to appeal to arms is discoverable. Two great Jacobite risings convulsed England; the American revolt, so fraught with momentous consequences, was fought and carried, but Ireland never stirred. The fighting element was gone.
It was in France, in Spain, in the Low Countries--scattered over half the battlefields of Europe. The country which gave birth to these fighters was quiet; a graveyard quiet, it may be said, but still significant, if only by contrast with what had gone before.
One advantage which the student of this century has over others is that it has been made the subject of a work which enables us to thread our way through its mazes with what, in comparison to other periods may be called ease. In his ”History of the Eighteenth Century” Mr. Lecky has done for the Ireland of one century what it is much to be desired some one would hasten to do for the Ireland of all. He has broken down a barrier of prejudice so solid and of such long standing that it seemed to be invulnerable, and has proved that it is actually possible to be just in two directions at once--a feat no previous historian of Ireland can be said to have even attempted. This work, the final volume of which has not yet appeared, so completely covers the whole ground that it seems to afford an excuse for an even more hasty scamper over the same area than the exigencies of s.p.a.ce have elsewhere made inevitable.
The task to which both the English and the Irish Parliaments now energetically addressed themselves was--firstly, the undoing of the Acts pa.s.sed in the late reign; secondly, the forfeiture of the estates of those who had taken the losing side in the late campaign; thirdly, the pa.s.sing of a series of Acts the aim of which was as far as possible to stamp out the Roman Catholic religion altogether, and in any case to deprive it of any shadow or semblance of future political importance.
To describe at length the various Acts which make up what is known as the Penal code--”a code impossible,” as Mr. Lecky observed in an earlier work, ”for any Irish Protestant whose mind is not wholly perverted by religious bigotry, to look back at without shame and indignation,” would take too long. It will be enough, therefore, if I describe its general purport, and how it affected the political and social life of that century upon which we are now entering.
In several respects it not a little resembled what is nowadays known as ”boycotting,” only it was boycotting inflicted by the State itself. As compared with some of the enactments pa.s.sed against Protestants in Catholic countries, it was not, it must be said, sanguinary, but its aim seemed to be to make life itself intolerable; to reduce the whole Catholic population to the condition of pariahs and outcasts. No Papist might possess a horse of the value of over 5; no Papist might carry arms; no Papist might dispose as he chose of his own property; no Papist might acquire any landed freehold; no Papist might practise in any of the liberal professions; no Papist might educate his sons at home, neither might he send them to be educated abroad. Deeper wrong, more biting and terrible injury even than these, it sowed bitter strife between father and son, and brother and brother. Any member of a family, by simply turning Protestant, could dispossess the rest of that family of the bulk of the estate to his own advantage. Socially, too, a Papist, no matter what his rank, stood below, and at the mercy of, his Protestant neighbours. He was treated by the executive as a being devoid, not merely of all political, but of all social rights, and only the numerical superiority of the members of the persecuted creed can have enabled them to carry on existence under such circ.u.mstances at all.
For it must be remembered (and this is one of its worst features) that those placed under this monstrous ban const.i.tuted the vast majority of the whole country. In Burke's memorable words, ”This system of penalty and incapacity has for its object no small sect or obscure party, but a very numerous body of men, a body which comprehends at least two-thirds of the whole nation; it amounts to two million eight hundred thousand souls--a number sufficient for the const.i.tuents of a great people[13].”
”The happiness or misery of mult.i.tudes,” he adds in another place, ”can never be a thing indifferent. A law against the majority of the people is in substance a law against the people itself; its extent determines its invalidity; it even changes its character as it enlarges its operation; it is not particular injustice, but general oppression, and can no longer be considered as a private hards.h.i.+p which might be borne, but spreads and grows up into the unfortunate importance of a national calamity.”
[13] ”Tracts on the Popery Laws.”
As was natural under the circ.u.mstances, many feigned conversions took place, that being the only way to avoid been utterly cut adrift from public life. For by a succession of enactments, not only were the higher offices and the professions debarred to Roman Catholics, but they were even prohibited--to so absurd a length can panic go--from being sheriffs, jurymen, constables, or even gamekeepers. ”Every barrister, clerk, attorney, or solicitor,” to quote again Burke, ”is obliged to take a solemn oath not to employ persons of that persuasion; no, not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven s.h.i.+llings a week.” It was loudly complained of many years later, that men used to qualify for taking the oaths required upon being admitted as barristers or attorneys by attending church and receiving a sacramental certificate on their road to Dublin. Others, to save their property from confiscation, sacrificed their inclinations, often what they held to be their hopes of salvation, to the exigencies of the situation, and nominally embraced Protestantism. Old Lady Th.o.m.ond, for instance, upon being reproached by some stricter co-religionist for thus imperilling her soul, asked with quick scorn whether it was not better that one old woman should burn than that the Th.o.m.onds should lose their own. The head of the house would thus often present himself or herself at the parish church, while the other members of the family kept to the old faith, and the chaplain, under the name of the tutor or secretary, celebrated ma.s.s in the harness-room or the servants' hall.
To the credit of Irish Protestants it may be said that, once the first violence of fanaticism had died out, there was little attempt to enforce the legal enactments in all their hideous atrocity. According to the strict letter of the law, no Roman Catholic bishop, archbishop, or other dignitary; no monk, nun, or member of any religious fraternity, could set foot in Ireland; and any one who harboured them was liable at the third offence to confiscation of all his goods. A list of parish priests was also drawn up and certified, and their names entered, and when these had died no others were by law allowed to come, any so doing being liable to the penalties of high treason. As a matter of fact, however, they came with very little hindrance, and the succession was steadily kept up from the Continent. The attempt to stamp out a religion by force proved to be the most absolute of failures, although, as no rule is without its exception, it must be added that in England, where exactly the same penal laws were in force, and where the number of Roman Catholics was at the beginning of the century considerable, they dwindled by the end of it almost to the point of extinction. In Ireland the reverse was the case. The number of Roman Catholics, according to the most trustworthy statistics, increased rather than diminished under the Penal code, and there were many more conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism than there were the other way.