cannon. On the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five
in the afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with
a grenade in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and
fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest
breath. Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis
had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies
of his deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. The grenades
fell thick. The assailants mounted by hundreds. The Irish gave
way and ran towards the bridge. There the press was so great that
some of the fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow
passage, and others were forced over the parapets into the waters
which roared among the mill wheels below. In a few hours Ginkell
had made himself master of the English quarter of Athlone; and
this success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty
wounded.93

But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the
Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge 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,