the cannonade began. The firing continued all that day and all
the following night. When morning broke again, one whole side of
the castle had been beaten down; the thatched lanes of the
Celtic town lay in ashes; and one of the mills had been burned
with sixty soldiers who defended it.95

Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During
several days there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait
passage. The assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by
inch. The courage of the garrison was sustained by the hope of
speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at length completed his
preparations; and the tidings that Athlone was in danger had
induced him to take the field in haste at the head of an army,
superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of
military strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general
seems to have thought that the bridge and the ford might easily
be defended, till the autumnal rains and the pestilence which
ordinarily accompanied them should compel the enemy to retire. He
therefore contented himself with sending successive detachments
to reinforce the garrison. The immediate conduct of the defence
he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson, and fixed his own
head quarters two or three miles from the town. He expressed his
astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell should
persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him
for trying to take Athlone; and mine ought to hang me if I lose
it."96

Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to
his great mortification, that he had not the full authority which
the promises made to him at Saint Germains had entitled him to