224

niSTOBY OJ? ENGLAND.

chap, sentinels who watched the gates, sprang into the river andgained the opposite bank. The number of these daring swim-mers, however, was not great; and the army would probablyhave been transported almost entire if it had remained at Li-merick till the day of embarkation. But many of the vessels inwhich the voyage was to be performed lay at Cork; and it wasnecessary that Sarsfield should proceed thither with some of hisbest regiments. Itwas a march of notless thanfourdays througha wild country. To prevent agile youths, familiar with all theshifts of a vagrant and predatory life, from stealing off to thebogs and woods under cover of the night, was impossible. In-deed, many soldiers had the audacity to run away by broaddaylight before they were out of sight of Limerick Cathedral.The Royal regiment, which had, on the day of the review, setso striking an example of fidelity to the cause of James, dwindledfrom fourteen hundred men to five hundred. Before the lastships departed, news came that those who had sailed by thefirst ships had been ungraciously received at Brest. They hadbeen scantily fed: they had been able to obtain neither pay norclothing: though winter was setting in, they slept in the fieldswith no covering but the hedges. Many had been heard to saythat it would have been far better to die in old Ireland than tolive in the inhospitable country to which they had been banished.The effect of those reports was that hundreds, who had longpersisted in their intention of emigrating, refused at the lastmoment to go onboard, threw down their arms, and returnedto then - native villages.*

The last Sarsfield perceived that one chief cause of the desertiononhe" 1 'which '"’as thinning his army was the natural unwillingness of,rish the men to leave their families in a state of destitution. Cork

army sails

from ^ and its neighbourhood were filled with the kindred of those whoFrance, were going abroad. Great numbers ofw'omen, many of them* Story’s Continuation; London Gazette, Jan. 4. 169£.