than a mile in length, and its mean elevation is about 350 feet. The bog lay closer up to Aughrim, where stand the ruins of an old castle which commanded the narrow and difficult pass, than to Urachree, where there is another pass not particularly formidable to a determined assailant. The road through the pass of Aughrim ran then, and still runs, by Kilconnell Abbey and village—after which the French have named the battle—to Athenry, Loughrea, and Galway. The road through the pass of Urachree connects Ballinasloe with Lawrencetown, Eyrecourt, and Banagher Bridge, and also, by a branch route, with Portumna; and these were the natural lines of retreat for the Irish army in the event of disaster. Near the crest of Kilcommodan Hill are the remains of two so-called Danish raths, circular in shape, and in the one nearest to Aughrim Castle St. Ruth is said to have pitched his tent. Most of the elevation was then a wild common, but at its base, on the Irish front, were many fields under tillage, and these small inclosures were divided from each other by thick, “quick-set” hedges, or, rather, fences, such as are still common in Ireland—formidable against the encroachments of cattle, but still more formidable when applied to military purposes. The French general had found his intrenchments ready-made, and proceeded to use them to the best possible advantage. Weak points in them were strengthened, and passageways connecting one with the other, from front to rear and from right to left, were constructed. The design was to enable the formidable Irish cavalry to aid the infantry when a crisis should arrive. In the direction of Urachree, St. Ruth caused the construction of regular breastworks, conceiving that his point of danger lay to the right, and having, as a military writer has well observed, “a fatal confidence in the strength of his left flank,” resting as it did on an old castle and “a narrow, boggy trench through which two horsemen could hardly ride abreast.” All his arrangements were completed by the 10th of July, and, according to Boyle, the author of “The Battlefields of Ireland,” his line of battle, which contemporaneous accounts say covered a front of about two miles, had its right resting on Urachree and its left upon Aughrim. The London “Gazette” of July, 1691, says that this wing of the Irish army “extended toward the Abbey of Kilconnell,” which was considerably to the left and almost in rear of Kilcommodan Hill. The Irish centre rested on the mid slope of the elevation, “between its camp and the hedgerows.” Each division consisted of two front and two rear lines; the former of infantry and the latter of cavalry. Of St. Ruth’s nine brass pieces, two were devoted to the defence of Aughrim Castle; a battery of three pieces was constructed on the northeastern slope of Kilcommodan, so as to rake the castle pass, a part of the morass, and the firmer ground beyond it, and thus prevent any hostile troops from deploying there and so threaten