Irish History and the Irish QuestionSmith, Goldwin
History
Irish History and the Irish Question
Smith, Goldwin
Ireland -- Politics and government; Irish question
But Protestantism, the stern Protestantism of the Calvinist, rallied on
its own ground, and behind the mouldering walls of Derry made against a
Catholic host one of the heroic defences of history, a worthy theme in an
after time for the most brilliant of historians. In the battle of Newtown
Butler, Protestantism again triumphed over odds. Succour at length came
from England. It came first in the person of the renowned Schomberg, whose
army, however, made up of raw recruits, ill supplied by fraudulent
contractors, and filled with disease by the moisture of the climate,
miserably rotted. At last the bonfires of jubilant Protestantism announced
that William of Orange had landed. On the Boyne he gained a small battle
but a great victory, which decided that the Protestant Saxon, not the
Catholic Celt, should be master of Ireland. James fled to the luxurious
asylum of his French master, and with him fled the last hope of the
Catholic cause.
Once more, however, at Aghrim, the Catholic, under the command of the
French General St. Ruth, accepted the wager of battle in open field. He
fought well, and the fortune of the day wavered, when a cannon shot took
off St. Ruth's head. Protestantism owed its victory largely to a regiment
of French Huguenots exiled by the bigoted tyranny of their own king.
All was over in the field. The irresistible Marlborough reduced Cork and
Kinsale. But in Limerick, by soldiers pronounced untenable, Catholicism
had its Derry. Its hero Sarsfield, by a daring march, cut off William's
siege artillery, and, after a fierce assault, gallantly repulsed, William
was fain to raise the siege. After his departure Ginkell again invested
the place, and Sarsfield, finding that the last hour of the last Catholic
stronghold had come, capitulated on terms. The military terms of the
surrender were strictly observed. The political terms, securing a measure
of religious liberty to Catholics, though endorsed by William in his wise
Dutch love of toleration, were repudiated by Parliament. The "violated
treaty of Limerick" was an ugly business, though there seems to have been
no protest at the time. But James had fled. The garrison of Limerick had
no status but a military one, to which surrender put an end. Politically
they were merely insurgents. Could any political terms made with them have
bound the sovereign authority of the Irish and British Parliaments in
dealing with their own citizens forever? Can Sarsfield have thought that
they did?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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