Ginckle drew out his army from Mullingar on the 6th of June, and halted at Rathcondrath, where he was joined the same day by General Douglas. Here he encamped for the night, and sent out a party to reconnoitre the fort of Ballymore, then held as an outpost of the Irish army. After a brisk skirmish with the pickets of the fort, this party returned, bringing in a wounded prisoner, from whom he learned the force and disposition of the garrison, and appeared before it at noon on the following day. The town of Ballymore lay on the direct road from Mullingar to Athlone, and a little to the right of it stood the fort on a peninsula, isolated from the mainland except at one pass which led up towards the town, and which was commanded by a ruined castle that stood at its outer entrance. The place had been in the possession of the English during the preceding autumn, but the country around it becoming too poor to subsist a garrison, it was abandoned, when the Rapparees took possession of it, and held it through the winter, as a rendezvous in their raids against Mullingar and the surrounding posts of the enemy. The place was of much strategic importance, being well adapted for either offensive or defensive warfare; but having been utterly neglected by the different parties occupying it through the last year, it was now in a dilapidated condition. The fort was of mud, mounting two pieces of "Turkish cannon on cart-wheels," with a garrison consisting of eight hundred soldiers, two hundred and sixty Rapparees,--four hundred women and children who had fled to it as a refuge,--and was commanded by Colonel Ulick Burke, who had orders to hold it to the last extremity, in order to gain time for the Irish army to anticipate Ginckle before Athlone.