esh battalions across the morass
in the centre, and the Irish infantry fell back, disputing every inch of
the ground.

The cavalry were still without orders, for strangely enough, no one
assumed the command on the death of Saint Ruth. As night came on, the
retreat of the Irish infantry became a rout, but the cavalry halted on
the summit of Kilcomeden, and covered the retreat.

The extraordinary circumstance, of the Irish army being left without
orders after the death of Saint Ruth, has never been explained. The
command should have devolved upon Sarsfield, but none of the accounts of
the battle speak of him as being present. He had certainly not been
consulted by Saint Ruth, and had not been present at the council of war
before the battle; for the bad feeling, which had existed between him and
Saint Ruth since that general arrived, had broken out into open dispute
since the fall of Athlone. But it is inexplicable that there should have
been no second in command, that no one should have come forward to give
orders after the death of the general, that a victorious army should have
been left, as a flock of sheep, without a shepherd.

Up to the moment of the death of Saint Ruth, the loss of the British had
been very severe, as they had more than two thousand men killed and
wounded, while that of the Irish was trifling. But in the subsequent
struggle the Irish, fighting each man for himself, without order or
object, were slaughtered in vast numbers, their loss being estimated by
the British writers at seven thousand men, a number which points to
wholesale slaughter, rather than to the loss which could have been
inflicted upon a brave army during little over an hour of daylight.

But, crushing as the defeat of the Irish had been, the victory was far
from inspiring William or his army with the confidence they had felt at
the outset of the war. Here, as at Athlone, it was almost a miracle which
had saved the English from a terrible disaster. The Irish had proved
themselves fully a match for the best soldiers that William could send
against them, and, although their infantry had suffered terribly in the
rout, their ranks would be speedily filled up again; while the cavalry,
the arm in which the Irish had uniformly proved their superiority, had
moved away from the field of battle intact and unbroken. Athlone and
Aughrim therefore rendered William and his general more anxious than ever
to bring the struggle to an end, not by the