erable quantity of cattle and fodder was collected within the
walls. There was also a large stock of biscuit imported from France.
The infantry assembled at Limerick were about fifteen thousand men.
The Irish horse and dragoons, three or four thousand in number, were
encamped on the Clare side of the Shannon. The communication between
their camp and the city was maintained by means of a bridge called the
Thomond Bridge, which was protected by a fort. These means of defence
were not contemptible. But the fall of Athlone and the slaughter of
Aghrim had broken the spirit of the army. A small party, at the head of
which were Sarsfield and a brave Scotch officer named Wauchop, cherished
a hope that the triumphant progress of Ginkell might be stopped by those
walls from which William had, in the preceding year, been forced to
retreat. But many of the Irish chiefs loudly declared that it was
time to think of capitulating. Henry Luttrell, always fond of dark and
crooked politics, opened a secret negotiation with the English. One of
his letters was intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but many
who blamed his perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it was idle to
prolong the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was lost.
His only hope was that he might be able to prolong the struggle till
he could receive from Saint Germains permission to treat. He wrote to
request that permission, and prevailed, with some difficulty, on his
desponding countrymen to bind themselves by an oath not to capitulate
till an answer from James should arrive. [113]

A few days after the oath had been administered, Tyrconnel was no more.
On the eleventh of August he dined with D'Usson. The party was gay. The
Lord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load which had bowed down
his body and mind; he drank; he jested; he was again the Dick Talbot
who had diced and revelled with Grammont. Soon after he had risen from
table, an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech and sensation. On the
fourteenth he breathed his last. The wasted remains of that form which
had once been a model for statuaries were laid under the pavement of the
Cathedral; but no inscription, no tradition, preserves the memory of the
spot. [114]

As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who had
superintended the Irish finances while there were any Irish finances to
superintend, produced a commission under the great seal of James. This
commission appointed Pl