Reasons for capitulation at Limerick, 1691

]> Reasons for capitulation at Limerick, 1691 an electronic edition John Wauchope John T. Gilbert Electronic edition compiled by Beatrix Färber Janet Crawford Second draft. 1065 CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of the History Department, University College Cork

College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

2005 2010 CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland. E703001-012

Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.

Manuscript source British Library, Egerton 2618, ff. 1701971 –171. The edition used in the digital edition John T. Gilbert Reasons for capitulation at Limerick A Jacobite narrative of the war in Ireland Shannon Shannon University Press 1971 (First published 1892) 310–311

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Text has been proof-read twice and parsed.

The electronic text represents the edited text. A few obsolete spellings and usages have been regularized using the reg element. The original is given in the value of the 'orig' attribute. Text supplied by the editor, J.T. Gilbert, is marked sup resp="JTG". In HTML format, both regularized spellings and supplied text are displayed in italics. Encoding is subject to revision.

There is no direct speech.

Soft hyphens are silently removed. When a hyphenated word (and subsequent punctuation mark) crosses a page-break, this break is marked after the completion of the word (and punctuation mark).

div0=the letters; div1=the individual letter. Page-breaks are marked pb n="".

Dates are standardized in the ISO form yyyy-mm-dd.

Dates are tagged. Personal and place-names are tagged.

by Patrick Sarsfield, earl of Lucan 1691 The text is in English. political prose 17c Jacobite War 2010-05-03 Beatrix Färber ed. Conversion script run, personal names encoding improved; header updated; new wordcount made; file parsed; new SGML and HTML versions created. 2008-09-24 Beatrix Färber ed. Keywords added; file validated. 2008-07-20 Beatrix Färber ed. Value of div0 "type" attribute modified, changes to file structure made; 'langUsage' revised. 2005-08-25 Julianne Nyhan ed. Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion 2005-08-04T14:21:35+0100 Peter Flynn conversion Converted to XML 2005-07-18 Beatrix Färber ed. Header created, file parsed, HTML file created. 2005-07-18 Beatrix Färber ed. File proofed (2), more content markup applied. 2005-05 Janet Crawford, Co. Tipperary ed. First proofing of the text; structural and some content markup applied. 2005-05 Benjamin Hazard text capture Text scanned in. Reasons for capitulation at Limerick, 1691 Letter from major-general Wauchope to George Clarke, secretary-at- war.

Sir, —My lord Lucan told me you were desirous to have the reasons for our capitulation, which I send you here enclosed.

I could be glad to serve you in a greater matter, for that I am with all sincerity imaginable, sir, your most humble servant, —Jo: Wauchope. —Limerick, 18th October, 1691. —Endorsed: Received at Kilkenny, 22nd October, 1691. The reasons the French general gave major-general Wauchope and ^Sarsfield lord Lucan for the capitulation:

Mr. Clifford having suffered the enemy to make a bridge upon the river Shannon ^{see [A Jacobite Narrative] p. 171}, gave them thereby an entry into the county of Clare, which was almost the only place we had to subsist the horse and dragoons, the want of forage in the town having hindered us to bring in the horse and dragoons into the town; and the enemy having on the second of October passed to the county of Clare with the greatest part of their troops, the ruin of them was inevitable, as well by the great number of the enemy that would have fought them, as by the want of provisions, so as the horse and dragoons must capitulate or disperse.

The question men made ^was, whether France could send horse and dragoons enough to make us keep the country that is so ruined, and desolate that half the flesh necessary for the support of the garrison of Limerick, that is nothing but the ruins of a town, could not be drawn from the country.

We should want bread ^on the fifteenth of October, and we expected none from any part of the country, and we had no news that the convoy from France was parted from Brest; and if it were come to the mouth of the river of Limerick we could not hope to be able to make use of the bread before the last of the month of October, even if the French fleet had burnt the English fleet then in the river, and passed all the batteries the enemies might make of both sides of the river.

All these reasons maturely examined made us desire general Ginkel to let us retire into France with such of the troops as had a mind to go, being assured of the greatest number of them; having no troops to establish the king but by going into France, there to make the war, being not able to make it here. And if we had stayed to the last day of our food we could not obtain any capitulation, and the enemy might thereby have our troops; whereas now, by passing them into France, we may be in a condition not only to oppose the Common enemy, but also to make a descent into England or Scotland, if it pleased God to give the French fleet such a victory over the enemy's fleet as it had last campaign.