of the wretched articles of Limerick, by keeping up a perpetual terrour and persecution over that parcel of miserable, unarmed peasantry, and dastard gentry we have left at home, without any other apology or pretence for it, but her wanton fears and jealousies; what could have been expected by the men of true vigour and spirit, if they had remained in their country, but a cruel war, under greater disadvantages, or such a universal massacre as our fathers have often been threatened with by the confederate rebels of Great Britain?" Ad quod non fuit responsum. Yet their liberty and glory abroad is but the price of their blood; and, even at that expense, they have only purchased a more honourable Haseldama[1].
It was impossible for a people to thrive, after having been driven by their too warrantable distrust of their enemies, into the snares laid for them by their false friends. France, upon their arrival, gave them a cruel reform of their officers and of their pay for a welcome, by a scandalous breach of faith; sacrificed them to her wars; made their zeal and spirit the dupes of her idle pretences; and, at last, inhumanly disbanded great numbers of them to the wide world, after the peace of Ryswick. Had they been kept together in one body from the beginning, to the number of 30000 men, according to the promise that tempted them partly to quit their country, they had made a much better figure in the world. Richelieu's politicks were against it. He was a great master, particularly in the judgment he had formed of the valour of his countrymen; since he has left it on record, that bodies of foreign troops must be
- ↑ Field of blood.
mixed
