The account of this affair in the Life of James, ii. 464., deserves to be noticed merely for its preeminent absurdity.  The writer tells us that seven hundred of the Irish held out some time against a much larger force, and warmly praises their heroism.  He did not know, or did not choose to mention, one fact which is essential to the right understanding of the story; namely, that these seven hundred men were in a fort.  That a garrison should defend a fort during a few hours against superior numbers is surely not strange.  Forts are built because they can be defended by few against many.

FN 119 Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the French War Office; Story’s Continuation.

FN 120 D’Usson to Barbesieux, Oct. 4/14. 1691.

FN 121 Macariae Excidium.

FN 122 Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 123 London Gazette, Oct.  S. 1691; Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 124 Life of James, 464, 465.

FN 125 Story’s Continuation.

FN 126 Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;
Burnet, ii. 81.; London Gazette, Oct. 12. 1691.

FN 127 Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;
London Gazette, Oct. 15. 1691.

FN 128 The articles of the civil treaty have often been reprinted.

FN 129 Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 130 Story’s Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 131 Story’s Continuation.  His narrative is confirmed by the testimony which an Irish Captain who was present has left us in bad Latin.  “Hic apud sacrum omnes advertizantur a capellanis ire potius in Galliam.”

FN 132 D’Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux, Oct. 17. 1691.

FN 133 That there was little sympathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the Southern Provinces is evident from the curious memorial which the agent of Baldearg O’Donnel delivered to Avaux.

FN 134 Treasury Letter Book, June 19. 1696; Journals of the Irish
House of Commons Nov. 7. 1717.

FN 135 This I relate on Mr. O’Callaghan’s authority.  History of the Irish Brigades Note 47.

FN 136 There is, Junius wrote eighty years after the capitulation of Limerick, “a certain family in this country on which nature seems to have entailed a hereditary baseness of disposition.  As far as their history has been known, the son has regularly improved upon the vices of the father, and has taken care to transmit them pure and undiminished into the bosom of his successors.”  Elsewhere he says of the member for Middlesex, “He has degraded even the name of Luttrell.”  He exclaims, in allusion to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and Mrs. Horton who was born a Luttrell:  “Let Parliament look to it.  A Luttrell shall never succeed to the Crown of England.”  It is certain that very few Englishmen can have sympathized with Junius’s abhorrence of the Luttrells, or can even have understood it.  Why then did he use expressions which to the great majority of his readers must have been unintelligible?  My answer is that Philip Francis was born, and passed the first ten years of his life, within a walk of Luttrellstown.