334 Proceedings of the Roijal Irish Ardrlemy. 



this authority, no rain fell for over ten weeks. Though Corporal Trim was not 

 an exact historian, there is no reason for disbelieving his recollection of the 

 state of the weather. His description of the siege seems to have been taken 

 by Sterne from an old soldier who had been present : " We were scarce able 

 to crawl out of our tents at the time the siege of Limerick was raised, and had 

 it not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret 

 and cinnamon and Geneva with which we plied ourselves, we had both left 

 oua." lives in the trenches. The city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun 

 under His Majesty King WilHam himself, lies in the midst of a devilish wet, 

 swampy country ; it is surrounded with the Shannon, and is, by its situation, 

 one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland ; it is all cut through with 

 drains and bogs ; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the 

 siege, the whole country was like a puddle. Now, there was no such thing 

 after the first ten days, as for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting 

 a ditch round it to draw off the water; nor was that enough for those 

 who could afford it without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of 

 brandy, which took off the damp of the air and made the inside of the tent as 

 warm as a stove." 



The Duke of Berwick's statement is flatly contradicted by John Stevens, 

 who was a Jacobite officer serving in the besieged town. On the 29th of 

 August he writes : " The night was extreme cold, dark and rainy."' The 

 3rd of September " was appointed a general day of review for the garrison 

 in the King's Island, but the weather proving extreme foul, it was put off."' 

 The entry of the 29th shows in what sense he uses the word " foul," for there 

 he writes that " the weather began to grow foul with extreme rain." Story 

 records that " a storm of rain and other bad weather began to threaten us, 

 which fell out on Friday the 29th in good earnest, upon which his Majesty 

 calling a Council of War, it was concluded the safest way was to quit the 

 siege."^ Dumont de Bostaquet, an eye-witness Like Story, says that before 

 the siege was raised, because " la pluie avoit tombe en telle abondance que je 

 ue doutai pas que j'aurois de la peine a la passer or du moins au retour "^ 

 from one side of the Shannon to the other. Captain Maupas informed 

 Dumont " son guide craignoit que la riviere ne grossit et qu'elle ne fut plus 

 gueable. ... La pluie continuant violemment nous fit une peine extreme, le 

 terrain etoit gras, les chevaux ne pouvoient tenir pied, et les cavaliers 

 aimoient mieux etre a cheval que pied a terre: la pluie continua toutela 

 journ^e."* In the Clarke correspondence^ occurs the significant statement : 



' " The Journal of John Stevens," pp. 182, 184. 



- "The Wars of Ireland," p. 39 ; 'William to Waldeck, September 22, 1690. 



' " Memoiref! Ineditf," p. 26. * IhiA.. p. ^SR. s y„i j;_ f ng. 



