While respecting Irishmen as individuals, Bob had always viewed their regiments primarily as a source of comic relief. He was fascinated to see them chasing Hessian storm-troopers across a bog. It was the first time in his knowledge that their ferocity and love of country had come into alignment with military competence. At the same time he was apprehensive, for the Partrys' sake, of what might happen next, because the cavalry fight at the far end sounded more ferocious than any he had ever heard. He could not believe that the French and Irish could withstand such an assault for long. But nothing happened; the Protestant cavalry never broke through. The battle was a stalemate.
Bob watched two more attacks across the bog. Both failed in the same way as the first; the Irish not only stopped them cold, but threw them back, and not only threw them back but overran some of their positions and spiked some of their field-pieces. Captain Barnes: "'Tis worse even than a Pyrrhic victory; 'tis a Pyrrhic defeat."
General MacKay was as wet, cold, and furious as a cat in a rain-barrel. He had led the failed attacks personally. As the afternoon turned into evening he had worked his way north up the line. It was plain that the center could not be forced, and he had no real choice but to probe that part of the bog around the piles of the causeway. For the fourth attack, therefore, he got permission from Ginkel to lead the Black Torrent Guards—who had done nothing so far—on a thrust parallel to and just a bit south of the road.
This attack failed like the others. Bob and his men had learned from the mistakes of the fellows they had been watching, and so they took fewer casualties. But it failed nonetheless, partly because of the ditches, and partly because of the plunging musket-fire that came down from the parapets of the ruined castle when they advanced within range. It was demoralizing to see a large building such as Aughrim Castle vanish behind a cloud of gray smoke as hundreds of muskets were discharged at once.
But they all suspected that they might have succeeded with more men. Bob mentioned to Captain Barnes, who reported to de Zwolle, who told General MacKay, that before the battle he'd spied a pair of regimental standards in the bog just by the causeway, where it entered Aughrim village. During one of the earlier attacks he had watched those colors move far south to the center of the line, where the fighting had been fiercest. They had not returned since. So the village's defenses were not what they had once been.
MacKay rode the line, having a look at the Black Torrent Guards, and pronounced them not half so wet, muddy, and exhausted as the men who'd attacked in the center; which he looked on as proving that this was not such a very boggy part of the bog, and that cavalry might get across it. He was being trailed by a motley string of European and English cavaliers who, because they had not done any fighting yet, were spotless and jittery. At one point MacKay got into a dispute with them, which he ended by wheeling his horse and charging directly toward Aughrim Castle just to show that it could be done. His horse took a header over a wall and stopped hard in muck on the other side, and MacKay flew off and ended up wetter, dirtier, and angrier than he had been before. Most of the cavaliers were convinced it could be done, and the others were now too ashamed to speak their minds.
The Black Torrent Guards were ordered to advance as far and as fast toward the castle as they could, and then throw themselves down in the bog and shoot at any Irish heads that showed above the parapet. It was hoped that this would lessen the damage inflicted on Ruvigny's skeletal division of cavalry as they galloped across and alongside the causeway. For every other route along which Ginkel's army might advance had been blocked; Ruvigny's squadrons were the only fresh troops he had; and the only way to avoid total defeat was to mount a charge along that causeway.
The Black Torrent Guards were sent across the bog first, in full view of the castle, to draw off some fire, but the Irish seemed to recognize that tactic for what it was and saved their loads for the cavalry, which came thundering down the road a few moments later.
Only ragged firing sounded from Aughrim Castle as the first squadrons rode directly past it. They galloped into the village with almost no casualties and found that it had been left nearly undefended, as Bob had predicted.
Bob got up on one knee to fire his musket at a head silhouetted against the evening sky, and was hit in the chest by something that made a strange zooming noise. He dropped his weapon and fell flat on his back.
When he woke up a couple of his men had ripped his coat open to examine the wound, which was in a bad spot, near where his left collarbone joined his breastbone. And yet Bob was still alive, and not coughing up blood. Not feeling bad at all, really.
He was being looked after by one Hamilton, a big bloke, infamous for uncouth qualities. Hamilton had planted a knee on Bob's shoulder to pin him in a more convenient attitude, and was picking curiously at a hard object embedded in Bob's flesh. Bob found this extremely annoying and said so more than once. "Oh, fuck it!" Hamilton decreed, and dived into Bob's chest, planting his lips over the wound. After a quick suck and a bite he popped up again with something yellow in his teeth, and spat it out for examination.
"'Tis a pretty brass button," he announced, "a bit dented by the ram-rod, but 'twill suffice to replace the ones we tore off your coat just now."
"Or we may fire it back to its owner," said one Roberts, who always did what Hamilton did, but not as well. He had a knee on Bob's other shoulder. "If we should run out of ammunition, I mean."
Not more than ten minutes had passed while Bob lay on his back on the ground, but when he got up again it was a new battle. All of Ruvigny's horse had now crossed over, and more was on the way, galloping up from the opposite wing where they'd been balked all afternoon. The gates of Aughrim Castle were open, and a lot of screaming and hasty praying could be heard within its walls as the unlucky garrison was put to the sword (vide Rules of Continental Siege Warfare). The squadrons not participating in this massacre had positioned themselves around the edge of the village and made ready to be attacked by the Irish and French battalions not far away, but such an attack never came; something had gone wrong in St. Ruth's chain of command, orders to counter-attack had not been issued or else were not getting through, and his generals were unwilling to do it on their own initiative.
Bob wrapped his coat around himself to cover the wound, which was bleeding, but not hissing or spurting. He strolled uphill a short distance and climbed up onto one of the earthen ramparts that the Irish had thrown up to defend Aughrim village.
He could see some Irish dragoons retreating off to his right. In the overall scheme this was amazingly stupid, and probably fatal, but they had no way of knowing.
"Sergeant!"
Bob looked down into the face of Captain Barnes, which was in the middle of a transition from intense anxiety to giddy relief; for the nonce it looked more quizzical than anything. "I was given to understand you had suffered a dire injury!"
"I was shot in the chest," Bob said guardedly. "One of those musketeers drilled me about here, from perhaps fifty yards." Bob glanced towards the corner of the castle from which the button had been fired. A French standard was being cut down by trophy-hunting cavaliers.
"Then you should be taking your rest! We have been ordered to garrison the castle," said Barnes.
"Has my bedchamber been made ready?"
"Alas, there are no chambers of any kind, only roofless cells," Barnes answered deadpan. "We could make you a bed from ammunition cases."
"I thought they had none."
"They have thousands of musket-balls in there," Barnes said.
"Then why did they not use them?"