One word more, and I am done with history. After the surrender of Limerick, Sarsfield and his men were given the choice of enlisting in William's army or leaving the country. They chose the latter, and went to France, where the last Catholic king of England had sought refuge. He, of course, was unable to maintain them, so they enlisted under the French king, Louis XIV, and formed the Irish Brigade, which was afterwards to become so famous, and in which, during the next fifty years, nearly half a million Irishmen enlisted, as the best means of avenging themselves on England. The part they played at Landen, at Barcelona, at Cremona, at Blenheim, at Ramilles, and finally at Fontenoy--all this is matter of history.
We crossed the bridge again, after a look at the treaty stone--which, enshrined on its lofty pedestal, is really a monument to English perfidy--passed the castle, and plunged into the crooked streets of "English Town," as this oldest part of Limerick is called, with its tall, foreign-looking, tumbledown houses--as picturesque a quarter as I have seen anywhere. For Limerick grew into an important city in the century following its capture by the English, and many wealthy people put up handsome town-houses, four or five stories high, with wide halls and sweeping stairs and beautiful doorways and tall windows framed in sculptured stone. It is these old houses which shadow the narrow lanes of "English Town," and they are all tenements now, for the well-to-do people--such of them as are left--have moved over to the newer, more fashionable, more sanitary quarter. No attempt is made to keep them in repair, and many of them have fallen down, leaving ragged gaps in the street. Others seem in imminent danger of falling, and the distressed look of the place is further heightened by the great fragments of the old walls which remain here and there.
This part of Limerick is on the island where the town started; the part just beyond the bridge which leads to the mainland is called Irish Town, and it, too, was once included in the city walls, a long stretch of which is still standing back of the ancient citadel. Here too, especially along the quay, are handsome houses, long since fallen from their high estate, and now the homes of the poorest of the poor, a family in every room. It is something of a shock to see these ragged and distressed people climbing the beautiful stairways, or sitting in the handsome doorways or leaning out of the carved windows, very much at home in the place which was once the abode of wealth and fashion, while the noisy play of dirty and neglected children echoes through the rooms which once rang with gentle laughter and impassioned toast.
