Where was St. Ruth employed during these momentous struggles? Just where he should have been, in front of his camp near the crest of the hill, watching the fluctuations of the battle, issuing orders, and sending aid wherever they were needed. Our chaplain says that he was so pleasurably excited by the charges of his central infantry to the very line of the British batteries that he flung his gold-laced hat into the air, extolling the bravery of the Irish infantry, and exclaiming that "he would now drive back the English to the gates of Dublin."
So far the Irish forces were sustained in their gallant struggle; but now the scale of fortune began to waiver. Their final defeat began in a quarter from which it was totally unlooked for by either themselves or their antagonists. The castle of Aughrim, so well garrisoned, looked on a narrow pass crossed by the stream before mentioned, but a little to the S. E. this isthmus of firm land opened out to a tolerably wide space "in the shape of a spindle furnished with its complement of thread." Here at about this time of the fight, the extreme right of the English force planted some cannon, and cleared of its defenders the gorge of the isthmus just between them and the space before the castle. So far a step was made in the right direction; they were enabled to make the next by the stupidity or treachery of an officer who had been directed to send to Urrachree a detachment from the second or rear line of the army toward the left. Along with this complement he sent away a battalion from the front line; [Footnote 33] and this being remarked by the English officers, three infantry battalions making use of hurdles, slipped across the edge of the morass in front of the castle, [Footnote 34] and took possession of a cornfield on the Irish side. The Irish musketeers stationed behind the hedges in that quarter, aware of the wide breach in the main columns behind them, retreated after delivering one discharge, and took refuge in the hollow near the castle, the post of the reserve cavalry. A troop of these coming to the rescue, the Englishmen took to the shelter of the hedges where they had little to fear from a charge.
[Footnote 33: Colonel Henry Luttrell having had to do in this transfer of the front line force where they were needed, gave a color to the tradition of his having "sold the pass at Aughrim."]