School: Christian Brothers, Athlone
- Location:
- Athlone, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Brother Meskill
Open data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Christian Brothers, Athlone
- XML Page 251
- XML “How Sergeant Custume Defended the Bridge of Athlone”
- XML “Retreat across the Bridge of Athlone - 19th July 1691”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- You are not logged in, but you are welcome to contribute a transcription anonymously. In this case, your IP address will be stored in the interest of quality control.By clicking the save button you agree that your contribution will be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License and that a link to dúchas.ie is sufficient as attribution.
- Fitzgerald's men, though exhausted after forty eight hours continual fighting, held the approaches to the bridge until 200 of their number were killed or disabled. The survivors of the gallant little band, now reduced to a mere handful, then fell back, fiercely contesting every inch of the way, and turned again at bay on the historical bridge.Wave after wave of Dutch, Danish, Scotch and English Troops were hurled against them in vain. The Irish, now armed for the most part with nothing more than sticks and poles fitted with metal points, gallantly held the bridge.Then, when further defence was seen to be impossible, the rere files turned, and working like furies, destroyed two arches of the bridge.Some of the defenders dashed across the falling masonry, but the front men, holding back the enemy were left behind.(continues on next page)