On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar.  On the seventh he reached Ballymore.  At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost surrounded by something between a swamp and a lake, stood an ancient fortress, which had recently been fortified under Sarsfield’s direction, and which was defended by above a thousand men.  The English guns were instantly planted.  In a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction of seeing the besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another.  The governor, who had at first held high language, begged piteously for quarter, and obtained it.  The whole garrison were marched off to Dublin.  Only eight of the conquerors had fallen.88

Ginkell passed some days in reconstructing the defences of Ballymore.  This work had scarcely been performed when he was joined by the Danish auxiliaries under the command of the Duke of Wirtemberg.  The whole army then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the walls of Athlone.89

Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most important place in the island.  Rosen, who understood war well, had always maintained that it was there that the Irishry would, with most advantage, make a stand against the Englishry.90 The town, which was surrounded by ramparts of earth, lay partly in Leinster and partly in Connaught.  The English quarter, which was in Leinster, had once consisted of new and handsome houses, but had been burned by the Irish some months before, and now lay in heaps of ruin.  The Celtic quarter, which was in Connaught, was old and meanly built.91 The Shannon, which is the boundary of the two provinces, rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream, and turned two large mills which rose on the arches of a stone bridge.  Above the bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built, it was said, by King John, towered to the height of seventy feet, and extended two hundred feet along the river.  Fifty or sixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford.92

During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon.  On the morning of the twentieth the firing began.  At five in the afternoon an assault was made.  A brave French refugee with a grenade in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest breath.  Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies of his deadliest enemies.  The example was not lost.  The grenades fell thick.  The assailants mounted by hundreds.  The Irish gave way and ran towards the bridge.  There the press was so great that some of the fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow passage, and others were forced over the parapets into the waters which roared among the mill wheels below.  In a few hours Ginkell had made himself master of the English quarter of Athlone; and this success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty wounded.93