The commanders of the respective divisions all led their troops in person.
The garrison of the town were all asleep.

In Saint Ruth's camp the festivities were over, and the general and his officers had retired.

The Irish sentinels, who noted the movement in the British camp, supposed that they were mustering to retreat, and thus the three British columns drew up inside the town wall, in readiness to advance, without a notion of their purpose being entertained on the opposite side of the river.
One column, headed by sixty chosen men in complete armour, was to cross the bridge and throw a platform over the arch; another to cross by the ford: the third by a pontoon bridge.

When the church bell tolled six, the three columns advanced simultaneously, and, before the Irish were thoroughly awake, the leading battalions had forded the river, the platform was in its place, and the troops pouring into the town.
A few guns were hastily discharged, and then the men of the three Irish regiments in the town fled in haste, to avoid capture by the columns pouring across the river by the ford and pontoon bridge.

Many, indeed, were captured whilst asleep.