Most of the following chapters were written some time since, at the request of the publisher, whose intention it was to present the readers of Irish history with a portable volume, which, while removing the necessity of wading through many tomes, would give an authentic account of the two leading events of a very important period,—the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim.
Having undertaken the task, and performed it to the extent of his information, it appeared to the writer that, without some allusion to antecedent causes and intermediate events, the book, though it should be acceptable to some, would be quite unsatisfactory to others; and it was concluded to make such interpolation as, without overburdening, would render the offering more clear and comprehensive.
After collecting much matter bearing on the subject, and finding it impossible to compress it methodically within the limits assigned, such selections were made, from historians of every shade of opinion, as would suffice, without distorting the parts already arranged, to give a consecutive view of the Jacobite war in Ireland, from its inception to its close.
As it was almost exclusively a war for religious ascendency on the one side, and for complete civil and religious liberty on the other, continually presenting a politico-religious aspect, it was chosen to leave the ethological bearing to other mediums, and confine this principally to the leading military events of the time. Hence, no allusion whatever is made to the interior merits of either faith dependent on the issue; nor to its exterior action, only so far as to preserve the order of an unbroken narrative.
Having followed the war down to the battle of Aughrim, inclusive, and reached the limit prescribed, the writer stops short of the final event—the last siege of Limerick; and he does so as well from motive as necessity, for he thinks that event could be more appropriately connected with a history of "The Brigade." But whether the subject is ever resumed by him or not, will greatly depend on the reception of this little volume, which is now submitted to the public.
THE AUTHOR.
A CURSORY VIEW OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND ANTERIOR TO THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II.
Few monarchs ever ascended the English throne under more unfavorable auspices than James II. Though he reached it in the order of legitimate right, it was at a time when the monarchy of England was well-nigh divested of its most vital prerogatives, and when the voice of the sovereign had little more weight in the national councils than that of any ordinarily dissentient member; and to this were superadded rivalries, jealousies, and hatreds, which having their sources in remoter times, gathered strength like the rivers, and grew deeper and darker in their course.
As a representative of Scottish royalty, he inherited many a bitter memory from Bannockburn to Flodden, and as a descendant of the unfortunate Mary, he was an object of hatred to the old reform families of England, with whom her persecutor, Elizabeth, was still a hallowed memory; he was a grandson of James I., whom neither the acquisition of a kingdom, nor the confiscation of Ireland,—so grateful to every English adventurer,—could redeem from national contempt; a son of Charles I., whom the revolutionary elements evoked in Church and State by the pedantry of his father, had brought to the scaffold; and brother to the second Charles, one of the most indolent and dissolute monarchs that ever disgraced a throne. Through the last three reigns, the name of Stuart had been a term of distrust or hatred, both to the High Church party of England, and the fanatics of Scotland; but through some unaccountable cause, it had one, and only one, abiding-place,—the heart of Catholic Ireland,—whose people, through every phase of that dynasty, had experienced nothing but treachery, confiscation, and proscription.
Other circumstances, too, though of a domestic nature, tended to establish the unpopularity of James, and to raise up difficulties in his road to royalty. In 1671, his wife, the Duchess of York, though nominally a Protestant, died in communion with the Catholic Church, and from that time forward he himself made open profession of Catholicity. Towards the beginning of 1673 he was married to Mary of Modena, a Catholic, and the daughter of a royal house then in close alliance with France. The Parliament, which met shortly after, expressed great indignation at this event, and gave practical effect to its resentment. A declaration of indulgence which had been issued by Charles in 1671, granting to dissenters from the High Church the public observance of their religion, and to Roman Catholics the right to hear Mass in private houses, was censured, and repealed in its application to the Catholics. In this session was also passed the "Test Act," which continued in full legal force down to the reign of George IV., and which, with some modifications, is virtually observed at the present day. By the passage of this act, every Catholic official in the realm was removed, and the Duke of York lost the command of the British navy, in which he had won high distinction, and which he had brought to a greater degree of efficiency than it had hitherto known. These and similar marks of disapprobation were specially meant for James, who was then heir-presumptive, and showed him the dangers that beset his way to the throne. He, however, continued on unwavering in his principles, while every exercise of conscience on his part was met by a check on the king's prerogative, or a direct censure on himself. But when it became known, after the demise of Charles, that he, too, had received the last sacraments at the hands of a Catholic priest, and that James had been instrumental in the conversion of his reprobate brother, the rage of the High Church party knew no bounds, and their denunciations were echoed through every recusant party in the land. Comfort they knew none; their forbearance was stretched to the utmost tension; their cup of hatred was filled to the last drop; and even that drop was pendent, as from a leaf; the next wind might shake the branch, and then——
But still they had one hope. James was a good round age; as yet he had no issue male by his Catholic queen; his daughters, by his former wife, were educated in the Protestant faith, and had each been espoused to a Protestant prince; and in a few years, the throne would apparently revert to a Protestant sovereign.
William, Prince of Orange, the husband of the elder, was the ostensible head of the Protestant Alliance, and a devoted enemy to France. This was a relief in their present misfortunes, and a little forbearance was thought better than much blood-letting. The Duke of Monmouth, too, the natural son of Charles, was a great favorite with a large portion of the English people, and had even, during the life of his father, struck for the crown; and though banished the realm for that offence, he was still a centre to rally round, in case of necessity. These were the considerations which alleviated the misfortunes of James's enemies, and made his accession, even for a moment, tolerable.
The reign of James I., commonly called the "Pedant," from his affectation of learning, his uncouth appearance, and slovenly habits, was not marked by any act that elevates a people, or adorns a crown. It was chiefly employed in religious disquisition, which, giving rise to innumerable sects, greatly disturbed the interior spirit of the nation. That part of his time not so devoted, was spent in securing to the reform party the lands, lay and cleric, which had been confiscated during the reign of his immediate predecessors. But he was never popular. Though his low garrulity and set apothegms were hailed by the vile minions by whom he was constantly surrounded, as the sublimation of wisdom, they never failed to plant a thorn in the breast of the nobles, and with them he was an object of unmitigated contempt—deeply felt, but not openly expressed. Still the courtiers and the king got along pretty well, and each improved after a mutual acquaintance. He knew their instincts and their passions, and they secured his favor by sacrificing to his egotism. In them he discovered an inordinate appetite for plunder, and in him they saw an obtusity of honor, and an unscrupulousness of conscience, that could be made sure instruments in securing the spoils of an incomplete reformation. He resolved to cater to their appetite, and they determined to obey his rule, though they did not at all reverence his majesty.
The death of Elizabeth had left England in a profound peace, which was scarcely disturbed during his reign; and this fortuitous circumstance, more than his innate cowardice, won for him the name of "the peaceful monarch." He has had many satirists and many eulogists, and some who were both as occasion answered. Among the latter may be reckoned Sir Walter Scott, by whom we are told that the restless spirits of the former reign might calmly enjoy "the peace which James the peaceful gave." But, then, this was only in poetic romaunt, and by one who greatly despised him in romantic prose. Such eulogiums, however, had only reference to the influence of his reign on England and Scotland; the tyranny of an English king towards Ireland had been, in all times, his surest passport to popularity, and there his reign was one of terror, vengeance, persecution, and spoliation.
The prince who connived at the murder of his royal mother, could lay little claim to the respect of the good or high-minded in any age or nation, and so he lived an object of contempt and loathing to all that was good or honorable in the land. But though men of honor shunned his court, the venal there held high jubilee. The king's natural avarice was keen, and it was still further whetted by Scotch self-seekers, who thronged lobby and vestibule in all their greedy officiousness. Their rapacity had to be appeased. The people of England, too, were grown sullen and discontented; a spiritual madness had lately overspread the land, and produced a state of society always ominous of evil to the monarch; hence the public mind should be diverted from its sombre broodings. To secure himself on the throne, he saw the necessity of opening a way to the enterprise of the incongruous elements by which he was surrounded, and many precedents pointed to Ireland as the never-failing outlet for English discontent.
The latter half of Elizabeth's reign had been disturbed by a series of revolutions in Ireland. The first of these was headed by the Earl of Desmond, in defence of religious liberty; it extended all over Munster, and ended in his death and the confiscation of that province. Shortly after it was revived by Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, and assuming national proportions, continued with almost unvaried success to the battle of Kinsale, in 1602, and terminated in a treaty which was wantonly violated after the queen's death. These wars extended through a period of more than twenty years, and left Ireland greatly prostrated on the accession of James I.; but the country was beginning to revive, and, under a fostering hand, it would soon have been content and prosperous. It was hoped, too, that as James, while king of Scotland, had contributed much to foment the uprising of O'Neil, he would be as instrumental in allaying the causes that led to it. The English "Undertakers," however, looked on an Irish war as a prelude to a general confiscation, and felt bitter disappointment at the terms accorded to the Irish rebels by the late queen. The apportionment of one province, which took place after the death of Desmond, did not satisfy them, while Ulster, a wealthy and populous one, was still left in the possession of the natives. The Scotch followers of James could not understand the thing at all, and attributed it to the dotage of the queen. In this state of affairs, the king saw an opportunity of rendering himself acceptable alike to his English and Scotch subjects. It was an age fruitful in plots and expedients, when plunder took the name of civilization, and avarice stalked forth under the cloak of religion. "The artful Cecil," the contriver and discoverer of many plots, was consulted by the king, and a scheme was laid for the violation of the compact of Mellifont, and the confiscation of Ulster. Lord Chichester was then deputy for Ireland;—but the words of Dr. Jones, the king's bishop of Meath, will tell the matter with sufficient brevity:1 "Anno 1607, there was a providential discovery of another rebellion in Ireland, the Lord Chichester being deputy; the discoverer not being willing to appear, a letter from him, not subscribed, was superscribed to Sir William Usher, clerk of the council, and dropt in the council-chamber, then held in Dublin Castle, in which was mentioned a design for seizing the Castle and murdering the deputy, with a general revolt and dependence on Spanish forces; and this also for religion; for particulars whereof I refer to that letter, dated March the 19th, 1607."—This letter was read, and O'Neil, the late leader of the Irish, was singled out as the head and front of the supposed conspiracy.
O'Neil, who had been educated at the English court with a view to the advancement of the English interest in Ireland, was apprised of the conspiracy designed for his ruin, and at once detected the master-spirit—"The artful Cecil." From this he knew that his doom was sealed should he abide the action of the council, before which he had been summoned. He accordingly notified the chiefs of Ulster of the impending blow, and advised flight as the only means of safety. Most of them followed this advice, and he himself, collecting his household, retired to Rome, where he died in 1616.
The flight of O'Neil accomplished all that the conspirators wished, and with far less trouble than they anticipated. Wholesale confiscation, without resistance, was out of their calculation, even in a country borne down by the protracted strife of nearly twenty years. There still remained an element in Ulster, which, though it could not work the deliverance of the nation, could wreak summary vengeance on many a hungry Undertaker; but this settled all at once, to the great "joyousness" of the king: and he lost no time in proclaiming his satisfaction, in words of which the following is an extract: "Wee doe professe, that it is both known to us and our council here, and to our deputie and state there, and so shall it appeare to the world (as cleare as the sunne) by evident proofes, that the only ground and motive of this high contempt, in these men's departure, hath been the private knowledge and inward terrour of their own guiltinesse," etc. "But," says Mitchell, "no attempt to give these proofs was ever made," and never will be. The very manner of their departure is a proof of innocence. Had there been a conspiracy, they would have abided the result, and sold their lives with their lands at a price dear enough to the English enemy. But they went in the belief that their lives and lands alone were what the king sought, and that by quitting the country, they would save the minor chieftains and their clansmen from the greed of England. They calculated erroneously, for this did not accord with the design of the infamous king, and the whole province soon became the spoil of the "Undertakers." An act of Parliament—the English Parliament—immediately followed the king's proclamation, declaring that "Whereas the divine justice hath lately cast out of the province of Ulster divers wicked and ungratefull traytors, who practised to interrupt those blessed courses begun and continued by your majestie for the general good of this whole realm, by whose defection and attainders great scopes of land in those parts have been reduced to your majestie's hands and possession," etc.—and of course awaited but the royal pleasure to be transferred to his loyal subjects of the realm. Nor was the royal assent long withheld, for the royal coffers were always open, even to smaller windfalls than the revenues arising from a confiscated province.
The work of settlement was soon commenced, under the supervision of the king, privy council, committees of conference, committees of inquiry, contractors, undertakers, speculators, and commissioners names of ominous import in Ireland and so often revived there that her people can rehearse them like a catechism. "In the six counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry, Farmanagh, Cavan, and Armagh, a tract of country containing 500,000 acres, was seized upon by the king and parcelled out in lots to Undertakers." 2 The "domains" of the attainted lords were assumed to include all the lands inhabited by their clans, and so far were the king's new arrangements from respecting the rights of the ancient natives, that "the fundamental ground of this plantation was the avoiding of natives and planting only with British."
That this cruel policy was carried out to the letter, would seem scarcely credible. But let the authority already quoted settle that matter. "It is true," says Sir Thomas Phillips, in "Harris's Hibernia," "that after the prescribed number of freeholders and leaseholders were settled on every townland, and the rents therein set down, they might let the remainder to natives, for lives, so as they were conformable in religion, and for the favor to DOUBLE THEIR RENTS!" Even so, to double their rents, if natives, though conformable in religion. A high favor, and all for the love of God!
This is but a very imperfect outline of the plantation of Ulster, and the manner of effecting it; and it is alluded to in these pages, only in so far as it illustrates the subject-matter of them, on which that settlement has a direct bearing. Its immediate and subsequent effects on the Irish race, though the theme of many a commentator, have never been told, and never will be. Even its remoter consequence at the present day can scarcely be alluded to without opening up wounds but imperfectly healed, and memories too bitter for wholesome reflection. It renewed, by one dash of the royal pen, all the wrongs of the preceding centuries, and filled the last stronghold of the Irish race with a people inimical to their interests, and who, with the exception of one short epoch in the country's history, have remained a cancer on the body politic, and, as if by a special providence, though meant to strengthen the dynasty of the Stuarts, were mainly instrumental in causing its extinction.
The reign of Charles I. was an eventful and a bloody one. In 1625 he ascended the throne; in 1649 he ascended the scaffold; and through the intervening period of twenty-four years, it was a continual struggle for the preservation of the royal prerogatives. These prerogatives were yielded, one by one, to the fanatical spirit of the age, and the last royal prerogative, that of life—for it is held a standing apothegm, that the king can do no wrong—terminated in a disastrous civil war which drenched the three kingdoms in blood.
England had been in a state of transition since the reign of Henry VIII. The religion of the country had undergone a change which had left more than one-half of its population—and that the more powerful one—adherents of the new faith. New manners and new morals had kept pace with the change of religion. The lands, too, had undergone as great a change as the people. Most of the old manors were possessed by new lords; and as for the Church, its glebes had passed to the early conformists, and its cash to the royal coffers. Hatred on the one hand, and revenge on the other, the usual concomitants of all violent changes in civil or ecclesiastical bodies, were the order of the day. Among those who had become recipients of the spoils, a feeling of insecurity was predominant. These changes had all been wrought through the will of the sovereigns—the royal prerogative, and it required no prophetic ken to know, that while that prerogative remained unimpaired, some future sovereign might undo all that his predecessors had accomplished; and this continual apprehension was the parent of each successive reform: and self-preservation the object.
The reign of James I. sowed the seed of religious discontent; that of Charles I. reaped the harvest. The old faith had been too closely drawn towards the political arena, and had suffered by the contact; the new one whirled in its vortex, and the result was the worst state of human society—civil and religious anarchy. A church had been established by law, and richly endowed by the spoils of the old one, antecedent to the accession of Charles, and its followers were called the "High Church" people. But outside its communion, innumerable sects overspread the land, known by the general name of "Nonconformists." The highways and by-ways of England and Scotland resounded with their religious disquisitions; every man had become an interpreter and a prophet. The most powerful of those sects were the Puritans of England, and the Covenanters of Scotland, who, though differing in religious principles, closely assimilated in their hatred of all monarchical government, and of the outward ceremonies of divine worship. Practising greater simplicity, they laid claim to greater purity of religion, until they at length believed themselves invested with a divine mission to eradicate "popery," "prelacy," and monarchy. The materials of combustion had been long preparing, and nothing was wanting but some partisan more daring or fanatical than the rest to apply the match, and he was at last found in Oliver Cromwell, a great king-hater, and one of the most daring military spirits of that or of any other age. Putting on "the armor of the Lord," and the "Shield of Righteousness," they seized the "besom of destruction," and went forth under his banner to complete the purgation of the land.
How this war, between the King and Parliament, progressed and terminated, forms a bloody chapter in English history, but it can be noticed in this place no further than its effect on Ireland; there it helped to swell the tide of oppression; it brought another war, another defeat, another confiscation, and another wholesale expatriation of the native race.
Since the plantation of Ulster, religious persecution had been aggravated by an established system of confiscation, under the name of the "Irish Titles Act." In the mean time the "Nonconformists" of England and Scotland having taken up arms against King Charles, made a solemn vow to exterminate the Catholics of Ireland, and the apprehensions of the latter were soon alive to the emergency. Groaning so long under civil and religious exactions, they looked on the king's difficulty as a most suitable event to petition for a removal of their grievances. But their action was anticipated, and while their leaders were considering a course of procedure, a series of outrages was perpetrated in the province of Ulster which precipitated them at once into the vortex of rebellion. A garrison of Scotch soldiers, stationed at Carrickfergus, in the dead of night, and without premonition, made a descent on Island Magee, a peninsula in the neighborhood, and drove all its inhabitants, to the number of 3,000, over the cliffs into the sea; scarce a soul escaping to tell their cruel fate. The Catholic inhabitants of the surrounding counties flew to arms, and the flames of rebellion were soon lit throughout the province. The Protestants rose to oppose them, and excesses were perpetrated on both sides. This hastened the action of the Catholic leaders. The Irish chiefs, the Catholic Lords of the English Pale, and the bishops of the Catholic Church convened at Kilkenny for mutual protection and right, under the name of the "Confederation of Kilkenny," and inaugurated one of the boldest efforts for civil and religious liberty known in the country's history.
In the mean time, the war between the king and the Parliamentarians progressed in England. The king's affairs grew desperate, and overtures were made to the Irish Confederates by the king's adherents in Ireland, the principal of whom were the Earls of Clanricarde and Ormond. The Confederates held out with great tenacity for their stipulated measures of redress; yet these the king, even in his direst extremity, refused to concede. But through the intrigues of the two royal agents, the councils of the Confederation were at last distracted; two parties, one for the king, and one for Catholic right, were formed; the soldiers took sides with their respective leaders, and made war against each other. So they fought for some time, the latter being generally successful, and the king at last offered concessions, but too late to redeem his fallen cause. The result is history; the king lost his head; Cromwell invaded Ireland; O'Neil, the only soldier capable of opposing him, is said to have been poisoned, and after his death Cromwell met with but futile opposition. The son of the decapitated king, after a few abortive attempts to secure the crown, became a refugee until the death of Cromwell, when he was recalled, through a popular reaction, and crowned as Charles II.:—and this is called the Restoration. It is called the Restoration, because it restored the throne to its lawful successor; because it restored the High Church party its privileges; and because it restored some of the lands confiscated in England during the Commonwealth to their former owners. But it was ushered in by an odious concession. It left the English rebels in full enjoyment of their lands and immunities, both in England and Ireland. In the latter country the confiscations of Cromwell were legalized, nor was the property of those who joined the late king's cause ever restored to them! But then, in England, it was a Parliament that rebelled against a sovereign; in Ireland, it was a people that demanded rights older than sovereign or Parliament,—that made all the difference.
Under the Protectorate of Cromwell 5,000,000 acres of arable land were confiscated, and the Restoration continued the robbery, by searches into titles which produced litigations, generally settled in English courts, to which all Irish questions were then transferable. It is needless to say that those suits terminated in establishing defective titles in the natives: the lands became the prey of the crown or its cormorants, and expatriation or slavish dependence was the award of the complainant. Five-sixths of the land passed away from the native race, and the population became dependents, without law or appeal, on the soil which had been theirs from time immemorial.
These confiscations had great effect in satisfying the vulture appetite of England. But as this business approached completion, the national mind reverted to the one great question—that of Protestant succession. The days of Charles drew towards a close. As yet the British Constitution had not debarred the heir-presumptive, though he should be a Catholic; and this was a thorn in the national heart. The fears of "popery" became again the national theme, and nobles and people alike brooded on this impending calamity. The hostility to James, always bitter, grew more open and violent as the king declined. In 1680, the Earl of Shaftesbury had him indicted in Westminster Hall, as a popish recusant; but the Chief-Justice dismissed the suit. In 1681, during a temporary illness of the king, a rebellion was set on foot by Shaftesbury, the Duke of Argyle, Lord William Russell, and others. The avowed object was the restoration of The Protectorate, but the covert design, to supplant the Duke of York, and place Monmouth, the natural son of Charles, on the throne. The king recovered; the plot exploded, Monmouth was banished the court, and retired to the Continent, and Argyle and Shaftesbury were attainted, but fled to Holland, to concoct new schemes for barring the succession of James. On the 6th of February, 1685, Charles died, unhonored and unlamented, save in so far as his death opened the way to an unwelcome successor, and all looked in fearful boding to that dreaded event.
The reign of Charles was a weak and inglorious one. His was a kind of passive existence, spent in connivance at the treason of a corrupt court, and the regicides of the last reign, while they connived at his secret carousals and studied profligacy. His youth was one of promise, and it is even asserted by some of his biographers that his indifference to all the great ends that excite the ambition of princes was an exemplification of practical wisdom. That such a reign was the only one that could have secured his permanency on the throne is now a matter of speculation. The received opinion is, that he believed it was, and acted in accordance with that belief. His well-known repartee to the Duke of York, who endeavored to rouse him from his apathy, would more than indicate this—that "he was too old to go again upon his travels." Yet it scarcely serves as an excuse for a long life wasted, and the noble ends of government neglected. But this much is well known in Ireland,—too well to be forgotten,—that he mulcted his English subjects to carry on his debaucheries; that he despoiled the Irish Catholics to remunerate his English creditors, and when both sources failed, he became a stipendiary on the bounty of the French king, bequeathing to his successor an exhausted exchequer, a turbulent people, a crown pawned for many a debt, and yet with many an heir-expectant. It required but a short time for James to establish facts which were patent to all minds but his: that the nobles by whom he was surrounded were irreconcilable to his views; that a time-server might wield and direct them if he pandered to their passions; but a king could not rule in peace, and retain the faith he had chosen. Yet, with all the evidence of the three last reigns before him to the contrary, he had an abiding faith in the justice of the English people. He knew that he was the choice of the Irish, and believed the native pride of the Scotch would not admit of the alienation of their crown; but above all, he trusted in the justice of his views, and he came to the throne with a fixed resolve to harmonize the conflicting elements of the State, and to make England, what he believed it ought to have been—a really free and happy nation.
THE REIGN OF JAMES II. IN ENGLAND.—THE INVASION OF WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE.—FROM 1685-1688.
The accession of James was not met by any overt act of opposition. On the contrary, it was hailed by the rejoicings of the people, and the parliamentary leaders of the High Church party, at that moment plotting his expulsion, received him with the usual congratulations and addresses of loyalty. The Catholics of England and Scotland, who were still a respectable minority, felt their long-suppressed hopes kindle anew, and by their Irish brethren the event was hailed with undisguised satisfaction. Nothing could shake the loyalty of this oppressed people to the house of Stuart. The cruel exactions, broken pledges, and studied persecutions of the last three reigns were at once forgotten. The advent of each false king after the other, had been represented as sure to redress the grievances which the former one had inflicted, and after every outrage they became more steadfast in their devotion. If, during the rebellion of 1641, their attachment to this house was sufficient to withdraw a large portion of them from the standard of their native chiefs, then battling for their lands and religious liberty, how then must they have felt when the house of Stuart presented them a Catholic king, and one who gave unmistakable signs that justice and toleration should at last be extended to them; that persecution for conscience sake was at an end, and that the exiled of many years might again return to their native land!
That James knew the dangers that beset him in England, there can scarcely be a doubt; but the measures of redress which he contemplated being just and beneficent, he believed they would in a short time harmonize all interests. He had faith in his own justice, but miscalculated in attributing so noble a sense to the dominant and intolerant nobles by whom he was surrounded, and was still more mistaken when he expressed an abiding faith in the justice of the English people. Yet filled with the hope of marking a glorious page in the annals of England, he assumed the sceptre with a bold and kingly hand. His speech before the assembled council of the nation was all that a generous or magnanimous people could desire, and all his subsequent acts are marked by a strict adherence to the principles which he then enunciated. "I will endeavor," said he, "to preserve the government of Church and State in the manner by law established. I know that the Church of England is favorable to monarchy, and those who are members of it have made it appear on various occasions that they were faithful subjects. I will take particular care to defend and support it. I know likewise that the laws of the kingdom are sufficient to make the king as great as I could wish. As I am determined to preserve the prerogative of my crown, so I will never deprive others of what belongs to them. I have often hazarded my life in defence of the nation; I am still ready to expose it to preserve its rights."
He eschewed the tendency to despotic power which his enemies had circulated, or any design to call in question the titles or hereditaments of such as acquired lands through the Reformation. His object was not to disrupt but to harmonize and adjust, and blend all interests for an onward movement in civilization. He declared civil liberty to be the right of Catholics and Protestants alike. He proclaimed liberty of conscience, and took immediate action to secure it by liberating several thousand Catholics confined in the prisons of Ireland for non-attendance on Protestant worship, and also twelve hundred Quakers who had been imprisoned for a like offence. He declared the abolition of all penal laws, all religious test-oaths, and even oaths of allegiance on the assumption of civil office. He extended the same rights to the people of Ireland and Scotland as to those of England, and enjoined the bishops to announce in their churches that liberty of conscience was henceforth the law of the land. Here, 'tis said, he made his first royal blunder. Proclaiming liberty of conscience from a pulpit is hardly in accordance with that right of denouncing heresy and schism, which every church, whether founded on human will or divine right, has asserted from the days of Abram. But, then, on the other hand, the Church of England, which had been proclaiming that and every thing else the royal reformers of the last century chose to dictate, might have announced this liberal measure of a king, the goodness of whose motives were well understood. But they denounced the innovation as a license to sin, though he intended only to have it announced that persecution for conscience sake had ceased in his dominions. The order was obeyed by some of the bishops, but by the majority it was stubbornly resisted. The king prosecuted for contumacy. The judges in some cases executed the royal mandate and the bishops were imprisoned; in others they refused, and bishops and judges joined issue in a passive resistance. Still the king bated not a tittle of the principle laid down. The establishment of civil and religious liberty for all classes and denominations had been the great object of his life, and he was not to be driven from his purpose. He believed that the majority of the nobles were tired of persecution for conscience sake, and wished for a restoration of social harmony. He believed that the masses yearned for it, and he calculated on their loyalty. He believed that the Restoration was a proof that legitimacy would never again be assailed, and he took no precautions against conspiracy; nay, he scouted the warnings of his friends, that one was ripening among the members of his council, and that even his own children were spies upon his actions, and plotting his destruction. But an event soon transpired that removed his incredulity, and awakened him to a sense of the difficulties and dangers that beset him.
The first rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth and its result have already been noticed. On its suppression, the chief conspirators, Shaftesbury and Argyle, fled to the continent. The former died shortly after, but the latter linked his fortune to that of Monmouth, plotted on, and gave direction to the ambition of this English favorite. Repairing to Holland, it is said that they received both counsel and a promise of aid from the Prince of Orange to attempt another invasion. After the death of Charles, William detached himself from this conspiracy, for his own pretensions to the British throne had become greater than those of Monmouth, and indeed it is hard to reconcile the conduct of William unless we accept a charge, which is not without supporters, and which is greatly to that Prince's discredit:—that of urging the wayward Duke to his destruction, and thus removing an obstacle to his own ambition. However that be, William disconnected himself from the conspiracy, and Monmouth soon after retired to Brussels, where he was joined by Argyle and continued his preparations for an invasion. Getting counsel and assistance from his partisans in England and Scotland, he prepared for a descent at the earliest opportunity; and the excitement created by the troubles between King James and the bishops gave him at once both a hope and a pretext. With a fleet of three ships and one hundred followers, he landed at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, and in a few days he had a following of above two thousand men. He proclaimed the king a traitor and a popish usurper, and called on the country to rise in opposition to his rule. At Taunton he was presented with a pair of colors and a copy of the Bible, by twenty young ladies, and assumed the title of king. Here his army increased to six thousand. At Sedgemoor he attacked the royal forces under Feversham and Churchill, and was completely overthrown; and, flying for shelter through the country, he was taken and finally executed. His evil genius, Argyle, met with a similar fate; the greatest rigor was exercised against the scattered refugees of this ill-advised rebellion, and many of the nobles of the land were attainted of treason.
This event opened the eyes of the king to the dangers by which he was surrounded. The army had shown signs of disaffection. Many of the leaders of the Protestant party in Ireland and Scotland were known to be connected with this conspiracy; even the members of his council were more than suspected of complicity; and he saw that his rule could only be established by the introduction of a Catholic element into the army. Since the passage of the "Test Act," nearly all the Catholic officers of the army and navy had been removed. Many of these were men of distinguished ability, and he now determined to recall them to the service. Accordingly, in his speech to Parliament on the 9th of November, 1685, in allusion to the rebellion of Monmouth, he introduced the proposition in the following words: "Let no man take exception, that there are some officers in the army not qualified, according to the late Test, for their employments; the gentlemen, I must tell you, are most of them well-known to me, and having formerly served me on several occasions (and always approved the loyalty of their principles by their practice), I think them now fit to be employed under me; and will deal plainly with you, that after having the benefit of their services in such time of need and danger, I will neither expose them to disgrace, nor myself to the want of them, if there should be another rebellion to make them necessary to me. I am afraid some men may be so wicked, to hope and expect that a difference may happen between you and me upon this occasion. * * * I will not apprehend that such a misfortune can befall us as a division, or even a coldness between me and you; nor that any thing can shake you in your steadiness and loyalty to me, who, by God's blessing, will ever make you all returns of kindness and protection, with a resolution to venture even my own life in the defence of the true interests of this kingdom."
It is scarcely necessary to say that this met the opposition of Parliament; and so far from being received in the liberal and loyal spirit which the king seems to have anticipated, it was denounced as a measure for the abolition of the Protestant religion. The revocation of the "Edict of Nantes," by Louis XIV., occurring about the same time, had filled England with Protestant refugees, which gave strength to the arguments of the opposition, and excited a spirit of retaliation in the English people. The king, however, persevered, and tested the legality of the "Test," in the person of Sir Edward Hales, who had held the commission of colonel in the army, and who had lately become a Catholic. The judges decided in his favor, but the king was accused of intimidation. This opened the way to reform in the army, and gratified the Catholics, but it raised the spirit of opposition among the bishops and leaders of the High Church party in a corresponding degree. Not deterred by this opposition, the king persevered in his measures of redress; and called Dissenters and Catholics to office wherever opportunity occurred; and, says Hume, "Not content with this violent and dangerous innovation, he appointed certain regulators to examine the qualifications of electors, and directions were given them to exclude all such as adhered to the test and penal statutes." In all of which one fails to see, notwithstanding the exaggeration of Hume, any attempt at injustice, or proscription. It was in fact, from beginning to end, an effort to establish equality and right on the one part, and to preserve and perpetuate an odious ascendency on the other. That many of the steps taken by the king to reach his object may have been imprudent, and must, from the surrounding circumstances, have met with bitter opposition, is not to be wondered at; but that his views were right, and his object wise and magnanimous, cannot be denied. The exclusion of Nonconformists, from social and legal equality, in a former reign, produced a civil war, which most Protestant writers vindicate as necessary, and it is hard to see why the same writers advocate the permanent exclusion of the Catholics, who were certainly entitled to equal consideration. Meanwhile the opposition ran high, and the High Church party being now united by the death of Monmouth, took council throughout the three kingdoms, and determined to call in William Henry, Prince of Orange, as their last hope to preserve their cherished and glorious ascendency.
The title—Prince of Orange—is derived from the town of Orange (ancient Awrasio), in the southeast of France, department of Vaucluse. In the middle ages this town was the capital of a principality, which for a considerable period belonged to the house of Nassau; and William Henry was then the incumbent both of the title and the domain. After his death the title passed to his heir, the King of Prussia, and is still retained in the royal family of Holland; but the principality whence the title is derived, has been since ceded to France. The father of William, who was Stadtholder of the Dutch provinces, died in 1650, and the office, which was not inherent, but elective, remained in abeyance, under the management of the brothers De Witt, until 1672, when England and France declared war against Holland. William laid claim to the office of his father, but was opposed by the De Witts. The emergency pointed out William as the choice of those opposed to the claims of France, and the De Witts, still opposing, became the victims of an assassination, said to have been concocted by William. This placed William at the head both of civil and military affairs, which, however unscrupulous were the means of attainment, he conducted with great ability, and saved Holland from subjugation to the French king. From 1672 to 1677, the war continued with various success. At the close of that year's campaign, William visited England by invitation, and Charles, in order to terminate a war which was unpopular with the majority of his nobles, acceded to the proposal of his counsellors, to pave the way for an alliance with Holland, by espousing Mary, the eldest daughter of James, then Duke of York, to the Stadtholder. This marriage, which took place shortly after, gave William, who was then both nephew and son-in-law to James, the right of heir-presumptive; and, the immediate result of it was a peace between England and Holland, at Nimeguen, in 1678.
William was a very ill-favored prince, weak of body, ungraceful in gait and manner, and of a forbidding countenance at once expressive of cruelty and unscrupulousness. He was not a statesman, nor yet an able diplomatist, but possessed a keenness of perception, that enabled him to see through the motives of men, a reticence of habit, which protected him from importunity, and a will subservient to the call of ambition. Yet though he was the acknowledged head of the Protestant league, and conformed to the ceremonies of exterior worship, he was a most confirmed sceptic, and averse to all religious disquisition. He, however, possessed those qualities which the enemies of James most desired. He was ambitious of power, an able soldier, the ostensible champion of Protestantism, and the irreconcilable enemy of the French monarch.
From the time of his marriage with Mary, he was ambitious of the English throne, chiefly, 'tis said, that he might check the power of his detested enemy, Louis, and the connection gave him a valid title, should the king, his father-in-law, die without legitimate male issue. The Duke of Monmouth, who was an English favorite, being removed, and the Duke of Berwick, the natural son of James, and nephew of Lord Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, cherishing no such pretensions, William's fears were quieted, and it is even said that he received the first advances of the High Church party with indifference. But rumors of the queen's pregnancy excited the fears of William; he became apprehensive, listened to their appeals, a conspiracy was set on foot through the agency of Bishop Burnet, Sydney, Peyton, and Gwynne, and he began to organize a military force for the invasion of England. The materials were ready to his hand. "The Thirty Years' War" had overspread Europe with adventurers from every nation, and he soon gathered to his standard an army of the most daring spirits of the age, consisting of Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Huguenots, and Germans, always ready and eager for any enterprise that offered fame or fortune to their arms.
On the 10th of June, 1688, while these preparations were carried stealthily forward, the Queen of England gave birth to a son. This event removed all hesitation on the part of the Prince of Orange, and precipitated "the Revolution." From this time forward negotiations between the Prince and the English conspirators were pressed with earnestness and vigor; every concession demanded by the Prince was yielded without question by the agents of the Church party, and he bound himself to the invasion and the maintenance of Protestant supremacy. Still the utmost secrecy was observed on both sides, and the Earl of Sunderland, who was in the king's confidence, and at the same time in league with William, kept the one impressed with a sense of security, and apprised the other of all that transpired in the national councils.
An incident which occurred at this time may serve to show the animus of party spirit, and illustrate the intriguing and unscrupulous character of William. It had been prearranged between the Prince and his English partisans, that in case the queen gave birth to a son it should be declared suppositious. Accordingly, William prepared an instrument to that effect, to be published on his arrival in England; and yet, with characteristic duplicity, he dispatched Zuylestein, ostensibly to congratulate the king on the birth of his son,—the Prince of Wales,—but covertly to complete arrangements with the heads of the conspiracy in England.3 By such artifices the king was kept in complete ignorance of the storm gathering around him, until the summer had nearly passed, when Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell,—then deputy for Ireland,—received information from the captain of a Dutch trading vessel, of the extensive preparations going on in Holland, and of the designs of the Prince of Orange on the English throne.4 Tyrconnell lost no time in communicating this intelligence to the king; and a letter which he received shortly after from his minister at the Hague, informing him that a powerful invasion must be soon expected, followed by private information from the French king to the same effect, at last opened his eyes to his real situation. M. Bonrepos, the envoy of Louis, who brought this intelligence, accompanied it with the offer of 30,000 French troops, to suppress the invasion before it could make head; but as the evil counsel of Sunderland still prevailed, on the ground that such an armament from France would excite the indignation of his English soldiers, and precipitate the catastrophe which he wished to avoid, the generous offer of Louis was declined. James continued in a state of the greatest bewilderment. All the boldness and decision of his earlier years seemed to have deserted him; and at a time when only men of approved loyalty should be trusted, he recalled to his service the contumacious officials of the late reign, and so paved the way for the success of the impending Revolution.
Preliminaries being arranged between William and his English adherents, by the beginning of October, 1688, he collected his forces at Holvoetsluys, a port in the south of Holland, lying over against the eastern coast of England, and, under the advice of Bishop Burnet, put to sea toward the end of the same month. His armament consisted of fifty ships of war, twenty frigates, four hundred transports, and some smaller craft, carrying 14,000 men, with arms and equipments for 20,000 more. The van and rear of this fleet were commanded by Admiral Herbert and Vice-Admiral Evertzen, respectively, having the Prince of Orange and his military adherents in the centre. All the ships carried the English flag, having the arms of the Prince emblazoned at the top, with the words:
RELIGION AND LIBERTY,
and at the bottom with the device of the house of Nassau,
I WILL MAINTAIN.
In his train were many English, Irish, and Scotch refugees, and three hundred Huguenot officers, the principal of whom were Marshal Schomberg; his son, Count Schomberg; Caillemotte and his brother Ruvigny; Mellioneire, Cambon, Tettau, and others of approved valor and of great military experience.
During the voyage a storm arose, the whole fleet was scattered, some of the ships foundered at sea, and the rest had to put back for several days. William, however, continued his course, and arrived safe at Torbay, in the county of Devon, on the 5th of November, 1688, with about 700 followers. It being the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, he availed himself of the circumstance, and appealing to the passions and prejudices of the people, stated the object of his invasion to be the protection of the Protestant religion from the machinations of "Popery." But this not having the desired effect, he felt somewhat disconcerted, and after spending a few days in the exercise of his marines and being joined by the remainder of his forces, he made the necessary disposition and took up his march for Exeter. Here, finding that the country gentlemen and clergy of the Established Church fled at his approach, and that none of the leading conspirators came to meet him, he began to think that he had been deceived by false promises; and with a presence of mind that rarely deserted him, he at once had recourse to intimidation. Accusing them of their twofold treachery, he apprised them of his intention of furnishing the king with a list of their names, and of then returning to Holland and abandoning them to their fate. This soon aroused them to a sense of their position. Lords Colchester and Godfrey fled from London in the night and joined his standard; others came in after these, and with a force continually increasing as he went, he continued his march towards London.
Upon receiving information of William's descent upon the English coast, King James mustered an army of 30,000 men, and marched towards Salisbury to oppose him. On the way, Lord Cornbury, under pretence of attacking an outpost of the enemy, took his own regiment and three others and abandoned the royal cause: further on, the Duke of Grafton, Colonel Barclay, and Lord Churchill, Lieutenant-General of the Guards, openly deserted. Seeing the defection continue, the king retired to Andover, whence Prince George of Denmark, the young Duke of Ormond, and other distinguished personages, fled in the night, and joined the standard of the invader. Overwhelmed with shame and confusion he returned to London, but here he found that his daughter, Anne, under pretence of fearing his anger on account of her husband's defection, had left the palace and taken refuge with his enemies. He had always been a most affectionate and indulgent father. The ingratitude of his elder daughter, though it pressed heavily on his heart, was borne with becoming fortitude, but that of the younger, not having the same extenuating causes, outraged all the dearest sensibilities of the father; his spirit was broken, and, weeping in his bereavement, he exclaimed: "God help me, my own children have forsaken me!" His queen and infant son demanding his first attention, he committed them to the care of the Count de Lausun, by whom they were conveyed in safety to France, and dispatching Lord Feversham with a letter of remonstrance to William, he determined to remain in London himself, and bide the issue of events. But contrary to honorable usage, Feversham was imprisoned, the palace was surrounded by Dutch guards, in the night, and the king was notified that he should quit London by 12 o'clock next day. Accordingly, he was sent under arrest to Rochester, whence he escaped to Picardy, and arrived at St. Germains on the 25th of December, deserted by all his family but the Duke of Berwick, and the Grand Prior Fitzjames.
The departure of the king was a signal for the uprising of the London mob; the Catholic inhabitants were forced to seek refuge in flight; their property was marked out for destruction; the houses of the Spanish and Florentine envoys were rifled, and William entered the city by the blaze of the few religious houses which had been erected during the short reign of the expatriate king. He lost no time in arranging his terms of settlement with his new subjects and in opening negotiations with the leaders of the Church party in Ireland and Scotland. On the 12th of February, the Princess Mary joined him in England, and they were proclaimed king and queen; the Prince of Wales was debarred the right of succession, William was invested in the administration, and his children by Mary—should he be blessed with any—were to be endowed with the right of succession.
EVENTS PRECEDING HOSTILITIES IN IRELAND.—THE PREPARATORY MEASURES OF TYRCONNELL.
Leaving William of Orange in undisputed possession of the English throne, and King James a suppliant at the French court for the support which he had so unwisely declined previous to the invasion, it is necessary to reconsider the condition of Ireland before presenting her part in this great politico-religious drama.
Of the three generations which had passed, antecedent to the events under consideration, each had witnessed a war more protracted and devastating than any which marked her history since the invasion. These were the wars of Desmond and Tyrone, and the war of the Irish Confederates of 1641; each of which was followed by a wholesale confiscation and plantation of the country with a population antagonistic to every interest of the native race. Through these violent changes four-fifths of the ancient chieftainries had changed proprietors, and those which were undisturbed by each successive military convulsion, the court of claims and the acts of attainder and settlement that continued down to the death of Charles II., had well-nigh sequestrated. The surface of the country is computed at ten millions and a half of acres; and of these, says Newenham, "Upon the final execution of the acts of settlement and explanation, it appears that 7,800,000 acres were set out by the court of claims, principally if not wholly, in the exclusion of the old Irish proprietors." It is scarce necessary to remark that if the above estimate of the island—which is taken from Dr. Petty's survey—includes the waste and water, the arable land had passed to the undertakers, and the waste and water were the portion of the old Irish proprietors.
The loss of liberty, too, had outstripped the loss of lands, for liberty and law had first to be silenced that these wholesale robberies might go unquestioned. Education had been proscribed, and ignorance had increased exceedingly. True, those of the "better sort" might have received an education at the hands of the Establishment, by forswearing their religious convictions and pandering to the spirit of the times, but the Catholic schools and colleges of the land had been suppressed; expatriation was the consequence of all attempts at the education of youth in the religious principles of their fathers, and death the penalty of return after banishment. Nearly all those who still retained any vestige of their patrimonial estates, had purchased them at the sacrifice of their religious convictions, and those who haply retained both, had done so through the friendly interference of some powerful minions of the English court, who were few and far between. There were still a few other exceptions to this general rule, which deserve a casual notice. The descendants of the early settlers of the Pale, though still adhering to the Catholic faith, had been held by the English Government as a distinct element from the native race. On questions pertaining to the English tenure of the island they had antagonistic interests. Through each successive convulsion they had been treated with greater leniency, and had received much more consideration on the adjustment and final settlement. Their condition was, therefore, less intolerable than that of the native chiefs; they had privileges without rights, while the latter had neither rights nor privileges. But then there was a counterbalancing influence; the native gentry had local popularity; while the Palesmen had Government consideration;—both felt their religious grievances in common, and between them there was a mutual forbearance, and an exchange of kindly offices.
Such was the condition of the descendants of the Normans, and of the fast waning septs of the ancient race; but, the people!—they had no consideration, national nor local; no protection but their poverty and their native tongue: no right but that of animal existence, and that only on sufferance! Yet, through all, they had retained the noblest characteristics of manhood; tenacious memory, stubborn will, unselfish love of country, unshaken fidelity to their faith; and who could doubt that they would now—true to their instincts—be the last refuge of a just king in adversity.
When James ascended the throne, on the 16th of February, 1685, the Earl of Ormond was deputy for Ireland. He had taken a leading part in the most exciting scenes of the last fifty years. Gifted with the highest graces of mind and person, he had figured, in early life, as one of the most important personages of the English court, and had won the highest favors of Charles I., and his queen, Henrietta. His powers of diplomacy and statesmanship were kept in continual exercise during the latter years of that reign; but though gifted with talents to excel in each, in each he was signally unsuccessful; and all the evils that befell that king and eventuated in the extinction of his house, may be fairly traced to the one leading passion of Ormond,—an implacable hatred of the Irish Catholics. It would seem as if all the enmity of all the reformers, from Elizabeth to Cromwell, had in him found an exponent, and in directing his deadly malice against them, he was over-successful: he accomplished their ruin, but virtually consigned his patron and sovereign to the scaffold.
His after life was ignoble and inglorious. He became prodigal of honor, tenacious of power, and served as trimmer and timeserver in turn, to Royalists and Parliamentarians alike. But whether in the service of his king or in complicity with his enemies, he held his political principles subservient to his worldly interest, and was consistent only in one passion, his religious intolerance. The character of this statesman had become odious to James long before his accession to the throne; and believing that no wholesome measures of redress could be introduced into Ireland, while one so notorious for his duplicity and hatred of its people remained at the head of affairs, he lost no time in recalling him. He then deputed the government to two Lords-Justices: Boyle, the Protestant primate, and Forbes, Earl of Granard, each of whom had attained a high degree of popularity with the people of all religious denominations. He had reason to believe that these appointments would be received in the spirit which dictated them, and prove a measure of general satisfaction. Upon the Catholic population it had the desired effect; but with the High Church party and the Nonconformists it was quite different. The hatred and jealousy that existed between them was only secondary to their mutual hatred of the Catholics, and these appointments kindled anew the ire of each party against the other. The Puritans were dissatisfied with Boyle, alleging that his Protestantism savored of "Popery;" and the Churchmen averred that Granard was a favorer of the sectaries, and an enemy to the "Establishment."
In order to harmonize all interests and carry out his measures of redress, James sent over the Earl of Clarendon as deputy, and with him Colonel Richard Talbot, an Irishman and a Catholic, as Lieutenant-General of the militia. But whether it was that Clarendon was opposed to the policy of the king, or that he felt unable to give effect to his measures of redress in a country so divided in sentiment, he retired shortly after, and Talbot was created Earl of Tyrconnell and appointed deputy in his stead. In Tyrconnell were then united the civil and military power, and of all the king's subjects who at that time accorded with his religious and political views, there could scarcely be chosen one better adapted to give practical effect to the reforms which he had extended to Ireland.
Richard Talbot, Earl, and afterwards Duke of Tyrconnell, is one of the noblest characters in Irish history. He was a loyal subject of the king, whom he served with characteristic loyalty, and though of Norman descent, he was as national in heart as the most devoted of the native race. Of noble presence,5 courtly manners, untarnished honor, unshrinking courage, indomitable will, and fervid patriotism, he was old enough to remember the Revolution of 1641, had been a sympathetic observer of the sufferings that succeeded, and all the energies of his mind, from his first introduction to royal favor to the end of his career, were directed to effect the civil and religious liberty of his country. Had James been a timeserving king, from Tyrconnell he would have received no adulation; as he was sincere and steadfast in his pledges to the Catholics, Tyrconnell was his devoted servant. As deputy and commander-in-chief, his powers for good were more than ordinary, and he stretched them to the utmost tension that justice permitted. His task was delicate and dangerous; but he discarded the delicacy and braved the danger, as though he alone felt the awakened energy of a whole people. Imprudent they term him; but looking through his chequered life, and reviewing the scenes he had witnessed in youth, we cannot acquiesce in the decision. The circumstances by which he was surrounded brooked no delay, and what is termed imprudence by our recent annalists, would, if viewed in the light of his time, appear the wisest statesmanship; and it must be generally conceded, that if the king was as bold and intrepid as Tyrconnell, the usurpation of William would have been as abortive as that of Monmouth.
I have turned aside from the course of direct narrative to dedicate a page to the memory of this much-maligned statesman. It is deemed a duty obligatory, because there is a tendency, even among Irish nationalists, to offer him as a sacrifice on the altar of conciliation. Truth may be unpalatable, but it is always wholesome, and without due reverence for it, there will be no incentive to do and suffer for noble ends. The religious martyr finds his reward above, but the patriot's reward is the blessing of posterity, and history should never divert a people's heart from those who labored for their good, albeit their efforts were unsuccessful. Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnell, is a name to be on the tongue of every Irish child, and his deeds a memory in the heart of every Irish patriot. He survived the battle of Aughrim, at which he was present, but a short time; and he should have died there, and gone to rest on that mournfully historic field, where rest some of the best and bravest that Ireland ever nurtured on her bosom. His character would then be complete. He labored for them through life; they were worthy of his companionship in death.
Of the parliament which he assembled in Dublin, after the removal of religious disabilities, the majority in the lower house were of the Catholic faith, and as the measures which were introduced during that session afford ample testimony that they were keenly alive to the higher duties of legislation, a brief outline of them is here submitted in the order of their political importance:
First.—An act removing all political disabilities from the natives of Ireland.
Second.—An act against removing writs of error from the Irish to the English courts.
Third.—An act of indemnity to Catholics who had been declared innocent by the Court of Claims.
Fourth.—An act to encourage strangers to settle and plant in the kingdom of Ireland.
Fifth.—An act investing in his majesty the goods of absentees.
Sixth.—An act for the advancement and improvement of trade, and the encouragement of ship-building.
Seventh.—An act declaring that the Parliament of England cannot bind Ireland.
The last was a virtual repeal of "Poyning's Law," an act passed during the reign of Henry VII. in a parliament convoked at Drogheda by Sir Edward Poyning, in 1494, and which provided "that no parliament could be held in Ireland until the chief governor and council had first certified to the king under the great seal of the land, as well the causes and considerations, as the acts designed to pass, and until the same should be approved by the king and council of England."
All these acts were known to be so just and salutary, that it was hoped they would at once meet the unanimous approval of the English king and his council. But they were all, or nearly all, negatived by the council; and the king himself, though he gave his assent to all the others, rejected that repealing the law of Poyning. It had met with great opposition in the upper house of the Irish Parliament, for though it was a law which placed Ireland under the complete legislative control of England, there was in the "higher estate" then, as to-day, a spirit of subserviency to the English interest, and the king was as jealous of his royal prerogatives as any of his predecessors. But this act was afterwards repealed, when nearly one hundred years more of bitter experience had proved its ruinous effect on the country, and eighteen years of unparalleled prosperity was the consequence. This subject is, however, out of the course of our narrative, and is only referred to as showing that the repeal of Poyning's law did not originate with Grattan or the volunteers of 1782, but had been the principal object of the statesmen of ante-Jacobite times, as the repeal of the union has been in our own days.
No body of legislators ever understood the wants of a country better than that parliament did the necessities of Ireland. And well might they understand them, for their impoverished country and broken fortunes bore striking and melancholy evidence of the evil effects of foreign legislation aided by a subsidized native oligarchy inimical to every interest but their own. For three generations the people had known no respite from robbery and proscription. Over two hundred thousand of them had passed into exile, or had been consigned to penal servitude in the colonies within the last fifty years. Then, as to-day, the population, though small, was deemed "surplus," while outlawry and banishment suppressed all manifestations of a national spirit. The chiefs were detached from their clans, and the clans, in losing their former protectors, had found but deadly enemies in their new taskmasters. The old feudal system was nearly extinct, even in the districts least visited by English adventure, and this Parliament had realized the stern necessity of reconstructing a nation out of the elements at its disposal. The troubles that surrounded the king gave it a temporary power, which it wielded for the removal of grievances becoming chronic in the land, but "no act of a proscriptive or retaliatory character stains the parliamentary records of that period."6
Measures of redress now followed in quick succession. Political and religious disabilities were removed from all denominations, without distinction; and the people were not slow in availing themselves of their long-lost privileges. Catholic churches were once more opened to the service of God, and local schools began to appear throughout the country. Catholic judges, mayors, and sheriffs took their places wherever opportunity offered, and the people felt a gratification corresponding to their altered condition. But, throughout all, they acted with a forbearance and dignity worthy of a people long tried in adversity; they expressed no exultation at their sudden emancipation, and no spirit of retaliation was manifested that might give alarm to their Protestant countrymen.
The Protestant officials of that day, who held the liberty of the country, as it were, in lien, threw many obstructions in the way of these reforms. Among the foremost of these were Topham and Coghill, masters-in-chancery, and the Chancellor himself, and they were removed for open contumacy, and on what then appeared "good and sufficient reasons,"—throwing the legal technicalities of an odious system in the way of a people's emancipation from the penal servitude of ages.
Early in 1686, Tyrconnell issued a proclamation in accordance with that of the king, that all classes of his majesty's subjects were allowed to serve in the army, accompanied by an order that the arms which had hitherto been given out should be returned to the king's stores, preparatory to a reorganization of the militia. The militia of the country, which at that time must have numbered about 20,000, were exclusively Protestant, and were officered by men of the most proscriptive tendencies, and apart from those regularly enrolled, the whole Protestant population were under arms, subject to the call of local leaders at a moment's notice. Being, almost to a man, opposed to the measures of Catholic redress then being instituted by the king, would appear sufficient motive for this action on the part of the deputy. For the last generation they had been the rigorous executors of the acts of attainder and settlement; the memories they awakened could scarcely be conducive to good order or a feeling of public security: not being national, they were regarded with distrust, and were held as unsafe guardians of the liberty which they openly denounced. Many of their leaders were known to be implicated in Monmouth's rebellion, and as a precautionary measure, it became necessary to infuse a spirit of loyalty among them by the introduction of a Catholic element. To accomplish this seems to have been the great trouble of the deputy. Men there were, to any number, ready at his call, but arms were wanting, and the revenue of the country was scarce sufficient to defray the expenses of the civil government. There was, therefore, no other resource but to call in the arms for a redistribution, and to organize a body of native troops from whom exclusion would be excluded. This measure created great alarm, among a party who had been so long dominant; and, if in its accomplishment, any denomination were excluded who felt a liberal sentiment towards the great body of the people, there would have been cause for just apprehension, but such does not appear on the record of the period. All test oaths were abolished according to the proclamation of the king, and all denominations, without distinction, were invited to join the new organization. The Catholic people responded with promptitude and alacrity, and an army of about 8,000 men, was soon enrolled from the old royalist corps scattered through the country; a few regiments more sprang up from the remnants of the native clans, and with these the deputy felt able to execute the laws, and garrison a few of the most important military stations in the kingdom.
On the other hand, the Protestant militia, feeling jealous that men so long outside the pale of all law, should at once be endowed with the high privilege of freemen, shunned the organizations, and many of their prominent officers, retiring to Holland, took service under the Prince of Orange, then conspiring for the overthrow of their rightful sovereign.
In this age and clime, such intolerance may seem greatly exaggerated, if not altogether incredible. But stepping down through the successive changes of ninety years, we find that the Volunteers of 1782, with the light of the American Revolution before them, were quite as exclusive. Up to the day when, on Essex-Bridge, the regiment of Lord Altamont held its way through the ranks of his Britannic majesty,7 and a revolution appeared imminent, the proposition to allow Catholics to bear arms in the native militia, even as private soldiers, had been scouted with contempt. The provisions of Catholic Emancipation are not yet accepted there, for we have seen the "Test Act" revived as late as 1864, in Dublin, to the exclusion of a Catholic alderman. Before such evidences, doubt vanishes, and we are able to appreciate the position of Tyrconnell, and the necessity for intrepid action in the premises. No man had a greater share of praise and censure from contemporary historians than he, and he is still a subject of each as the minds of men incline to either side in the issues that then distracted the country. His precipitancy in removing the restraints on religion, and in giving too active an impulse to the popular will, has come in for its share of condemnation. He is also criticized for a too pompous display of his dual power, as Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief: but we should remember that they who censure his hasty measures of redress, are those who persistently oppose all redress; that his manner of life as Viceroy was simple and unostentatious as compared with that of his successors in office, and that his dual power was conferred on him, when the king's brother-in-law, Clarendon, had deserted him, and there was no other man capable and at the same time willing to assume that critical position.
Tyrconnell, however, was not a man to be diverted from his purpose by either threat or criticism, and so he pursued his course unshrinking. His country demanded redress and he hearkened to her call. The emancipation of his co-religionists was necessary, and he endeavored to effect it: but in doing so he infringed no civil or religious right of others: none were denied equality before the law, and none were removed from office except for open contumacy or covert treason. No doubt he had to brave obloquy and opposition; but who could serve that country and that king at that particular crisis, and escape the shafts of malignity?
In the summer of 1688, when the conspiracy of the Prince of Orange became known to Tyrconnell, in the manner already indicated, he lost no time in communicating his intelligence to the king. It was received with incredulity, for the evil counsel of Earl Sunderland still held sway over every other representation. How could he believe that his affectionate son-in-law, who had made him a prompt tender of military assistance to suppress the rebellion of Monmouth, could have been prompted by any but the most honorable and filial motives? Had he not offered to lead his forces in person, and to protect the capital and the inmates of the royal palace?
But the urgency of the occasion emboldened Tyrconnell, and he at last succeeded in arousing the king's suspicions. He urged the necessity of an immediate alliance with France, and though in this he was not able to move the fixed impression left by the wily secretary, he prevailed so far on the king as to accept the greater part of the forces he had raised for the protection of Ireland; and so they were immediately sent over and placed at the royal service.
Tyrconnell then formed the bold design, without the knowledge of the king, of placing Ireland under the protection of France. The proposition was well received by Louis, but events culminated with such rapidity during the autumn of 1688, that no time was left for diplomacy, for it required the undivided attention of Tyrconnell to repress the spirit of disaffection throughout Ulster as the winter approached. The leaders of the Protestant party in Ireland were alive to all that was taking place, and premonitory symptoms of open revolt were apparent to all. In Ulster, Lord Blaney, Rawdon, Skeffington, Keames, Kelso, and Walker, who had kept a close correspondence with the Prince of Orange since the death of Monmouth, sounded the alarm, and called their followers to arms. Every action or word of the deputy was seized on to excite the passions and fears of their people, and every counter-effort on his part to allay the growing excitement was futile. The time was propitious, and they seized on every event to magnify their danger. The alarm became wide-spread, and the old hatred that so often left the country a prey to foreign adventure was revived in all its bitterness. Fanaticism overruled common sense, and the people were divided.
A report was industriously circulated that a massacre of the entire Protestant population of the country was arranged for the 9th of December, with a minuteness of detail that convinced the most incredulous. This was about the date that was to usher in the Prince of Orange. The conspirators knew it, but the people were ignorant. The utmost consternation prevailed; the Protestant people in considerable numbers abandoned their homes, flocked to the sea-shore, and stowing themselves away in the hold of every available craft that presented, passed over to England, while the boldest of them fled to the North to join the standard of William's adherents. Those who reached England awakened the liveliest sympathy for the condition of their Irish brethren, and the most bitter indignation against "the murdering Irish." The arrival of William at Whitehall was the signal for a general onslaught on the English Catholics, and the Irish residents there had to take refuge in immediate flight. The regiments imprudently sent there at the suggestion of Tyrconnell, being placed in small detachments throughout the country, were forced into the usurper's service, or, trying to make their way home, were set upon in detail, and slaughtered mercilessly in the streets and by-ways wherever they passed. Some few fought or forced their way to the seaboard, and through the kindly offices of the English Jacobites, made their way back in the most wretched condition.8
The news of William's arrival soon spread throughout Ireland and Scotland. In the former country this event had been anticipated: the people had already arrayed themselves into two parties known through succeeding times as Williamites and Jacobites. In the latter a convention was called, and after much angry opposition, the covenanters declared that James's flight was a virtual abdication, and that he had consequently "forefaulted" his right to the throne and the allegiance of his subjects of Scotland, which they tendered to William. A respectable portion, however, headed by the Archbishop of Glasgow, the Duke of Gordon, the Earl of Balcarras, and Graham of Claverhouse (Viscount Dundee) supported the Jacobite cause and took up arms in defence of their lawful king.
On the 7th of December the gates of Derry were closed against the Earl of Antrim's regiment of Highlanders sent thither by Tyrconnell on the invitation of its governor, and the call to arms was sounded through all the province of Ulster. Blaney, Walker, Keames, Kelso, Skeffington, and Rawdon called a convention, and assuming their right to dispose of the country, tendered its allegiance to William. They then entered into a league "for the maintenance of the Protestant religion and the dependency of Ireland upon England," and placed themselves at the head of the military organizations formed throughout the province: and Enniskillen, Culmore, Sligo, Coleraine—nearly all the important posts from Down to Donegal, and from Cavan to Antrim—were seized on and garrisoned in the name of the Prince of Orange.
It is scarcely necessary to say, that the 9th of December came and passed without any manifestation of that murderous design attributed to the Catholics. The conspiracy was on the other side, and manifested itself in the following manner. Major Poor, who had served in a dragoon regiment under Cromwell, had got the command of two companies of cavalry, from "The League." With this force he commenced a series of raids on the inhabitants of Louth, and levied a tax of ￡500 on the tenantry of Lord Bellew. Hearing of this, Bellew sent his son, a youth of eighteen, with a company of dragoons, to assist the farmers in resisting the tax. These troops met and fought for some time with the most determined bravery, until Bellew, closing with the Major, killed him with a blow of his pistol on the head, when the troops of the Major took flight, leaving their dead and wounded behind them. This was the first act of open hostility: it aroused the Catholic people to the necessity of defensive measures, and quickened that martial spirit, never extinguished; their hearts responded to the war-note of the times; but what could the spirit do, but chafe at delay? Their country was impoverished, and they had neither arms nor organization.
FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF HOSTILITIES TO THE LANDING OF KING JAMES IN IRELAND.
Tyrconnell, seeing that a civil war could no longer be averted in Ireland, bitterly regretted the loss of those troops that he had sent to England. A few well-equipped regiments: those of Mountcashel, Clancarty, Lord Antrim, Lord Bellew, and his own, about three thousand,—were all that remained in the country. Men by thousands daily presented themselves for enrollment, but they were destitute of every thing that constitutes the soldier, "excepting courage and good will," and he had neither money nor arms to equip them. The Williamite organization grew more powerful and extended, day by day. Along with the province of Ulster, it soon embraced the counties of Longford, Meath, and Dublin; its leaders, in the mean time, feigning to treat with Tyrconnell, while privately soliciting arms and succors from the Prince of Orange. Tyrconnell at last determined to make a final appeal to the country, and for this purpose issued colonels' commissions to the heads of the old Catholic houses and the loyal Palesmen of Leinster. The effect was electric. With a common impulse they rushed to his standard, and threw the wrecks of their former fortunes in the balance. In a short time, the regiments of McMahon, O'Reilley, MacDonnell, Maguinness, Maguire, O'Donnell, Nugent, Loutrell, Fitzgerald, Felix O'Neil, Gordon O'Neil, Cormac O'Neil, Bryan O'Neil, Sir Neale O'Neil, Clare, Galway, O'Moore, O'Dempsey, and others were in the field, to the number of 20,000, nearly all recruited from their respective households.
But the people having been long deprived of the right to bear arms, were necessarily unprovided with them, and the state to which the country had been reduced by the misgovernment and oppression of the last forty years, rendered them unable to provide any other than the rudest weapons, hastily improvised. They had, therefore, to be armed and provisioned at the individual expense of their leaders, and it was found impossible to equip and sustain the multitudes that presented themselves for service. The murmurs of the people were loud and deep, but there was no remedy. The organizations of the Council, all well armed, and supplied with the necessaries of war, were wide-spread throughout the country, and were levying, in the name of the Prince of Orange, on the Catholic people of Ulster, and even the eastern and southern provinces had to yield to their exactions. Notwithstanding all this, thousands had to be dismissed to their unprotected homes, with promises that a little time would remove those difficulties. It was represented, as it was indeed believed by all, that an immense armament was fitting out in France, to accompany the king, who was daily expected to arrive; that his presence would rectify every thing, and afford them the means and opportunity of giving active proof of their patriotism; and with these promises, though chafing at delay, they retired to watch the current of events, and bide the arrival of their king. The new regiments were reduced to a limited standard of about 250 each, so that 12,000 men, including those already enrolled, were rendered fit for service, and with this force Tyrconnell opened the campaign of 1689.
Carrickfergus and Charlemont in the north, and all the forts on the Shannon, from Lough Allen to the estuary, were still in the possession of the Irish, and each had to be reinforced and put in a better state of defence: the town of Kilkenny, and the cities of Cork and Waterford, had each to receive its quota of troops; Dundalk, an important seaport, had to be secured against the excursions of the insurgents of Monaghan and Armagh; and the metropolis could not dispense with the few veteran regiments that had been stationed there since the inauguration of the deputy. After the distribution of his forces among these posts, Tyrconnell found at his disposal a small army of 6,000 men available for the field, and, dividing it into three corps, he gave the command of one to Lieutenant-General Justin McCarthy, to operate in Munster, where Inchiquin had raised the standard of revolt; one to Lieutenant-General Richard Hamilton, for the reduction of the rebel garrisons from Dundalk to Derry; and another, a co-operative force of about 1,000 men, was placed under Lord Galmoy, to give countenance to the outlying posts around Cavan and Enniskillen.—The limits prescribed these pages preclude a detailed account of these expeditions, although each presents some of the most striking and agreeable events of that period. McCarthy, at the head of 2,000 regulars and a few hundred followers, reduced, in a few days, the rebels of Castle-Martyr and Bandon, and turning his attention to Inchiquin, who was plundering and laying waste the country, from the Shannon to the Blackwater, he drove him back on his stronghold in Clare, and marched uncontrolled from the Fergus to the Barrow. The Williamites of Munster, surprised by these events and the rapidity of their execution, laid down their arms, returned to their homes, and all apprehension of future trouble in that quarter was at an end:—for this important service McCarthy henceforth received the title of "Pacificator of Munster."
When the rumor of William's conspiracy first became known to the Earl of Tyrconnell in the preceding year, he sent General Hamilton, as already indicated, with about four thousand men, for the service of James in England. After the invasion of William this force was either slain, dispersed, or forced into his service, and their general, contrary to the usages of war, and to the terms accorded to the other adherents of the king, was detained a prisoner. Being an Irish gentleman by birth, of great family influence, and one of the best cavalry officers of his time, William saw in him one who, if weaned from his allegiance to the king, would be a powerful agent of success to his designs on Ireland, and accordingly, 'tis said, made overtures to that effect. History, however, is not clear as to the nature of these proposals, nor of the manner in which they were met by Hamilton. This much at least is known, that he was released from captivity, was sent with proposals of an accommodation to Tyrconnell, but on arriving in Ireland he urged the most determined opposition to William, and was appointed to lead the expedition against the rebellion in Ulster.
Leaving Drogheda on the 8th of March, with a force of about two thousand men, he marched through Dundalk and Newry, and on the 13th took up a position between Loughbrickland and the river Bann, and sent out Colonel Butler to take a reconnoissance of the enemy, said to be in force between him and the Laggan. The service was one of extreme peril, and required the utmost courage and address:—he was in the midst of a mountainous country, surrounded by a wary foe, and the slightest misconduct on his part, was sure to result in the capture or destruction of the main body.
The task was, however, performed to the satisfaction of the general: the enemy were found strongly intrenched at Dromore-Iveagh, on the north side of the Laggan, to the number of 8,000 men, under the command of Hugh Montgomery, Lord Mount Alexander. It was soon decided to attack them; so breaking camp with the dawn, on the morning of the 14th, Hamilton crossed the Bann and advanced boldly on their position. The cavalry regiment of Montgomery advanced to meet him, but after the first charge of Hamilton's dragoons they fell back in confusion on the main body, and his infantry having also crossed the river, a general attack was ordered. The enemy, however, did not wait the assault, for Montgomery himself running away, his men followed the example, and a complete rout succeeded. The Irish remained masters of the encampment. Montgomery continued his flight to Hillsborough, into which he threw a few companies, and ordering the bulk of his forces to Coleraine, embarked at Donaghadee, and sailed for England. This was the first time the forces of "The Council" met the Irish in the field. They had been organizing and levying on the country for months; they were well armed; had an intrenched position of their own selection, behind a deep and rapid river, and the result was the loss of their camp equipage, four hundred slain, and that disgraceful flight known in the history of the period as "The Break of Dromore."
After stopping here for a day to rest his men and secure the advantages of his victory, Hamilton pushed on to Hillsborough, the headquarters of the Council, while Sir Arthur Rawdon advanced rapidly from Lisburn to its relief, at the head of 4,000 men. Rawdon, however, only arrived in the vicinity to find the place in the possession of Hamilton, and to see its paroled garrison making their way home across the country. On learning that Rawdon was in the neighborhood, the Irish troops advanced to meet him, but he, ordering his men to make the best of their way towards Coleraine, abandoned them to their fate, and, like Mount Alexander, embarked for England.
The capture of Hillsborough was of great service to the Irish cause. It had been the headquarters of the "Council" since its formation, and was the repository of its papers, plans, and secret correspondence with William; but, above all, it contained immense stores of provisions, wrung from the inhabitants of the surrounding country since the preceding winter. The evacuation of Dungannon, on the west side of Lough Neagh, a fine central position of the Williamites, and one of their chief depots for provisions and military stores, followed closely on that of Hillsborough; and Hamilton, pursuing the retreating insurgents through Belfast, Antrim, and Ballymena, drove them in on Coleraine, and halted to recruit his little army in the town of Ballymoney, within a few miles of their only remaining stronghold in Antrim. While here, he was assailed by a strong force sent out to cover the movements of a foraging party, but he attacked them so vigorously that he drove them within the gates of the town, inflicting a severe loss, and capturing all the booty collected in their excursion.
Thus, in less than a fortnight after his departure from Drogheda, all the eastern counties of Ulster—Armagh, Down, Antrim, and the greater part of Tyrone—were reduced to obedience; but, as he was now about to approach the walled town of Derry, he halted for a few days in his career, to await artillery and reinforcements from the capital.
In whatever light this campaign is considered—whether from a Williamite or a Jacobite point of view—it confers immortal honor on Hamilton and his little band, for it can scarcely be dignified by the name of an army. In a season of unusual severity, in the face of a vigilant foe, four times his number, and established in the strongest positions that could be selected, he, by vigilance and audacity, baffled all attempts at surprise, and with an insignificant loss, and without a single repulse, cleared the greater part of the province from the grasp of an enemy that a few days before had uttered defiance before the gates of Dundalk, and bore away their booty undisturbed within sight of the capital.
The co-operative force, under Galmoy, was scarce less successful. The scene of his operations embraced Monaghan, Cavan, and Fermanagh, where the leading rebels, Lord Blaney and Gustavus Hamilton, carried fire and sword wherever they went. The first to arouse the infatuated people, by the cry of religion, they were the persistent violators of all religious precepts. The total extirpation of the Catholics could alone appease them, and to this end they kept the minds of their followers inflamed by every species of misrepresentation and calumny. The people were driven from their homes, and wholesale murder and rapine, with crimes too revolting for detail, marked their course among the doomed fugitives. In the few months that had elapsed since the advent of the Prince of Orange in England, this section of country had become almost desolate. Few were to be seen but the destroyers let loose over it, or the stealthy Rapparees, that tracked their steps, to wreak a deadly revenge for the crimes that rendered them at once both homeless and merciless. But the contest was unequal; the unarmed people were forced to give way before the trained-bands of Hamilton and Blaney, when Galmoy entered on the scene, to add fresh fuel to the flame. He soon roused the flagging spirit of the Jacobites. Blaney and Hamilton, now joined by Wolseley, put forth all their strength to oppose him, but they were met by measures as arbitrary and effective as their own. "No quarter" became the cry on both sides; but the military skill of Galmoy proclaimed him the master-spirit, and after a few reverses, and a rigorous retaliation, they fell back wherever he advanced; all opposition in the open country soon ceased, and they were forced to take refuge within the walls of Enniskillen.
The poor countenance shown by the rebels in the field, now emboldened Galmoy to attempt the reduction of Enniskillen, which was their chief rendezvous in the south-western portion of the province; and for that purpose he approached the Castle of Crom, one of its principal defences, and having driven in its outposts, invested it about the middle of March. This fortress, which stands on a peninsula in the waters of the Lower Erne, being impregnable to his light-armed infantry, he now had recourse to stratagem. He got some tin cannon constructed, and giving out that artillery had reached him from Dublin, placed them in battery within musket range of the castle. On the 21st he summoned it to surrender, but the garrison, having been apprised of the ruse intended for them, provided themselves with the long guns used in duck-shooting on the lake, and answered his summons with a well-directed fire that killed about forty of his men, and compelled him to retire to a safer distance, leaving his mock cannon behind him. They were soon conveyed into the fort, and were exhibited as trophies at many a succeeding celebration of "the glorious and pious, etc.," furnishing the Enniskilleners with a theme of boastful merriment.9
The name "Enniskilleners," has now become nearly obsolete, and is only applied to a regiment of dragoons in the English army, kept up in perpetuation of the part they took in the ruin of their country; but at the time of the Revolution it was applied without distinction to the partisans of William, who, when driven before the Jacobites, took refuge within the town of Enniskillen, and held out until the relief of Derry, to which it was next in importance. It is a place of great natural strength, and has many historic memories dating farther back than the unhappy events that have given it such unenviable notoriety. It was originally the stronghold of the Maguires, who held it for centuries against each successive invasion, but had passed into the hands of Sir William Cole, after the civil war of 1641. It stands on a river connecting the upper and lower waters of Lough-Erne, which, lying from the north-west to the south-east of the County Fermanagh, and connecting with Lough-Oughter on the south, extends over a distance of more than forty miles. These lakes and their tributaries, studded with islands innumerable, render the country for several miles a labyrinth almost impassable to all but the natives. There is not, perhaps, in the world, for the same extent of country, a place so well adapted to insurgent warfare. In such a country the people of La Vendée would have exhausted all the resources of the French Directory; and the wonder is, not why Galmoy could not take it, but how he even approached it, in the face of such overwhelming odds.
Meanwhile the exiled king was keenly alive to all that was passing in his late dominions. Assured of the strenuous support of Louis, on the first demonstration of popular will in his favor in England, his agents there were active in their endeavors to effect a change of public sentiment; nor did their efforts seem barren of good results. The way of William, since his accession, was not strewn with flowers. Signs of reaction manifested themselves daily, and it required all the efforts of his Dutch and German mercenaries, to check the spirit of disaffection. The people had been taken by surprise. Their subjugation to the arms of Holland had been effected by a conspiracy between a few of the nobles and William, in which they had no part, and many of the moderate nobles had begun to regret an action by which they intended only a change of the royal policy, but which had terminated in a change of sovereigns. Nor was the result, in any light, very flattering to their vanity; nor a comparison between the sovereigns favorable to the new incumbent. It was, however, from the dignitaries of the Established Church that William experienced the greatest opposition. The Archbishop of Canterbury and six others, though active in their opposition to the reforms introduced by James, would never acknowledge any other king, and continued to pray publicly for his welfare and protection. Mary sent to the Archbishop to ask his blessing, but received for answer: "When she has obtained her father's blessing, I shall be very ready to give her mine." The Prince of Orange was outraged by such perverseness of spirit, and as an example of the religious liberty that he had established in England, deprived them of their bishoprics. Throughout the country a reaction had really set in. The Dutch guards and the English soldiers came frequently into collision, and the insolence of the former, being generally overlooked by William, he became an object of popular disfavor. To silence this disaffection he determined to send the malcontent regiments to Holland, and supply their place with Dutch soldiers. A Scotch regiment mutinied, and marched northward "with drums beating and colors flying," but were overwhelmed by three regiments of Dutch dragoons, under Ginkle, and sent off to the continent. This revolt caused the passage of the famous "Mutiny Bill," which deprives the British soldier of the right of citizenship, shuts him off from the benefit of civil law, and makes him an alien in his own country.
The Jacobite cause in Scotland was still hopeful, for there, Viscount Dundee kept the field, and refused all terms of compromise, while in Ireland three provinces remained steadfast in their allegiance, and the adherents of William in the other province, though still obstinate in the course they had adopted, were unable to keep the field. The Earl of Tyrconnell, faithful to his trust, animated the people by word and example, and "retained," says the Duke of Berwick, "all the kingdom in obedience;" so James, at last, rousing himself from his apathy, determined to assume the management of affairs in his Kingdom of Ireland. The state of the country demanded his presence; the people clamored for it; and the French king hastened it by his counsel, and gave promise of adequate military support. Accordingly, James set sail from France, under an escort of thirty-three war-ships, and arrived at Kinsale on the 12th of March, 1689. He was accompanied by his son, the Duke of Berwick, M. de Rosen, M. de Momont, M. de Pusignan, de Lery, Bo?sselau, Lestrade, Guidon, and about one hundred French officers of different grades, and twelve hundred of his guards, who had joined him in his exile.
The people, who expected to see this imposing array of ships pour out its thousands of armed men on their shores, were greatly disappointed; but the arrival of the king banished every other consideration. His adversity awakened all the sympathies of their nature, and he had an abiding-place in every heart. From Kinsale he proceeded to Cork, which he entered amid the greatest rejoicings. After the usual formalities, of which religious ceremonies formed the most solemn and imposing part, he received from the deputy an account of his stewardship. It exceeded even what he had been led to expect, and as a mark of his approval, Tyrconnell was raised to the rank of Duke, and McCarthy, "The Pacificater of Munster," was created Lord Mountcashel, and honored with a seat in his cabinet. After a short delay here, the king proceeded to the metropolis. His route through the country was one continued ovation. Crowds of people lined the wayside, invoking blessings on his cause, while religious ceremonies, pledges, and addresses of loyalty, arrested his way at every step of his route. The city of Dublin, proverbial in all times for taste and elegance, and which had never witnessed the advent of a king since the days of Henry II., exhausted every effort that art or fancy could suggest, to grace the royal pageantry. The corporation, headed by the mayor, in all the pomp of office, went forth to meet him, and tender him the keys of the city. Farther on, and near the portals of the castle, the Primate, crowned with the triple tiara, and holding in his hand the emblem of redemption, awaited to receive his obeisance, and bestow the benediction. As he approached the august dignitary, a general halt of the procession took place, and even the multitude, that surged like a closing sea behind, hushed their acclamations, and bent in lowly reverence, until the king, rising from his genuflection before the cross, and, bareheaded, offered them his parting acknowledgments. Then, as the national flag, standing out above the castle-gate, revealed to him the terse and significant motto:
Now or Never; Now and Forever,
one wild and prolonged cheer, deep and fervid, burst from the hearts of the multitude. The die was cast, and their adherence to the discrowned monarch was sealed and irrevocable.
Immediately after his arrival in Dublin,10 James proceeded to the construction of his cabinet, the leading members of which were Tyrconnell, Mountcashel, General Nugent, and some of the French officers that formed his escort. He at once issued a proclamation, offering pardon and protection to all who would retire peaceably to their homes, and again announced his unalterable determination to maintain the civil and religious liberty of all religious denominations. The army, however, demanded his earliest attention, for, whatever was its enthusiasm, its real condition was far from encouraging. The gentlemen who bore the expense of the first levy were unable to continue the drain on their slender means, and the soldiers were suffering much privation. It was necessary also to organize a force sufficient to meet events that might now be daily expected, and accordingly the king at once appealed to the country. More than one hundred thousand men, almost simultaneously, offered their services; "but," says Hume, "not two in every hundred were provided with muskets fit for service; the rest were armed with clubs and sticks tipped with iron," and he found himself compelled to decline the service of all but about twenty thousand.11
These, together with those already in the service, constituted an army short of thirty thousand men; the whole artillery in the country was twelve field-pieces and four mortars; and with this force, in the weakest period it had known since the first invasion, Ireland resolved to measure strength with England, its army of mercenaries, and the most powerful of her own provinces now arrayed on the side of the usurper. The king had unbounded confidence in the timely assistance of France; but the people had realized the purport of this war; for them it was to be a struggle for national life or total extinction, and though many retired to their homes wherever it was practicable, thousands who had already been rendered homeless, seized on every rude weapon that presented, and, determined to wring a subsistence from the enemy, took up the bold and reckless life of the Rapparee. Tyrconnell was now appointed commander-in-chief of the army; M. de Rosen was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general, and appointed second in command; M. de Momont was raised to the same rank; de Pusignan and de Lery to that of major-general; Bo?sselau was appointed adjutant-general, Guidon master-general of cavalry, and a reinforcement of about three thousand troops, then the best in the country, was sent to Lieutenant-General, the Viscount of Dundee, who was making head against Mackey, the commander of the Williamite forces in Scotland.
The condition of affairs now brooked of no delay; the English Parliament was convened for an early day; William had expressed his intention of sending an expedition into Ireland, and only waited its assent: the suppression of the Ulster rebellion before such an event should take place, was a matter of vital importance to the Jacobite cause, and an active campaign was at once determined on. Accordingly, Major-General, the Duke of Berwick, was dispatched to the assistance of Hamilton, now lying before the fortified town of Coleraine, while de Pusignan, with a select body of horse and foot, and two pieces of artillery, was to march through Charlemont and Dungannon, and passing to the west of Lough Neagh, unite with Berwick and Hamilton, and proceed against Derry, the chief stronghold of the rebellion.
THE BATTLE OF CLADIFORD—THE INVESTMENT OF DERRY—PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT.
Lying impatiently before Coleraine since the affair of Dromore, Hamilton, on being joined by the Duke of Berwick, determined to renew hostilities, and immediately proceeded against that important position. Its garrison consisted of 3,000 effective men, who were expected to make a determined resistance; but on the approach of the royal troops they destroyed the bridge on their front, and, abandoning the fort, retreated in the direction of Derry. Hamilton soon occupied the place, and, leaving a regiment there under Colonel O'Morra, and being joined by de Pusignan, who had captured Moneymore, Magherafelt, Dawson's Bridge, and, in short, all the places on the left of the Bann, marched to Strabane, which he reached on the 15th of April, without meeting any opposition. Here he halted to rest his troops, and having ascertained that the enemy to the number of 12,000 men, from Enniskillen and Derry, under the command of General Lundy, were drawn up at Cladiford, behind the river Finn, determined to offer battle. On receipt of this intelligence, Hamilton and Berwick, leaving their main body at Strabane, took 600 horse and 350 foot, and advanced to reconnoitre; but on their appearance the town was evacuated, and the enemy, destroying the bridge, drew up in a fortified camp on the western side of the river.
Neither their force nor the strength of their position had been exaggerated: the river, which was of considerable volume, was found to be unfordable, while their right and left, beyond it, were protected by morasses impassable to cavalry; a strong breastwork had been thrown up in front of the bridge, behind which, in advance of their main body, 2,000 men were arrayed in order of battle. Hamilton, however, determined to attack them, without apprising De Pusignan, and setting a party to work on the bridge under cover of his infantry, he marched the cavalry along the river, determined to cross at the opportune moment. The infantry approached the bridge and opened a fire which dislodged the enemy from the trenches, and the planks being laid, they dashed over, and making a lodgment in the abandoned works, drove them back in confusion to the camp. Taking advantage of this diversion, the horse swam the river on their right, and forming on the opposite side, charged the entire body of the rebels, now drawn up on the high grounds to receive them. But the bold front assumed by Hamilton disconcerted them, and observing, at the same time, a squadron of dragoons, which had just arrived under De Rosen, crossing the river to their left, their whole force became panic-stricken, and fled in confusion. Their cavalry was followed up and driven furiously through Raphoe, a distance of five miles; "As for their infantry," says Berwick, "we killed about four hundred of them on the spot, but the rest, being favored by the morasses, found means to escape." The loss of the royal troops in this affair was one officer and two men, drowned in crossing the river.
Hamilton found abundance of provisions and some war materials at Raphoe, where, waiting to rest his troops, he was joined by Lord Galmoy with eight hundred men, and determined to advance on Derry, when his progress was arrested by the arrival of a deputation that came to treat for its surrender. The party were well received, and a conference being arranged to take place within two days, on condition that he should approach no nearer than St. Johnstown, they departed highly satisfied with their reception. Hamilton proceeded to the appointed place, and being impressed with the importance of Derry to the Jacobite cause, offered them the most liberal terms:—"Life, liberty, property, and protection, on condition that the town would be surrendered at twelve o'clock next day. The terms were accepted, and awaited but ratification on both sides."
In the mean time, the king had left Dublin on the 8th of April, to take a view of the country. Hearing of the victory at Cladiford, he directed his course to that place, and arrived at the camp on the 18th, on the very hour that Hamilton was in conference with the delegates from Derry. De Rosen, perhaps, jealous of Hamilton's success, or wishing to gain credit with the king, represented to him that his presence before Derry would cause its gates to be at once thrown open, and prevent unnecessary delay, so he prevailed on him to make the experiment. Avoiding the place of conference, he took a circuitous route, and appearing before the town, summoned it to surrender. The "defenders," taking this sudden appearance of the king at such a time as an act of treachery on the part of Hamilton, answered the demand by a cannon-shot, which killed an officer by his side, and caused him to retire in shame and confusion. The consequence is easily foreseen. The treaty about to be ratified was broken off; the alarm was sounded throughout the rebel ranks; the "defenders" determined on more stern resistance; a siege was ordered by the king, and under escort of De Rosen, he returned to Dublin to meet his Parliament, which had been convoked for the 7th of May.
The consequences of this ill-advised interference on the part of the king are generally attributed to the Count de Rosen, whose appointment to the command of the army was one of the many unwise proceedings attributed to this very weak or very imprudent monarch. Speaking of the affair just narrated, the Duke of Berwick says: "M. de Rosen was the more to blame in persuading the king to the step I have just mentioned with regard to Derry, as he knew and had approved the agreement of M. Hamilton." But, with due respect for established authority, there is ground for a deduction different to that drawn by the Duke and other learned contemporaries. From the beginning of this revolution the "defenders" had practised the art of duplicity to a very considerable extent. In the winter of 1688, they sent delegations to Dublin and London at the same time with very different objects:—that to Dublin was meant to delay any action on the part of the deputy, while the other went to expedite an invasion by the Prince of Orange. Notwithstanding the short time that had elapsed from their defeat at Cladiford until the conference with Hamilton, they had received a large supply of arms and ammunition from England, and had gathered their scattered forces into the town; and there is reason to surmise, that while the king was outraged before their walls, Hamilton was outwitted by their delegation.
But however this may have been, we think that if Hamilton, with his characteristic promptitude, had marched boldly on Derry from Cladiford, he could have dictated his terms within its walls. Most of the "regimented men" spoken of by M. Walker in his history of the siege that succeeded, were still outlying in the "far north;" the fugitives from the late defeat would have been cut off from any hope of entering the place; and the supplies received during the interval would have been intercepted. There was not then within the town, a force capable of offering any protracted resistance, and a surrender would be the probable, nay, the almost certain consequence. Fewer lives, also, would have been sacrificed on each side, and the whole country would have been reduced to the arms of the king before the arrival of the Duke of Schomberg. But, then, the army was under the command of De Rosen, and whether this delay was occasioned by that general or not, it is now hard to determine.
The success of the royal arms in Monaghan, Leitrim, and Fermanagh, kept pace with the progress of Hamilton and Berwick. The insurgents were everywhere driven from the open country, and compelled to take refuge in Crom and Enniskillen. The garrison of Sligo, consisting of 3,000 foot and 1,000 horse, under Lord Kingston, withdrew to Ballyshannon, which commands the entrance to Lough-Erne; and towards the beginning of May, there remained no place of any significance in their possession but the fortified towns of Enniskillen and Derry. But the defenders of the latter place had made good use of the temporary cessation of hostilities after the battle of Cladiford. Their outlying posts were immediately abandoned, and troops came in daily from all quarters. Culmore, a strong post which guarded the entrance of the Foyle, and which they had held through the winter, was evacuated on the approach of the Jacobite army, and its garrison of 1,500 men, under Captain Murray, after a hazardous march through the mountainous country to the west of the river, succeeded in getting safely within its walls. The accession of these forces gave a new impulse to the flagging spirit of the defenders. Governor Lundy, being suspected of Jacobite tendencies, was at once deposed, and a military council was constituted, of which Murray, the Reverend George Walker, and Colonel Baker, were the ruling spirits.
The town of Derry stands on the western bank of the river Foyle, about five miles above its expansion into a lough of the same name. It is situated on an oval-shaped hill; the houses, rising tier over tier, look very picturesque to one approaching it from an eastern direction; but to the west it is overlooked by an irregular line of hills, stretching far back into the County of Donegal. Since the time of the Revolution, it has been greatly extended in all directions, but was then confined to the hill already mentioned, and was encompassed by a wall of immense strength, and about a mile in circuit. It was founded by King James I., in 1607, as a refuge to the settlers, whom he sent from England and Scotland, to the exclusion of the native race; and, by a sort of retributive justice, it helped to complete the ruin of his house, in the person of his grandson, but eighty years later. After the departure of the king for Dublin, the Irish generals proceeded to invest this important position, and, by the 20th of April, had made the following disposition of their forces: The fort of Culmore, which stands about five miles below the town, was occupied by a small garrison after its evacuation by Captain Murray, and the river was obstructed by a boom a little higher up. Hamilton, with about one thousand horse and foot, established his camp some two miles from the walls of the garrison; General Ramsay, with four battalions, took up a position at Hollywell Hill, nearly the same distance to the west; Brigadier Wauchop, with two battalions, a squadron of horse and two field-pieces—their only artillery—made a lodgment on the eastern bank of the river, at a place known as the "Waterside;" while a reserve of three battalions of infantry and nine squadron of cavalry was stationed at Johnstown, about six miles farther up the river, in the direction of Strabane.
The "defenders," from their walls, saw the gradual approach of the Jacobite army, and felt the necessity of prompt and determined action. Every consideration that impels men to deeds of daring was heightened by the fiery appeals of their leaders. The fall of so many important posts, in such quick succession, had deprived them of the vast stores which they had collected through the preceding winter; the population of the town had increased to twenty thousand within the last month, and famine, at no distant day, would do the work of war, should William fail to succor them in the interval. On the other hand, they still outnumbered the beleaguering army three to one; were better supplied, and much better armed; they had their city as a last refuge, in case of defeat, and one successful battle before its walls might save them from the horrors of a protracted siege. All these considerations awakened them to a consciousness of their true position, and nerved them to action, while it was yet possible to dislodge the enemy; and from this time, until the town was completely invested, they exhibited a courage and determination worthy of a better cause.
On the 21st of April, Colonel Hamilton was ordered from General Ramsay's headquarters to occupy the village of Pennyburn, about a mile below the town, in the direction of Culmore; and taking with him a guard of 200 men, he proceeded to the execution of his order. As he passed within sight of the town, he was assailed by the enemy, amounting to 1,500 foot and 300 horse; but he gained the village, and occupying the houses and adjacent cover, he kept up a fire, while he dispatched a messenger to de Momont's quarters for assistance. It happened that the Irish cavalry were out on a foraging expedition; there being only a guard of forty troopers and the same number of horse dragoons in the camp; and with this force de Momont and Major Taaf rode at once to the rescue. On reaching the scene of action, they found Hamilton still disputing the possession of the town with the enemy's foot, while their horse were drawn up with their right resting on the river to receive them. A fierce conflict ensued; the enemy broke and fled into the town, but de Momont, Major Taaf, and seven of their command, were killed, and "there was not a man left who was not either wounded or had his horse shot under him."13 The loss of the enemy is not stated, but judging from the vast superiority of their force, and its hasty retreat, it must have been much greater.
Pennyburn was then occupied by the royalists, and reinforced from the encampment at Boom Hall14 to the number of 500 men, and a second attack, after such a signal defeat, was little apprehended. But as that position brought them within cannon range of the city, the enemy, conscious of its importance, determined to risk another effort to dislodge them before it could be secured by intrenchments. Accordingly, on the 25th, they sallied out with a force of 8,000 men, and endeavored to surround this detachment. The Irish disputed every inch of the ground, but were forced back to the last houses in the village, and were on the point of retreat, when Ramsay appeared in the rear of the enemy, and assailed them with great vigor. Other reinforcements arrived; the action continued from nine o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening, when the enemy retreated in confusion. In this sally de Pusignan was killed, Brigadier Pointy was wounded, and Berwick received a contusion, which he tells us was the only hurt he ever had, though his after years were spent in continual warfare.
As the next attack was the last of that series of "brilliant assaults" so greatly extolled by the eulogists of the Williamite cause, it is here transcribed entire from the Memoirs of the Duke of Berwick, who was himself an actor in the affair which he so simply, yet so graphically, describes:
They sent us word from Dublin that they were dispatching artillery to us; for which reason we thought it right to possess ourselves immediately of such posts near the town as might be of use in pressing the siege. With this view, Ramsay, with his troops, on the 6th of May, attacked a windmill, which stood on an eminence at half-cannon shot from the town, and behind it was a bottom in which he meant to encamp. The enemy defended themselves with great bravery; and, at last, the whole town sallying out upon him, he was driven from his post and obliged to retire. Ramsay himself was killed, with about 200 men; several officers of distinction were made prisoners. Wauchop took the command of Ramsay's troops, and resolved upon another attempt to make himself master of the mill; but the enemy, apprised of the importance of it, had covered it with a great intrenchment, which our troops could never force, and we sustained a further loss of several officers, and at least a hundred men. * * * "After this experience, we assembled all our troops, consisting of twelve battalions and fifteen or sixteen squadrons (about 2,800 men), and encamped opposite the front of the place, behind a rising ground, at the distance of a long musket-shot; and we left on the other side of the river two battalions that had been stationed there. A few days after, six large pieces of cannon—four guns and two mortars—arrived: there were thirty in the town. We had, in all, not more than five or six thousand men; the besieged had ten thousand, well armed. About the same time arrived M. de Rosen, with some French engineers and matrosses to begin the attack. As I was not pleased with the business, any more than with the new general, * * I asked for the command against Enniskillen, and obtained it, and left the camp on the 21st of June, with four hundred horse dragoons, and marched to Cavan Park."
The Parliament which assembled in Dublin, in obedience to the king's call, had high and solemn duties to perform, and seems to have been fully impressed with their importance. The country was impoverished; its treasury was empty; its banking-system was completely unhinged; and, as money was the great necessity of the hour, little could be done towards the support of the army until the financial system of the country was established on a satisfactory basis. Though the Williamites of Ulster had fallen away before the national troops, they had still two very important strongholds, Enniskillen and Derry, in their possession; and hostilities might be protracted until the arrival of an invading army, which the king's English agents apprised him might be soon expected, and to raise and equip an army able to cope with it was the real business of the session.
But the Parliament was not constituted for that expeditious legislation that the king expected. In the Upper House there were no Catholic prelates, and the Protestant lords, spiritual and temporal, greatly outnumbered the Catholic peers.
In the Lower House the Catholic element greatly preponderated, and conflicting opinions are never slow to arise in the greatest emergencies. The Protestant representatives very naturally wished to know whither the king's reforms tended; and the Catholic members, with a desire quite as reasonable, wanted to have their rights secured by constitutional guarantees. The discussions arising in consequence of these different views were long, and not free from religious rancor, and so, much of the time—short enough for the pressing duty of the hour—was wasted on questions that might have been better left for future deliberation. Grattan, in alluding to this Parliament eighty years later, says: "Though Papists, they were not slaves; they wrung a constitution from King James before they accompanied him to the field."15 This was the view of a great statesman; but yet we think that the first and only duty of that Parliament should have been to grant, even to wring, money from the country, to remove their king's dependence on the bounty of France, and enable him to support an army equal to the necessity of the time; and this it undoubtedly could have done, had the Catholic members been as liberal in voting supplies to James, as their Protestant colleagues were afterwards in casting the wealth of the country at the feet of William. These rights that Grattan appreciated so much—the rights he won himself—where are they? The great duty was to beat the enemy and leave the rest to time.
The speech of the king to the assembled Parliament was all that could be desired, and went far to secure that general accord so necessary to success. His principles were unaltered. Pardon and protection were again offered to all who, within a certain day, would return to their homes. He pledged himself to secure social harmony through the establishment of civil and religious liberty; to elevate the social condition of the people, and advance the interests of trade and commerce. The address met the approval of both Houses, and, under the best auspices, they entered on their important duty.... With the exception of the following acts, which appear supplementary, the measures introduced into this Parliament were the same as those already noticed:
First: An act declaring that all persons should pay tithes only to the clergymen of their own communion.
Second: An act repealing the act of settlement, and indemnifying Catholics who had been declared innocent by the Court of Claims.
Third: An act of attainder against all persons bearing arms for William, declaring their property, real and personal, forfeited, unless they surrendered before a certain day.16
Fourth: An act increasing the king's subsidy to ￡20,000 per month.
These acts all received the royal sanction, though the third met with considerable opposition; and the fourth was passed over an earnest protest from the Protestant lords, spiritual and temporal. But the great act, the one which concerned the future welfare of the country, far more than all the others, met with the persistent opposition of the king, though strenuously advocated by the majority; and so the act of Poyning remained unchanged until the days of Grattan and the volunteers of '82.
At last, and towards the end of June, they reached the great, important business of the session—the ways and means of supporting the army. The Catholic gentry had maintained the war up to the present time, and their means were totally exhausted. The Protestant gentry seemed unwilling to risk fortune or credit on the issue as between the king and the Prince of Orange. The king's condition was desperate, and called for extraordinary remedies; there was no alternative between exaction and abdication, and he overstepped the limitations of trade for the higher law of preservation. He doubled his subsidy by proclamation; established a bank restriction act by the same authority; issued a million and a half of copper coin, and gave it a nominal value. These measures were declared arbitrary, but they were also measures of the direst necessity; he pledged himself to revoke them when the necessity had passed, and also to redeem the coin issued in sterling money. The traders demurred, raised the price of provisions, and rendered the coin almost worthless; the king established a scale of prices, and threatened penalties on those who exacted more. Such was the offence, and such the demand for this "arbitrary assumption." The king in his extremity, the country in the throes of a revolution, the brave men pouring out their life-blood on the battle-field, were as nothing in comparison to the claims of a self-constituted monopoly.
In criticising those "arbitrary assumptions" of the king, we should bear in mind that free trade was then no established principle of either English or Irish legislation; that the corn laws of England, which are somewhat of a kindred character, have been repealed after years of angry agitation, and within a very recent period; that the people, whose rights were of paramount consideration, gave their unqualified approval to those measures; and, even allowing them to have been arbitrary, he could be no patriot who would put the claims of trade in opposition to the liberty of the nation. In one measure alone—his interference with the Dublin University—does the king seem to have acted both unwisely and arbitrarily; and of this, the following extract from Taylor's history will afford a sufficient exposition:—"The first step taken by King James in his war on the Dublin University, proved that he gave that body more credit for common sense than it merited. He nominated a Roman Catholic to be professor of the Irish language, and was afterwards astounded to hear that no such professorship existed in that venerable institution. Doctor Leland rates James very severely for having committed such a blunder, but, truly, the blunder belongs not to him alone. He could scarcely have credited the existence of such a practical jest as an institution whose professed design was to instruct the Irish in the doctrines of the reformed religion, which yet left the teachers wholly ignorant of the language of those whom they had to instruct. Compared with this, the folly of Goldsmith's attempting to teach English in Holland, without first having learned Dutch, sinks into insignificance."17 The point is well taken, and the oversight of the primary duty of the founders is, no doubt, of a piece with many others that might be noted; but candor compels the acknowledgment, that neither the king nor the Catholic people should be first to rectify a mistake which left the college so harmless in pressing the object of its establishment.
The heads of the institution, alarmed at this interference of the king, endeavored to convert the property of the college into ready money. Tyrconnell ordered the prosecution of the purchaser, and seized on the plate so disposed of. Litigation followed, and after some time the property was restored to the institution, on condition that it should not again be sold. The king next appointed a Catholic to a fellowship of the college, and its authorities demurred; but before the matter was pressed to an issue the candidate's incapacity was discovered, and the affair terminated for the time. Such were the encroachments of the king on that venerable institution, antecedent to the invasion; but now that he had become king regnant in Ireland, he pressed those innovations with more rigor and less cause. He abolished its original charter, expelled the provost for contumacy, and is even accused of a design to convert the college into a Jesuit seminary. This was all inexcusable; the more so, that it was inconsistent with his avowed principles, that it awakened the reasonable apprehensions of the loyal Protestant people, and, above all, that it consumed the time and attention which should have been devoted to the great and pressing demands of the country.
By this unnecessary and ill-timed delay, the military affairs of the nation were allowed to languish; the army, dependent on tardy and forced supplies, had partaken of the general apathy; and were it not for the indefatigable efforts of Tyrconnell, scarcely the semblance of an army could have been maintained to the end of this memorable session. But while the king was engaged in angry discussion with his turbulent Parliament, Tyrconnell was engaged in the organization of the forces. He had already sent 2,500 troops to the army before Derry, had in course of training 9,000 more awaiting arms and equipments from France, and a well-appointed force ready, under Lord Mountcashel, to undertake the reduction of Enniskillen.
THE BATTLE OF NEWTOWNBUTLER, AND THE RELIEF OF ENNISKILLEN AND DERRY.
The time elapsed since the withdrawal of Galmoy from Enniskillen, on the 24th of March, had not been barren of stirring events; but events of a predatory character, and so differently colored, by the historians of each side, as to leave the mind in a state of uncertainty from the constant succession of almost similar events. This, however, appears distinct enough: that Galmoy, with a small body of troops, continued to check the excursions of the Enniskilleners, and, as the siege of Derry progressed, kept the country open for the passage of the king's trains to and from the metropolis; while, on the other hand, the Enniskilleners, emboldened by his occasional disappearance from their vicinity, renewed their raids under Wolseley, Hamilton, and Blaney, spreading terror wherever they appeared, and supplying their stronghold with the necessary booty of cattle and provender. As their position grew stronger, and their numbers increased, those raids became more frequent and extended, and by the beginning of June were such as to claim immediate and energetic measures for their suppression.
It was therefore resolved that Lord Mountcashel should proceed against Enniskillen from the direction of Dublin, while Berwick and Brigadier Southerland were to approach it from the north and west, and place their commands at his disposal. For this purpose, Berwick was ordered from Derry on the 21st of June. He was to march through Donegal, chastise the outlying insurgents there, and establish his headquarters at Trellick; while Brigadier Southerland, who lay towards Sligo, and under whom Colonel Sarsfield commanded a division of horse, was to move round to Belturbet, and, in his way, scour the country along the south-western side of Lough-Erne. Both were then to drive the enemy within their defences and await the arrival of Mountcashel, who was to proceed from Dublin, through Monaghan and Cavan, when all were to co-operate in a simultaneous movement for the reduction of this rebel stronghold.
On receipt of these orders, Sarsfield, at the head of three troops of horse, one of dragoons, and three battalions of foot,—a force of about five hundred men,—cleared the country along the south-east of the lake, and arrived at Belturbet on the 10th of June. Here he received an order from de Rosen to march forthwith to Omagh, about twenty-five miles north-west of Enniskillen, to protect the Irish besieging army at Derry against rebel attacks from that quarter, and proceeded at once to execute his commission. Southerland, with the remainder of his command—about 1,200 men—advanced through the south of Leitrim, and doubling Lough Oughter, reached the vicinity of Belturbet on the 16th of June. Here he found that Sarsfield had departed for Omagh, and that he was left to cope alone with the united commands of Hamilton, Wolseley, and Lord Blaney. On the 18th, he was informed by one of his spies that the enemy, 15,000 strong, knowing his condition, were about to seize a narrow pass, through which he had advanced, and to attack him in front and rear, with the intention of capturing or annihilating his force before the arrival of Mountcashel.18
On receipt of this information, Southerland, leaving Lieutenant-Colonel Scott and two hundred and eighty men in the churchyard of Belturbet to check the pursuit, withdrew in the night, and, by a skilful movement, brought his command in safety to Sligo. The Enniskilleners, baffled in their design, then turned their whole force against Scott, who, after a stubborn contest of two hours, was compelled to surrender: and all the supplies of the garrison, eighty dragoon-horses, seven hundred muskets, and a considerable quantity of gunpowder, fell into the hands of the enemy.
Berwick left Derry on the 21st, and, at the head of his four hundred dragoons, marched rapidly to the town of Donegal, where three hundred of the enemy from Ballyshannon were forming magazines. He approached their position in the night; attacked them at daybreak; killed many, forced the rest to the shelter of the castle; burned the magazines; and marched off with a booty of 1,500 cattle. Being shortly after joined by two regiments of horse and four battalions of foot,19 which swelled his command to 1,200 men, he advanced, and on the 6th of July formed an encampment at Trellick, about nine miles north-east of Enniskillen.
On the 13th, he advanced with a party to reconnoitre the country and the fortifications of the town, when he was ambushed by a force of two hundred foot and one hundred horse, and attacked with great vigor. But notwithstanding the suddenness of the onset, he turned on them; killed all but six of the infantry; drove the horse within their intrenchments, and returned with a captain, a lieutenant, two pair of colors, and the arms of the slain.
Shortly after this he was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general, and the king ordered that he should have troops and artillery to press the object of the expedition. But de Rosen, whose mission to Ireland seems to have been to disconcert every movement that promised success, again ordered him to Derry, and he abandoned the expedition against Enniskillen with that reluctance which he indicated in after years by the following remark: "It is true, we had few, if any, cannonballs, and scarce any ammunition; but yet, as the Fort of Enniskillen was only a mud fort, we might have carried it; besides, the town being entirely unfortified, we should have got possession of it, and by that means have obliged the fort to surrender." But then it was de Rosen's to command, and Berwick's to obey.
The recall of Berwick left the Enniskilleners again free to renew their excursions and strengthen their fortifications, and they availed themselves abundantly of this temporary advantage. Their forces daily augmented, and they grew more exacting on the country as they increased in power. The garrison of Sligo kept them in check on the western side of the lake, but from Ballyshannon round to Belturbet, a circuit of fifteen miles, all had to quit their homes or yield to their exactions. Their military power towards the end of July was formidable; and, taking the forces of Lord Blaney, Captain Francis Hamilton, Wolseley, and Colonel Creighton (the commandant) into account, must have come up to Southerland's estimate of 15,000 men. Stationed at strong positions around the shores of the Lough; having large depots at Ballyshannon, Enniskillen, and Crom Castle, and acquainted with all the intricacies of the lake and its confluents, they should have been able to cope with an army of twice their number. In addition to this, they had lately received from England ten pieces of cannon, with ball and match to suit; fifty barrels of gunpowder; a large supply of dragoon firelocks and muskets; a corps of engineers and gunners; experienced officers, with commissions to raise new regiments of horse and foot; and eight hundred veterans of Kirke's command, under Colonel Berry.
To drive this force from their network of fortifications, and lay siege to Enniskillen, Mountcashel arrived with about 3,600 men and seven pieces of artillery at Belturbet on the 27th of July.
The town had been abandoned, on his approach, and on the 28th he advanced and invested Crom Castle, on the eastern side. By the 30th he had carried the outer works, and driven the enemy within the walls, though not without considerable loss, and at once opened a cannonade upon the castle. While here, he received word that Colonel Berry was advancing on him by way of Lisnaskea, with eight hundred regulars, followed by the united forces of Wolseley and Hamilton. Without discontinuing the operations against the fort, he withdrew a part of his command about two miles to the eastward, and took post at Newtownbutler. Learning that the enemy's forces had all united, and were too powerful to meet in the open country, he sent Colonel Anthony Hamilton, with O'Brien's regiment of dragoons, to hold them in check, while he himself prepared for a retrograde movement to Belturbet. The troops of Hamilton were drawn into an ambush by Berry, near Lisnaskea; their commander was wounded, his next in command killed, and in a retreat which was ordered, two hundred and thirty were slain or taken prisoners. Mountcashel, on hearing of this disaster, advanced with his own regiment of horse; arrested the retreat and repulsed Berry; but seeing Wolseley, with a force of 8,000 men, close in Berry's rear, he took up his retreat to Belturbet. Berry and Wolseley moved forward rapidly; Mountcashel closely pressed, and considering resistance safer than flight, at last drew up his men about a mile to the south of Newtownbutler, and hastily formed in line of battle.
The action which ensued was disastrous to the Irish army. Opposed by more than double their number, and attacked in front and flank, they fought with great bravery, and the battle might have resulted in their favor, but an unfortunate blunder, in carrying out the general's orders, disarranged their lines, created a panic among the soldiers, and a total rout was the consequence. The lake and its tributaries cut them off from escape in any direction, and, being completely hemmed in, they were slaughtered without mercy. Their loss is estimated to be over 2,000 men, of whom 400 only were killed in the battle, the rest being massacred through the night, to the cry of "No popery!" or drowned in the lake into which they had thrown themselves in the vain hope of escaping the general carnage. Mountcashel himself was wounded and taken prisoner, but was saved from death by a captain named Cooper, to whom he had previously rendered a similar service. Sir Stephen Martin and Lord Abercorn, and many officers of distinction, were killed. All that escaped of this unfortunate command fled towards Belturbet, and, after the capture of their general, the expedition was abandoned.
Affairs at Derry were now approaching a crisis. The siege had been pressed with vigor under every disadvantage: minority of force, inadequate artillery, and a season almost unprecedented for heavy rains, which kept the trenches continually filled with water from the beginning to the end of the siege. The besieged, reduced to the last extremity, had become almost passive in their resistance, and were frequently on the point of surrendering, when the appearance of an English fleet would again raise their spirits for a time, but to cause a still greater depression when it had to withdraw without being able to afford relief. Every successive disappointment renewed the murmurs of the people, and cooled the ardor of the soldiers. Several times through the summer they had received fresh supplies of powder and ball; but of provisions, which were as easily smuggled in, they had received little or none.
De Rosen, exasperated by delay, collected the fugitive population of the district, and placing them between the town and his men, gave orders to drive them in on the besieged. The Irish soldiers, though suffering great privations, and eager for the surrender, refused to obey the order, and threatened a mutiny if compelled to enforce it. De Rosen continued unmoved, but Hamilton and the other leaders communicated the circumstance to the king, and received a positive order that the multitude should be allowed to depart unmolested to their homes. The garrison, taking advantage of this circumstance, sent away the most helpless of the citizens, and took in a reinforcement of the young and active in their place, so that de Rosen's cruelty ultimately tended to their advantage.
Yet, notwithstanding the advantage thus gained by the besieged, their suffering had become unendurable, and despair had settled on all, when, towards the middle of July, Kirke again entered Lough Foyle, and displayed his fleet to the wistful eyes of the starving inhabitants, and was again obliged to retire without accomplishing his object. This was the turning-point of the siege. The long-hoped for relief again disappeared; the authorities of Derry determined on a surrender, and demanded a cessation to regulate its provisions. But Kirke managed to convey a note to the governor, concealed in a twisted rope, which he tied round the waist of a country lad, and this note—which may be found in Walker's account of the siege,—apprised him of a plan which he had set on foot to relieve the garrison.
Baffled in his efforts to succor the town from the side of Lough Foyle, Kirke divided his fleet and with one part of it doubled Malin Head, sailed up Lough Swilly, and established a garrison of 800 men near Rathmelton, a few miles west of Derry. The place was well selected for his purpose; which was to attract the attention of the besiegers, and cause them to withdraw some of their forces from the side of the Foyle. This movement was observed by de Rosen, who, instead of drawing his forces from the water-side, ordered Berwick from Enniskillen to check the movements of Kirke, and dislodge him, if possible, without weakening the forces stationed at the obstructions in the river; and Berwick, as already indicated, abandoned Enniskillen, and arrived at Rathmelton, with a force of 1,200 horse, about the 22d of July.
The position occupied by Kirke was one of great natural strength. The inlets of the Lough indented the country in all directions, and extended up to within three or four miles of Derry, presenting almost insuperable difficulties to an attacking force; and, on one of its peninsular mazes, he was found strongly intrenched under the protection of his frigates. Berwick spent a whole day in trying to dislodge him, but without effect, when he retired to an adjacent height, and contented himself with watching his movements, and confining him to his intrenchments.
But Kirke succeeded in his object. Notwithstanding the vigilance of Berwick, he threw both men and munitions into Enniskillen; partially relieved Derry; and conjuring the governor to hold out yet a little longer, sailed out of Lough Swilly, and joined the fleet at the Foyle, while Berwick united his command to the force of the besiegers.
On the 28th of July, the English fleet again appeared in Lough Foyle, and bore up steadily towards the obstructions above Culmore Fort, near the mouth of the river. It consisted of twenty ships of war, 300 transports laden with provisions and military stores, and 6,000 veteran troops under the command of General Kirke.20 The result may be anticipated. The blockading army, not having cannon of sufficient calibre to sink the approaching vessels, the boom across the river was broken. Derry was partially relieved on that day, and, on the 30th, all attempts of the besiegers to thwart their movements had become futile. The whole fleet rode up the river, and succored the beleaguered town, and the Irish army, after a few days more, raised the siege, and retired towards Dublin, on which Marshal Schomberg was reported to be projecting a descent. On their way they were joined by the remnant of Mountcashel's command; nor was the news that preceded them in Dublin of a more cheering character. Since the siege had commenced, the famous battle of Killicrankie had been fought and won. There, on the 26th of May, Dundee, at the head of 2,000 Irish, and about the same number of Highlanders, defeated General Mackay's army of 8,000 veterans. But with this victory expired the hopes of the Jacobite cause in Scotland. Dundee received a mortal wound in the moment of victory; the Highlanders, dispirited by his death, dispersed after a few unimportant skirmishes, and what was left of the Irish contingent returned to their own country.
So ended the siege of Derry, an affair of little military note, but of great political and religious import. Though its gates were closed against the king's troops on the 7th of December, free access to it from the sea was not obstructed until the surrender of Culmore, on the 21st of April. It had made ample preparation for a siege, and, notwithstanding the blockade, had received 480 barrels of gunpowder, and stores of provisions and clothing, from that time until the end of June. It had not been closely invested until the latter part of May; and, unless from the two light field-pieces of General Wauchop, on the water-side, there was no cannonade whatever before the 21st of June, when Berwick withdrew to Enniskillen. The defenders, during the heat of the siege, had other advantages not generally accorded to an enemy. They were allowed to send away ten thousand of the sick and indigent inhabitants, and, during the armistice that ensued, had managed to admit an equal number "of the young and active." They had thirty siege-guns on their walls, 10,000 "regimented men," and a population, stated at twenty thousand, to supply the casualties of war.
The investing force was 5,000 men, four siege-guns, two mortars, and two field-pieces. From this force 400 dragoons marched with the Duke of Berwick to Enniskillen, and during the siege they received but 2,500 additional troops, making the entire force 7,500 men. The weather was continually unfavorable to siege operations, and, excepting in the amount of rations, the besiegers endured far more suffering than the besieged. The bombardment continued at intervals from the 21st of June to the 28th of July; but during the last week there had been an almost entire cessation of hostilities, to admit of negotiations. On the estimate of the Reverend George Walker, who has left a journal of the siege, the ball and mortar, great and small, thrown into the town up to the 22d of July, was 587. After this there was but an occasional shot until the siege was raised. This fell short of fifteen shots a day, and about one every two hours, admitting them to have been fired in regular succession. During the siege the garrison had been reduced to 3,000 effective men, while the besiegers retired with 3,500—showing a loss to the defenders of 7,000, and to the assailants of 3,600.
The Duke of Berwick, who was present in all the skirmishing that took place up to the 21st of June, and who afterwards became a prominent character in the great wars of the continent, had certainly no inducement to magnify this episode in his life, by underrating the Jacobite forces; nor is it to be credited that the Reverend George Walker has given an overestimate of the besieged. Whatever were the privations of the non-combatants,—and they must have been great—it does not appear from his journal that the defenders were, for any considerable time, on an allowance much below that of soldiers in ordinary warfare. We find that in two or three instances they were obliged to resort to the boiling of salt hides for a substitute; and to eating "dogs and cats, etc.," now considered a luxury, though thrown in by Williamite writers to shadow a picture dark enough from any perspective.
But if the defenders did not display as great intrepidity as the besiegers, they showed qualities which, in their position, would be considered by many as more important:—wonderful fortitude and great endurance—and their service to England can scarcely be overestimated. They forced this war for religious ascendency; they maintained this stronghold until the landing of Schomberg, which turned the tide of fortune; but in all that transpired before the walls, the Jacobite army exhibited greater courage, and far greater valor and intrepidity. If, then, it should be asked why they were able to withstand, so long, the greater valor claimed for their enemies, the answer is plain:—Stone walls, abundant means, and great numerical odds. If it be true,—and it is so asserted,—that in a moment of desperation they threw open their gates and invited the enemy to enter, and it should be asked, why they were not accommodated?—it should be remembered that there is a wide difference between rashness and valor. But that they were driven from the open country, by a much inferior force, and twice brought to terms, unwisely rejected by an over-punctilious king, are also as certain as the records of the time are reliable. But, when it is asked, why men and appliances sufficient were not brought to bear on them in time; the answer is harrowing, but nevertheless true:—an impoverished country, a ruined exchequer, and the consequent dependence on the bounty of the French king.
THE LANDING OF MARSHAL SCHOMBERG, AND HIS WINTER CAMPAIGN.
Hitherto, the success of the Jacobite cause in Ireland and Scotland, had rendered the tenure of the English throne by the Prince of Orange a matter of uncertainty both to himself and his English adherents. The state of public feeling in the capital had rendered the presence of his foreign mercenaries continually necessary to his person; and he knew that should James succeed in repressing the rebellion in the other two kingdoms, his restoration to the third would follow as an inevitable consequence. He had already, with the English people, lost all that popularity which immediately succeeded his invasion. By turning the Convention into a Parliament, in order to avoid a popular election, he outraged the first principle of the British Charter, and the people soon learned that his pledges to maintain their liberty and religion were only affected for the time, to establish his own dominion over them. The Conventionists, too, so long subservient to his wishes, had, since erected into a Parliament, inveighed against the Dutch influence in the kingdom, and he, more than once, had threatened to abdicate and leave them to the mercy of their outraged king. This threat never failed of its desired effect on the leaders of the Opposition in Parliament; but the popular discontent had to be suppressed by the strong hand; and the British soldiers who showed any sign of disaffection, were sent to serve as his Dutch contingent to the League, while the followers of Schomberg and Ginckle lived at will in England.
But now that the relief of Derry and Enniskillen put a better face on affairs in Ireland; and the death of Dundee freed him from farther apprehension for the safety of Scotland, he resolved to relieve the English people of the presence of his foreign mercenaries, by employing them in the reduction of the only kingdom that preferred allegiance to King James. He accordingly apprised the Parliament of his intention. The proposition was favorably received, and large subsidies being granted for that purpose, an army consisting of eighteen regiments of foot, and six regiments of horse—about 20,000 men,—was soon organized from among the military adventurers that the higher pay given in England at that time had drawn thither from the Continent. A fleet was soon ready to transport this army to Ireland, and the whole was placed under the command of Marshal, the Duke of Schomberg, and Count Solmes, to make a descent on the eastern coast of Ireland, and, after establishing communications with the rebels, to proceed to the reduction of Dublin. On the 12th of August this fleet appeared off the coast of Down, and, sailing into Belfast Lough, effected a landing at Bangor Bay, between Belfast and Carrickfergus. The next day Schomberg took possession of Belfast, and after strengthening its defences, and giving his troops some rest, he appeared before the Castle of Carrickfergus and summoned it to surrender. The garrison was under the command of Colonel McCarthy-More, and consisted of his own regiment and that of Colonel Cormac O'Neil,—about eight hundred men,—poorly supplied, and greatly embarrassed by the population of the town, who had taken refuge within its walls. Schomberg immediately opened upon it from his ships and land batteries, keeping up a fierce cannonade day and night during the entire period of the siege. The garrison made a stubborn resistance, and visited the besiegers with severe loss, which elicited the praise of Schomberg, and excited a spirit of vengeance among his followers. The walls being breached after the second day, the besieged had resort to a singular stratagem. The cattle within the walls were slaughtered, hauled up and thrown into the breach, and earth and stones being heaped over them, the place was soon as tenable as ever; their balls being spent, they tore the lead from the roof of the castle, and converted it into bullets; and at last, their powder being exhausted, and no succor arriving from the Irish army; after a siege of eight days, they surrendered on terms considered highly honorable. But these conditions were flagrantly violated after the evacuation; the prisoners, whom the English Annalist calls "brave fellows, but poorly clad," were subjected to treatment which darkens the history of the time; crimes too abominable for recital, were perpetrated by the foreign mercenaries on the defenceless inhabitants of the town: and Schomberg, who tried to check their excesses, only succeeded in rendering himself so unpopular as to affect unfavorably the result of the ensuing campaign.... Judging of this army of mercenaries on the authority of the historian, Taylor, they must, indeed, have been a godless host. "They were," says he,21 "the outcasts of all society, familiar with every crime, abandoned to every excess. Vices for which language scarcely ventures to find a name; abominations that may not be described, and can scarcely be imagined, were constantly practised by these bandits.... The traditions of the Irish Protestants and Catholics contain a horrid catalogue of the enormities practised by this 'black banditti;' and these accounts are fully confirmed by the narratives which the contemporary writers have given of their conduct in other countries. With these were joined some raw English levies, who found it much easier to imitate the debaucheries than to practise the discipline of the foreigners. Indeed, no worse scourge could be sent by an angry Providence than the army which now proceeded against Ireland."
Having repaired the Castle of Carrickfergus, and left English garrisons there and in Belfast, Schomberg drew out his army into the open country, and spent some time in organizing the Enniskilleners, who now flocked to his standard. Nor does it appear that they who now joined him were of a character to check the evil propensities of his foreigners. In allusion to them, the authority just quoted, gives the following not very flattering picture:
The soldiers of Schomberg were perfectly astounded by the appearance of the men whose fame had been so loudly trumpeted in England.... Every man was armed and equipped after his own fashion, and each was attended by a mounted servant bearing his baggage.... Descended from the Levellers and Covenanters, they preserved all the gloomy fanaticism of their fathers, and believed the slaughtering of Papists an act of religious duty. They were robbers and murderers on principle, for they believed themselves commissioned to remove idolatry from the land.... Reeking from the field of battle, they assembled round their preachers, who always accompanied them in their expeditions, and listened with eager delight to their wild effusions, in which the magnificent Orientalisms of the Old Testament were strangely combined with their gross and vulgar sentiments.... William himself despised them most heartily, and subjected them to military execution by the dozen for violating the laws of war. From the moment they joined the regular army, they performed no exploit worthy of their former fame, simply because they could not learn a new mode of fighting. They were aware of this themselves, and frequently declared, with truth, that they could do no good while acting under orders.22
Such was the army; discordant in language, in habit—in fine, in every thing but its love of plunder and confiscation, with which Schomberg now undertook the conquest of the country and the eradication of the Catholic faith; and had he moved directly on the capital without delay, there is hardly a doubt that he could have established his winter-quarters in it, for there was then no army on his front capable of offering any protracted opposition. Behind him, and to his right, lay the northern province, lately relieved from the presence of the Jacobite army; with no garrison but Charlemont, on the Blackwater, to concern his movements, and that, in the presence of the Enniskilleners, and in the midst of a population friendly to his cause, might have been safely disregarded. Far off towards its western confines lay a few detached encampments of the Irish, too remote to offer any timely opposition, while the garrison of Belturbet was so straitened and reduced by the late reverse at Newtownbutler, as to be scarcely able to maintain its position against the outlying insurgents of Fermanagh. At this moment he might have safely chosen at once, either to march westward across the whole breadth of the island, or direct upon the capital, without meeting a force capable of disputing his progress. But on his front lay Newry, and there, report said that a large army was encamped under the Count de Rosen and Hamilton, though, in truth, no body of any consequence had as yet left the capital, and these generals were then at Drogheda, engaged in the work of mobilizing and disciplining their raw levies. After spending several days, undecided whether to advance direct against it, or turn northward and undertake the siege of Charlemont, he at last adopted a middle course, which was to detach a force against that stronghold, while with the bulk of his army he felt his way cautiously towards Dublin. Proceeding slowly along the coast for several days, within easy communication of his fleet, he at last turned his steps towards Newry, to try the countenance of the enemy. The time lost by this indecision enabled the Duke of Berwick to anticipate him there, and with a force of 1,000 foot and 600 horse dragoons, hastily mustered, he stood prepared to oppose him. Knowing the futility of giving battle with such a small body of men to an army like that led by Schomberg, flushed with its recent success, he endeavored to effect by stratagem that which he could not by force. So, raising intrenchments at Newry, and causing a report to be spread through the enemy's ranks that he was marching forward to give him battle, the movements of the latter became more slow and cautious as he advanced. The country between the two armies was studded with hills favorable for deception, and on these Berwick posted videttes, within sight of the enemy, and took up a central position himself, making as bold a front as possible. Schomberg, on observing this, believed that the whole Irish army was drawn up to dispute his advance, and, halting his army, he encamped at the distance of two miles, and went at the head of fourteen squadrons to reconnoitre the position. Berwick in the centre, with only two troops of horse, caused his videttes to withdraw gradually, and ordered a flourish of trumpets, as if about to charge, when Schomberg hesitated, halted, and finally retired to his camp. He was followed at a safe distance by Berwick, and, the night soon closing, he spent it in hasty preparation; he strengthened his position, delivered ammunition to his troops, and resolved to attack in force the following morning. The morning came, every thing was in requisition for the great issue of arms, but no army appeared on his front, for Berwick had retired during the night, and marched to Drogheda to join the Duke of Tyrconnell, who had assembled an army there, and where the king had arrived to conduct the campaign in person.
The army now assembled at Drogheda, under the command of the king, consisted of about 20,000 men, not more than half of whom were the veterans of the last year, the rest being raw levies, indifferently clad, and armed with such weapons as could be hastily improvised for the occasion; with a park of artillery, generally estimated at twelve light field-pieces. Here a council of war was held, in which the king was earnestly besought to abandon the capital and fall back towards the centre of the island; but, after much deliberation, he determined to offer battle, and advanced to Dundalk, where Schomberg lay intrenched with an army greatly augmented by accessions from Derry and Enniskillen, and vastly superior in every thing that could render an army effective.
It is hard to account for the indecision of Schomberg at this period; for several days the Irish army hovered in his vicinity, but no challenge could induce him to quit his intrenchments. His well-known gallantry made this the more remarkable, and his continual persistence in declining an engagement, daily offered, led de Rosen to believe that "he wanted something," and to urge the king to assail him in his encampment. But this proposition was declined by the latter, on the ground that, as "he wanted something," winter would do the work of war on his army of foreigners without hazarding a battle, and leave him completely powerless to continue his campaign in the ensuing season. Elated with the belief that Schomberg was afraid to meet him in the field, after issuing a manifesto offering rewards to such as would desert to his standard, he took leave of his army and returned to the capital. The army soon retired to winter-quarters at Drogheda, and Schomberg, after an inglorious campaign of four months, spent in advancing about thirty miles, withdrew from Dundalk, and encamped in the low country to the north of it, where he passed the remainder of the winter. Here a loathsome disease attacked his troops. Thousands of them fell victims to it, and the whole army became so enfeebled, that the living were scarcely able to bury the dead. Others, principally of the French troops, under the inducement held out by King James, deserted to the Irish army, though many were retaken and executed: until disease, demoralization, and desertion had actually reduced his army to four or five thousand men at all capable of service. Cognizant of this, the Irish generals again appealed to the king, to attack him while in this condition, and rid the country effectually of his presence; but with his characteristic dogmatism, he still persevered in a policy that seemed to work so well, lost an opportunity which seems to have been offered by Providence for the success of his cause, and hugged his illusion till too late. De Rosen and d'Avaux were soon after recalled to France; the Irish generals had become disgusted with their leadership; the army felt relieved by the event, and higher hopes were felt for the campaign of 1690.
SCHOMBERG'S CAMPAIGN CONTINUED—THE ARRIVAL OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.
The winter, and the advantages it offered to the Irish army, passed away, and the Duke of Schomberg, who, for several months, could have offered but an ineffectual opposition, was, through the vacillating policy of the king, and the factious opposition of the Lords, spiritual and temporal, in his Parliament, allowed to take the initiative in the renewal of hostilities. While he pressed the siege of Charlemont with renewed vigor, he dispatched 3,300 English and Enniskilleners, under the command of Brigadier Wolseley, to seize on Belturbet and Cavan, which were occupied through the winter by a small force under General Wauchop, and to the relief of these positions, which were considered of much importance, the Duke of Berwick was ordered with a force of 1,500 foot and 200 horse. Belturbet had been the scene of many bitter conflicts since the commencement of the rebellion, and had been taken and retaken by the troops of each army in turn, as the tide of war fluctuated. Situated in the midst of a fertile district, it was of much advantage in the way of supply. By its possession, through the previous year, the Irish had been enabled to hold the Enniskilleners in check even after the disaster of Newtownbutler; and it was still hoped that, by holding it, they could confine them to the more northern counties, and prevent their concentration round the Duke of Schomberg, or divert his attention from the capital.
Berwick, on receipt of the order, proceeded by rapid marches, and arrived at Cavan, which is about five miles from Belturbet, late in the evening, whence he sent orders to General Wauchop to throw out pickets in the direction of the enemy, and notify him of their earliest appearance. Owing to the heavy rains that had fallen through the night, this order was either totally neglected, or but carelessly observed; and early in the morning, while Berwick took up his march from Cavan, Wolseley approached as rapidly from the direction of Monaghan; each with the intention of occupying a mud fort which commanded the town. Both forces, each unapprised of the design of the other, met in the intrenchments, and a fierce conflict followed. Wolseley was driven from the fort and through the adjoining coppice in great confusion, but Colonel MacGeoghaghen being killed, and General Nugent and several officers wounded, their troops became panic-stricken, "and, in a moment," says Berwick, "from being conquerors, we became conquered." Wolseley lost 300 men, and Berwick 500; the fort was evacuated as a consequence; the Irish fell back to Cavan, which they shortly after abandoned; and Schomberg, being relieved of further apprehension from that direction, and being strengthened by his native auxiliaries, turned his undivided attention to the siege of Charlemont.
Believing that the fall of Belturbet, and the isolation of his position, must have dampened the ardor of Colonel O'Regan, the commandant of the Castle of Charlemont, Schomberg offered him honorable conditions in case he agreed to surrender the fort, but he found the spirit of this indomitable old chieftain as hopeful and defiant as ever. Since the arrival of Schomberg, he had succeeded in baffling all efforts to reduce the place; and, though now surrounded, and cut off on all sides from hope of succor, he thanked the duke for his offer, but replied that he would never surrender "his castle," and was determined to hold it for his king, or die in its ruins. He was, however, placed in a very embarrassing situation. Within the last few days a body of five hundred soldiers, bearing a scanty supply of ammunition and provisions, had forced their way into the garrison, and, having thus partially relieved it, were ordered unceremoniously to fight their way out again, but, in making the attempt, were driven back under the guns of the fort. The governor refused them admittance. He said that he was ordered to defend the place, and would do it, and looked on them as much his enemies as the troops of Schomberg. They were, therefore, placed on the counterscarp of the fort, where they were exposed to the fire of the enemy, and many of them were actually killed during the bombardment that followed. But, though in appearance, and in many of his characteristics, he affected the ogre, his heart relented; and, while he could bear to see them shot from the walls, he could not see them die of starvation, and so doled out his scanty provisions until they were consumed, and the garrison was reduced to all the horrors of a famine-siege. Every means of supporting life was now resorted to, and every effort for the reduction of the fort was in vain, until on the 14th of May, when, literally starved out, after a siege of nine, months from the landing of Schomberg, he capitulated, and marched out with what remained of his famished garrison. The terms granted him by Schomberg, who was impatient of delay, were highly honorable: the garrison was allowed to retire with arms and baggage, and the king, who neglected to succor him during this protracted siege, raised him to the order of knighthood, and he was henceforth known as Sir Teague O'Regan, and intrusted with the defence of Sligo, which he held until the last tocsin summoned him to Limerick.
This was the only event worthy of the military fame of Schomberg since his arrival in the kingdom. From the first to the last, the Castle of Charlemont and its commandant were as thorns in the side of this unfortunate soldier of fortune. It would seem as if the old chief had him under a spell; for once he set eyes on him and his stronghold, they were in his thoughts day and night, and he would not depart until the place was rendered to his arms. Yet, 'tis said that he had an immense liking for that quaint old soldier, and was even sorry when he saw him depart from his seemingly enchanted castle. A soldier himself, and an accomplished one, he could appreciate soldierly qualities even in an enemy; and O'Regan, notwithstanding his grotesque appearance and eccentric habits, was a rare military genius. Of this siege it may be said, that, unless in so far as that of Derry affected the final issue of the war, it loses in comparison with that of Charlemont, both in the duration of the contest, and in the spirit, hardihood, and valor of the besieged. Its fall may be said to have put an end to the Jacobite power in Ulster, and also to the military career of Schomberg. He frittered away his time in its reduction, when it might have been safely left in his rear; and the stubborn old chief that commanded it, after having diverted his purpose so long from the real object of his campaign, offered him his grateful acknowledgments, and laughed at his folly when departing. The delay occasioned by this event was a matter of vital importance to the Jacobite cause; for it had enabled King James to make more ample preparations for the opening campaign, and saved Dublin, which, up to that time, could have made but slight resistance, if any, to the veteran army of Schomberg.
Knowing, through his English agents, that the earliest possible attention of the Prince of Orange would be directed to his affairs in Ireland, King James was now making active preparations. While the levies lately made were undergoing that hasty discipline which the duty of the hour made obligatory, he sent Tyrconnell to the French court to solicit the assistance so long promised, and so unaccountably delayed. Men there were at his call for any purpose, and to any amount, but he lacked money, small-arms, artillery—in short, every thing that could render their service available. Through the exertions of Tyrconnell, a French contingent was immediately put in readiness, and, towards the end of April, a force of six thousand men, with a park of artillery, consisting of ten pieces, under the command of the Duc de Lausun, arrived in Ireland. But this was the extent of the French king's bounty, for the money, clothing, provisions and arms, on which James had calculated so long, and which alone could enable him to put the requisite number of troops into the field, were still withheld. Had the troops now sent been of the regular French army, and given in good faith, they would have been a great acquisition to King James. But the French king did not allow his generosity to outrun his discretion. He was then engaged in a war with the allies, which severely taxed the population of his own kingdom, and so the troops sent to Ireland were a heterogeneous body consisting of French Huguenots, Germans, and even English Protestants, taken prisoners on the Continent, and offered pardon on condition that they would serve under the standard of King James. It is said that at least one-third of de Lausun's force was so constituted, and of this, the number of desertions that took place while they remained in Ireland, and the unwilling service performed by the rest, would afford ample corroboration. Nor were the discordant elements of which this force was composed, nor its want of devotion to the Irish cause, nor the eccentricities of its general, the only drawbacks consequent on this accession. Ireland had been represented, as indeed it would seem to be, inexhaustible in men who wanted but arms and discipline to become excellent soldiers. Louis wanted men at the time, and, taking advantage of this information, stipulated for an equivalent to the force which he sent over with de Lausun. On the other hand, King James thought that he would engage the French king and nation more earnestly in his cause, by the introduction of French troops into Ireland, and, as a matter of course, the terms were accepted. All things considered, it did not seem an unwise act, and might even be an advantage to his cause, had he not been as poor a diplomatist as he had lately proved himself a statesman. Any number of armed men would have been better than the same number without arms; and 'tis said that it was optional with him to send his equivalent either in disciplined soldiers or in raw recruits. But his pride prevailed over his judgment; and, perhaps ashamed to make a poor display in the eyes of the French king and people, he resolved to send over Lord Mountcashel and his command in exchange. This general, who had escaped from Enniskillen in December, was now at the head of six thousand troops, designated by the annalists of the period as "the flower of the Irish army," and had all seen service in the events of the preceding years. They were accordingly marched to Cork, where, embarking on board the fleet of Chateaurenaud, which brought over the brigade of de Lausun, they bade adieu to their own country, and arrived in France early in May.
We therefore hear no more of Mountcashel in the last struggle for the liberty of his country; but his name was occasionally borne from another land, in whose service he fought and bled, like the gallant men so soon to follow. During the remaining year, he received an accession of four thousand troops to swell this force, which formed the nucleus of that "brigade," still the theme of the warrior and poet, but who have left no other memorial to Ireland than their wrongs, and their reckless valor in foreign lands. The year after his arrival in France, Mountcashel, while fighting against the allies in Savoy, received a wound from the effects of which he subsequently died at Barège, in the Hautes Pyrénées, and the highest military honors were decreed by the French king to his memory.
The Convention Parliament of England had been dissolved on the 6th of February, and a new one, more in the interest of William, had been convened in March. To this Parliament he signified his intention of taking the command of the forces in Ireland. The proposition was highly satisfactory, and a supply of ￡1,200,000 was granted him for that purpose; a presentation of ￡100,000 was also voted to Marshal, the Duke de Schomberg; and large supplies of provisions, clothing and military stores were soon got in requisition.
The report that de Lausun had landed in Ireland with a French army, tended to hasten these preparations, and to swell the proportions of the designed armament. Pending the prince's departure, large bodies of English troops were shipped to the garrisons of Ulster, and as Schomberg had expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of his English and Anglo-Irish troops in the field, a new army, consisting of foreign adventurers—Dutch Danes, Scandinavians, Swiss, and French Huguenots; some, no doubt, induced by religious fanaticism, but many by the higher pay in the English army, and the promise of subsequent plunder, flocked to his standard. On the 6th of June, William's grand park of artillery and ordnance stores arrived at Carrickfergus, and on the 14th he himself, accompanied by Prince George of Denmark, the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt, the Dukes of Ormond and Wortemberg, the Earls of Oxford, Portland and Scarborough, Generals Mackey and Douglas, and other notables, arrived and proceeded to Lisburn, where Schomberg had awaited his arrival since the fall of Charlemont.
No sooner was the news of William's arrival spread abroad, than the clergymen of the Established Church, and the Presbyters and dissenting clergy of all denominations, waited on him, proffering him their allegiance, and embarrassing him with fulsome addresses, indicative of all they had done and would do for the advancement of religion and the eradication of "popery."23 William, though impatient of delay, received them with grave respect, if not with cordiality. The gentlemen of the establishment were simply told that "he would take care of them," while large sums of money were distributed among the dissenting teachers of the northern province, indicating that, as they had already done more for the cause, more was expected under the government about to be established for their behest. The men of the establishment retired not over-pleased with their new master, and the Covenanters, thanking God that they had a country to sell, and a religion to trade in, also took their departure, and William addressed himself to the real object of his mission; for, as he expressed it, "he did not come into Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet." This was a significant hint to the Duke of Schomberg, that he had fallen under his displeasure through his tardy movements since he came to the country. It was so received by that old veteran, and an estrangement, never after reconciled, was the consequence. The days of Schomberg were nearly numbered; but, short as they were, they were embittered by the ingratitude of the prince in whose service he had spent the better part of an eventful life.
The available force of William in Ireland now numbered over sixty thousand effective men. There were none of these who had not seen active service, and by far the greater portion were veterans long inured to continental warfare. The "Thirty Years' War," which has left its impress on the nations of Europe, down to the present day, had sent afloat a swarm of military adventurers ready for any cause that could offer fame or reward; and to England they flocked as the best market for their services. From this force he selected an army of 38,000 or 40,000 men, and, placing the remainder in the garrisons of Ulster, he struck his tents and turned his steps towards the Irish capital.
If we except those bands of Rapparees that traversed the country at large, and levied on it in the name of the king, or for their own support, the Jacobite force, according to the highest estimate, was now but 30,000 men. And taking into consideration the long sweep of coast from Dublin round by the south and west to Galway, and the defences of the Shannon from Lanesborough to Limerick, there could not have been then in garrison less than 10,000. This would leave him an available force for active service of about 20,000, and of these 6,000 were French, the only well-appointed infantry in the service; and about 9,000 Irish infantry, indifferently armed with muskets and short pikes; but the cavalry were a superb body, long inured to service under Hamilton, Berwick, and Sarsfield, and numbered about 5,000 men. When with these is taken into consideration a train of twelve field-pieces, lately brought over from France by the Duke de Lausun, the reader will have a reliable estimate of the force which King James now assembled to dispute the possession of the country with the Prince of Orange.
On the 16th of June King James arrived at Castletown-Bellew, near Dundalk, where part of his army occupied an advanced position under the command of M. Girardin, a French officer; and thither also the rest of his forces soon repaired from their winter-quarters at Drogheda. Here, drawn up on the heights, behind a river, with their right resting towards Dundalk and the lowlands, where Schomberg had passed the preceding winter, stretching before them to the north, they awaited the appearance of the enemy.
From the 16th to the 22d William was at Newry and James at Dundalk, each awaiting the arrival of his artillery. While the main armies stood thus, almost in sight of each other, several skirmishes occurred between the pickets thrown forward on both sides, in one of which Colonel Dempsey, with two companies of his own regiment, encountered 200 foot and 60 horse of the enemy, only six of whom escaped; but the gallant colonel himself received a wound of which he died a few days after. This incident raised the spirit of the troops to a high pitch, and made them eager for a battle; and the king himself, much elated by the event, determined to abide the enemy in his present position. But the Irish leaders were not so favorably impressed, either with the condition of the troops, or the position which they occupied, and endeavored to dissuade the king from risking a battle under such disadvantages. They again urged him to abandon the capital, and to fall back on the defences of the Shannon, where, by instituting a desultory system of warfare, he could keep William in check until the winter set in, when, by the promised assistance from France, they could render his campaign as inglorious as that of Schomberg had been in the last. Every argument that could favor such a course was urged, and all the circumstances by which he was surrounded seemed to point it out as the best that could be adopted. A fleet was fitting out in France, of which his earnest friend, M. de Seignelay, would have command; a few days more would see it afloat, and on its way to destroy the fleet and transports of William around the coast of Ireland: it would also bring arms and ammunition in abundance, and by winter a powerful and well-disciplined army would be ready to take the field. These and many other arguments were urged, but all in vain. The king would not relinquish the capital without striking a blow for it; he became all at once as bold and intrepid as he had hitherto been weak and temporizing; rejected their remonstrance, and determined to risk all on a single battle.
This he tells in his memoirs, written several years later, and it is but just that his reasons for disagreeing, which are not wanting in plausibility, should be placed beside those of the generals. He held that the loss of the capital would end whatever prestige his name had with the French king; that it would entirely alienate the Protestants of Ireland; that it would throw the provinces of Leinster and Munster completely open to William, while he would be confined to one province, the smallest and poorest in the kingdom; and that his final defeat, though it might be protracted for a time, would be eventually certain. But, whatever were the merits of the different views, is now but speculation;—the king remained persistent.
On the 23d, William's artillery having arrived, he moved forward. The same day King James retired to Ardee, where he was met by his train, and drew up in a strong position in the direct route between William and the capital. William, still advancing, crossed the mountains between Newry and Dundalk, and, observing the situation of the Irish army, divided his own into two bodies for the purpose of flanking it, or forcing it into the plain, where his great numerical superiority would render victory certain. Seeing this, King James continued gradually to fall back; on the 29th, he crossed the Boyne, at Drogheda, and, drawing up his army on the heights of Donore, overlooking that river, he there awaited the enemy.
THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE.
The Boyne, which finds its head-waters near Carbery, in the County of Kildare, takes a meandering course towards the west and north, until it enters Meath, through which it flows in a north-easterly direction through Trim, Navan, Slane, and Drogheda, four miles below which it falls into the Irish Sea. At tide-water it is navigable to Navan, a distance of nineteen miles, for barges of fifty tons burden; but at low-water, from Navan to Slane, it is a shallow stream, brawling over a rocky bottom of a few yards in width; and from that to Old Bridge it is fordable by horse and foot at almost every rood of its length. Below Slane, its course is due east for nearly a mile, when, dipping abruptly towards the south, it takes a semicircular sweep of nearly three miles to Old Bridge, and the curve so formed embraces its memorable battle-ground. The northern bank, for nearly half a mile back, is high and firm down to the water's edge, while the opposite one is low and sedgy, and the ground behind it broken, back to the base of Donore, which is over a mile from its mid-current:—the chord of the arc indicated is nearly two miles, and the distance from Old Bridge to Slane, in a direct line, is somewhat under three.
On the evening of the 29th, when James crossed the river, the distance between his rear-guard and William's advance, was about eight miles, and on the morning of the 30th the latter appeared, and halted his army facing the concave bend of the river, behind a line of hills which partially concealed it from observation, while awaiting his artillery, which was still some miles in his rear.
With that promptitude which characterized all his movements since his arrival in the country, he immediately ordered an examination of the river from Old Bridge to Slane, and proceeded himself with a detachment of cavalry to reconnoitre the position of the royal army. While so engaged he was struck by a cannon-shot that grazed his shoulder and drew a little blood. This caused a report of his death to be spread throughout the camp, and created the greatest alarm among his followers; but, calling for a napkin, he stopped the blood, and, putting on another coat, passed through the ranks to restore the confidence of his soldiers, and then completed his reconnoissance.24 Towards noon he moved his army forward to the river, when, his cannon having arrived, he established his batteries along the heights, ordered a heavy cannonade to be kept up against the Irish centre, and, retiring within his lines, summoned his generals to receive his plan of action.
It was the intention of William at first to cross the river at Slane during the advanced hours of the night, and falling on James by surprise, to strike his left, and turn it from the road to Dublin. The Duke of Schomberg, with characteristic caution, would have opposed this proposition, on the ground that though James's army appeared small from the English line of sight, he might have large reserves behind Donore. But the duke was again rebuked by the prince, and notified to retire, which he did, deeply mortified, and received his orders afterwards in his tent, with the querulous remark, that "they were the first that had ever been sent him!" Bating this, the utmost harmony pervaded the council of William, and confidence reigned supreme throughout his camp.
But, notwithstanding the discourtesy shown by William to the Duke of Schomberg, the advice of that old veteran had its due weight in his council; the determination to assail the Irish left during the night was abandoned, and the following plan of action was adopted: Of the 40,000 men of which the prince's army now consisted, about 13,000, composed of the Dutch Guards, the Enniskillen infantry, and the Brandenburg and Huguenot regiments, under the command of Duke Schomberg and Caillemotte,25 formed his centre, opposite to the same division of the royal army. His right, 10,000 horse and foot, under Count Schomberg and General Douglas, respectively, was extended in the direction of Slane; and his left, about 12,000 strong, comprising the Dutch, Danish, and Enniskillen horse, and the British and Scotch infantry, was drawn up towards Old Bridge, and to be commanded by himself in person. His immense train of artillery, variously estimated at from fifty to sixty pieces, including several mortars, was portioned out to each division, the weight of it being placed against the Irish centre; and his reserves, about 5,000, were stationed in the low ground to his rear, within easy supporting distance of his right and left, and not more than a mile from either. The Count of Schomberg was to open the battle at daybreak by forcing the Pass of Slane, and turning the Irish left; when this should be accomplished, the duke was to cross at the centre, and, carrying the intrenchments opposite, press them back from the river; biding these results, the prince himself would cross at Old Bridge, and, flanking their right, cut off their retreat to Dublin. Thus, by a general movement, the royal army would be completely overthrown, and the war terminated by a single blow:—the chances of defeat had no place in his calculation.
As William had the advantage of ground—that is to say, the northern bank of the river was steep and firm down to its margin, while the southern side was low and broken—James had thrown his army well back towards the hill of Donore, and during the interval had made the following disposition: His centre, about 8,000 men of all arms, was arranged in two lines; one, comprising the musketeers and pikemen, under Major-General Dorrington and the Marquis de Hoquincourt, was placed in the intrenchments along the river, and the other, composed of the exempts, under General Nugent and Taafe, Earl of Carlingford, in the broken ground behind it. For the support of these the infantry regiments of Tyrconnell, Parker, and Gordon O'Neil, and the dragoons of Lords Clare and Dungan, were held between a small village and the hill of Donore, as the ground nearer to the river was low, and commanded by the enemy's artillery. His right wing, about 3,000 men, of whom but eight battalions were infantry, rested near the town of Old Bridge, opposed to William's left, under the command of Lieutenant-General Hamilton and the Duke of Berwick. His left, composed of the French troops under the Duke de Lausun and M. de la Hoquette, stood about a mile from his centre, in the direction of Slane; while that important Pass, which, he tells us in his Memoirs, he expected to be William's first point of assault, and which lay three miles from his centre, by the course of the river, was entirely neglected until late at night, when, at the urgent request of his generals, it was occupied by Sir Neale O'Neil and his regiment of dragoons. A strip of moor-land, extending from Old Bridge to the Pass of Slane, ran behind his right and centre, traversing the base of Donore round to the southeast; and behind this, but well drawn up against the hill, he held a reserve of nearly 3,000 infantry and cavalry, the former under Sir Charles Carney, and the latter under Sarsfield and Brigadier-General Maxwell.
How little soever conversant in military affairs, one cannot fail to see the almost insuperable disadvantages of the Jacobite army. Lying on the convex of the river, with an army scarce half the number of the opposing force; its supporting distance to the Pass of Slane treble to that of the enemy; the ground near the river unsuited to the action of cavalry, which was its main dependence; and its ordnance miserably inferior in number and calibre, it was barely possible to repulse the enemy, but almost impossible to turn a repulse into a victory. To an ordinary observation the chances of battle would thus present themselves: by intrepidity and superior valor, James might hold his ground until the return of tide, which would suspend it, or if the enemy succeeded in crossing without his ordnance, he might draw up all his force on the heights, and by one of those desperate and sudden efforts that man is sometimes capable of, hurl him back into the river. There was no other alternative between him and defeat; the vast numerical advantage of the Prince of Orange rendered the former improbable, and the lack of military ardor in the king himself was not calculated to evoke the latter.
With a will concentrated on the object of his mission, exultant in power, and personally brave and enterprising, William's plan was simple, bold, and aggressive. Weak in numbers, and straitened in resources, that of James was tortuous, cautious, and weakly defensive. Fortitude and military capacity he is said to have possessed, and they would seem not to have entirely deserted him on this occasion; but in that desperate daring which alone could wring success from the surrounding disadvantages, he was utterly deficient. His army was gallant, and even eager for the conflict, and a rival whose persistent malignity would have roused the meekest spirit, confronted him; but the blood did not course warmly in his veins at the devotion of the one, nor did vengeance steel him to action at the sight of the other. Trepidity was manifest in all his motions, and he had not even the self-control to hide it from his soldiers. The Pass of Duleek, in his rear, claimed more of his attention than the enemy on his front; for, while ordering the battle, he was devising a retreat, and had, in their sight, dispatched one-half his artillery in the evening for the defence of the capital. It therefore mattered very little how he disposed of the remainder—six pieces, on a line of four Irish miles.26
So stood the hosts on the night of June 30th, 1690, prepared to deliver battle on the dawn of the morrow; and, as darkness settled down and hid each from the view of the other, the feelings that swayed them may be easier felt than depicted. One feeling, that in such moments pervades every bosom alike, from the private to the king, must have been theirs in common—the hope to survive the carnage;—in all else their thoughts must have been as different as the causes they represented. The mercenary can have but one passion and one object—to slay and to dominate. The patriot has many, and all are sacred. The poetry of emotion is his, and over none does it exert a more boundless influence than over the race of which this king's army was mainly composed. The memories of the past, standing out like the immemorial hills; the voices of futurity coming up the long vista of time, and all pleading the reversal of a fate more cruel than Egyptian bondage: while clearer to the ear and nearer to the heart come the pleadings of kindred, and the anxious household lifting up their prayers to heaven for the devoted hearts that shield them from ruin, death—dishonor. All these speak to them, and a thousand fancies, taking the form of life, pass in solemn review, till the hardiest soldier, with moistened eye, and heart full to breaking, grasps his sword, compresses his lip, looks out for the dawning, and sighs for relief in conflict.
But did not the Irish of that day deceive themselves? This king, whose cause they had espoused, was not their king. His restoration would still leave their country an appanage of the British Crown, and his house was a name of woe and desolation throughout the land! Would her future, under it, be much brighter than her past? There was, no doubt, many a thoughtful mind in that Irish army that had all those misgivings; but this was not the time to indulge them. Nor should we of the present day be hypercritical. Royalty was then something more than a name, and we should not judge the events of the seventeenth century by the light of the nineteenth, nor the Ireland of untoward circumstances as the nation of her people's will. To the memory of this unhappy king this truth should be generously conceded.... He could have retained his throne had he violated his conscience. He could have ruled the Irish people as his predecessors had done, and at that time they had no power to stay him; for the Catholic descendants of the Palesmen were firm in their allegiance to the English throne, and the native race was destitute of means to strike for separation. He had forfeited his crown and jeopardized his power, for right. He had emancipated them from a bondage servile to mind and body. He was the first royal champion of civil and religious liberty. He had offered them justice in his power, and appealed to their loyalty in his adversity. His cause was their cause. He was banished by his own people, outraged by his own family; he came to them in his bereavement, and to their honor, be it recorded, they did not forsake him! His very injuries threw a sacred influence around him, and as he sacrificed to justice, they paid him the homage of their blood!
Yet, in truth, he was not their king;—not the ideal king of the Irish race. That should be a native king; one infusing nationality through every hamlet in the land, and defending its liberties against a world in arms! Six hundred years had failed to eradicate the hope of such a king from the hearts of every successive generation, and every outrage of the invader only rendered it the more indelible. The place, too, was historic. Every hill and valley, from Drogheda to Clonard, in rath and ruin, bore ample testimony of their aspiration for native rule. Tara and Skreen, now plainly visible in the soft moonlight of summer, stood out in relief against the southern sky, and it is no stretch of the imagination to say: from that same Pass of Slane, the ancestor of Sir Neale O'Neil, had, nearly 900 years before, reconnoitred the Danish host and marked it for destruction. Many a chief and many a clan of his martial house had, since then, crossed the Boyne to do battle with the invader, but never a braver soldier than he, nor a more devoted following than that which now counted the moments by the reverberation of the enemy's cannon along its banks, and looked through the night for the eventful dawning.27
The night wore slowly away, and as its shadows were blending into the gray dawn of morning, the cannonade which had been kept up since the preceding noon from William's batteries ceased for a time, and the beat to arms was distinctly heard on the heights of Donore. It was promptly answered by a roll from the Irish camp, and the troops on each side were immediately in motion, and deploying down towards the river. An hour of hurried preparation now passed on, when the waters of the gentle river were again startled from their short repose by a heavy peal along the whole English line, the smoke of which having cleared away, William's left, the cavalry in advance, was seen doubling the curve in the river, and advancing steadily towards the Pass of Slane. The firing thus resumed, was now kept up incessantly from the English left and centre, and as the sun appeared above the hills, and both armies stood out bolder on the foreground, William himself, accompanied by Prince George of Denmark, the Prince of Nassau, and the Duke of Wurtemberg, and surrounded by a grand cavalcade, was observed reviewing his army, and, by word and example, infusing hope and courage through all its ranks.
King James saw all that was passing from the heights of Donore, and as Count Schomberg and Douglas moved in the direction of Slane, he ordered de Lausun to move his troops in the same direction. Then, after seeing the remainder of his baggage on its way to Dublin,28 whither the half of his artillery had already been sent, he stood to watch the issue of the day, with much composure of manner and much Christian resignation, but none of that military ardor by which a gallant general often imparts a spirit and energy to a small army that render it invincible in the hour of battle. Not so, however, with the Duke of Tyrconnell. Though bowed by age, and broken in health, he moved from rank to rank, exhorting all to bravery; and it is very questionable which felt most solicitude at that hour—that king for the fate of his crown, or that patriot for the cause of his country. As for Sarsfield, he had little to do in the affairs of that day; for both he and General Maxwell were in continual attendance on the king's person, and his attention, with the exception of one visit to his right, was entirely divided between the reserve on Donore and the French troops on his left. Hamilton and Berwick were at their post on the right, and well had it been for James and his cause had he tarried in Dublin and committed the marshalling of his army to those generals, and the issue of the day to the King of battles.
Apprised of the design of the enemy on his position, O'Neil had made such preparations as time allowed for his reception. Around the pass on both sides of the river he had drawn intrenchments, and as the morning dawned had thrown forward a small detachment to impede his progress. The ground over which he approached was favorable to defensive operations, being much broken and interspersed with hedges: these natural impediments, and the weight of his artillery, rendered his movements slow and irregular; the fire of the skirmishers met him at every step as he neared the pass, so that it was eight o'clock before he had forced them back within their intrenchments.
Here the fight was renewed with great stubbornness, and continued for two hours longer, when Schomberg, with the loss of two hundred men, forced the position, and the dragoons retired with the loss of one-fourth their number, bearing away the body of their leader, mortally wounded, and renewed the contest on the other side of the river. Schomberg immediately commenced to cross, and the king, apprised of the state of affairs here, sent Sarsfield, with sixty dragoons and a piece of artillery, to oppose him; but these succors only arrived in time to see the defenders driven from their intrenchments, and the troops of Schomberg drawn out on the southern bank to receive them.
All further attempts to check the progress of the assailants were now futile; the dragoons retired on their supports; the gun brought down by Sarsfield got "bogged," and had to be abandoned, and Schomberg, his artillery being got over, deployed by his right, on the outer side of the marsh, to turn the left of the king's army. He had, however, scarcely got clear of the river, when the troops of de Lausun appeared on the inner side of the marsh to oppose him. The force of the latter was 6,000 men, within support of a reserve of 3,000; it was fresh, finely appointed, and the marsh at this place was narrow and practicable to horse and foot; but he showed no disposition to engage, although Schomberg halted and drew up to offer him battle. After some time the troops on both sides were put in motion, Schomberg still moving by his right, and de Lausun by his left in the same direction, the marsh gradually widening round towards the rear of Donore, until nearly a mile intervened, when an engagement became impracticable, and the Irish left was flanked.
In the mean time, King James, seeing that Count Schomberg had crossed the river, believed that the other division of William's army would also move in the same direction, and that the entire battle would be finally transferred to his left. He therefore determined to withdraw his own right and centre from the river, to the support of de Lausun, and with this intention he now proceeded to his right. There seeing that William's left and centre were still drawn up on the opposite bank, and being opposed in his design by Tyrconnell, he returned to his left, where Count Schomberg and de Lausun were still confronting each other. Posting his reserves on the right of the latter, and riding up to him, he ordered him to charge the enemy across the intervening ground; but the order was disobeyed, although Schomberg halted again and formed to invite an action. In this state of perplexity the king rode back to the reserves, placed the infantry at the edge of the marsh, supported on each side by his cavalry, with the foot dragoons filling up the intervals, and approaching M. de la Hoquette, "whispered him" to lead on the French infantry. The latter was about to comply with this request, when he was checked by de Lausun; at this time, Sarsfield and Maxwell, who had been out inspecting the ground in front, returned, and pronounced it impracticable to cavalry, it being traversed by two double ditches with a rivulet flowing between them. So the king was convinced, and de Lausun was relieved from his importunity. In this manner the two wings continued to manoeuvre the situation each moment growing more critical, as Schomberg neared the end of the marsh, where the road turned towards Duleek, and led on to the capital.
Thus, through some motive of de Lausun, never after explained, and through the absence of control in the unfortunate king, never forgiven, the French auxiliaries, and with them the Irish reserve,—a body of 3,000 men,—were neutralized; the Irish left was completely turned, and the remainder of the army, not exceeding 11,000, was left to contend with 30,000 under William and the Duke of Schomberg.
In the mean time a considerable change had taken place in William's left and centre. The Duke of Schomberg had discovered another ford in the direction of Slane, and when that pass was carried, had moved by his right to avail himself of the advantages it offered, while William had moved by his left somewhat nearer to the town of Drogheda. These changes necessitated corresponding movements in the Irish line. A greater extension was the consequence, and some regiments of its rear were extended to oppose the Duke of Schomberg; but still they offered a good front, and awaited the enemy in confidence.
It was well on to noon, and the tide was on the return, when the firing ceased on Duke Schomberg's front, and the Dutch Guards, accompanied by their band, detached themselves from the main body and moved down to the river. Here the music of the band ceased; the guards formed in compacted columns, twenty abreast, and commenced the passage of the river in the face of a well-directed fire.29 When they had all got below the level of their own artillery, its fire was again directed against the Irish intrenchments, and compelled the men there to lie close in their works, until the guards got beyond the mid current and began to ascend on the opposite side, when they quitted their defences, and advanced into the river to meet them, and, as they closed, Major Arthur, of the Irish Guards, singling out the leader of the enemy, passed his pike through his body. This stimulated his men to action; a desperate conflict ensued; the Dutch Guards were held in check for a considerable time, and many fell on both sides, and were trampled beneath the current.
The Dutch Guards were the household troops of the Prince of Orange; were fighting under his eye, and formed a compact body of five thousand men, while the Irish were mostly raw levies, inferior in number, and indifferently armed with pikes and muskets. The result was doubtful for some time, until Major Arthur was wounded and conveyed to the rear; disheartened and borne back by the weight of numbers, his troops gradually gave ground; and the Dutch troops advanced and effected a landing. As they reached the firm ground above the river, they were charged by the dragoons of Clare and Dungan, and wavered; but Lord Dungan being slain, the dragoons became panic-stricken and retreated, nor could they again be brought to the charge. In this state of indecision the Dutch renewed their assault, and established a position in the broken ground behind the Irish line. The position was a strong one, and at once laid bare the intrenchments on the river, while it afforded a protection against the Irish cavalry; and here they remained during the succeeding events of the day, suffering severely, but defying every attempt to dislodge them.
William, who witnessed this, felt deep concern for the fate of his household troops. They had accompanied him in all his campaigns, and his care for them, in peace and war, was that of a patriarch for his household. From his point of view, their condition was now perilous in the highest degree, they being surrounded by the enemy on all sides, and in danger of total destruction before relief could reach them. To him, the movements of Schomberg, always slow and measured, seemed now painfully so; and, suspending his advance against the Irish right, he rode down to the centre, to precipitate the troops forming there for the relief of his famous guards. Two regiments of the Huguenot troops and one of British infantry were immediately formed, and, under the leadership of Caillemotte, commenced the passage of the river.
Hamilton, from the right of the Irish line, had followed these events with a feeling akin to that of William. He believed, like him, that the fate of the Dutch troops was sealed, could the reinforcements of the enemy be held in check or repulsed; but he also saw that the intrenchments at the centre were partially abandoned from the effects of the enemy's fire on their rear, and that all now depended on intrepid action. He therefore detached two regiments of infantry from the right, to march close by the river, and throw themselves before Caillemotte, while he hastened himself, by a more circuitous route, with the cavalry, to sustain them.
The troops of Caillemotte advanced rapidly to the mid-current, where they were met as the Dutch Guards had been, and, like them, were forcing their way against the Irish infantry, when Hamilton reached the scene of action. As he appeared, the infantry opened to the right and left to make way, and, with unchecked impulse, he rushed to the onset. The effect was instantaneous. In a moment, the enemy were helplessly broken, trampled, and dispersed. Caillemotte, two colonels, and two lieutenant-colonels were slain, more than half his command were either killed or wounded, and the remainder fled to the opposite side, pursued by the victorious cavalry. As they pressed the fugitives up to their lines, the Danish horse were precipitated against them, but were instantly broken, hurled back in confusion, and closely pressed on the columns now forming under the Duke of Schomberg. Rushing on wildly, and crying out "Horse! horse!" in great alarm, they created a panic, which was near ending in a total rout; when William again appeared among them, restored order in the ranks, and the Irish cavalry leisurely retired.
William now collected all the infantry of the centre, while Schomberg, placing himself at the head of the cavalry, entered the river, and advanced with the same coolness and caution that had hitherto characterized all his movements. The Irish horse had just returned from the pursuit, and were drawn up on the river to oppose him. They did not wait for his whole force to get in motion, but as he approached the middle of the river, they bore down on him with their wonted impetuosity. The effect was the same as before. Schomberg and Walker of Derry were slain; dismay and inextricable confusion was the consequence, and all retreated to the northern side to reform. Taylor, in his short but life-like portraiture of this battle, says of the event just detailed: "Had James chosen this moment to place himself at the head of his troops, for one general charge, or had the French auxiliaries attacked the Dutch in flank, the event of the battle would certainly have restored his crown!" The poor king—he was at that very moment concerting a retreat on his left, outraged by his French general; and even his reserves were two miles from the scene of action!
This was the crisis of the day. The tide was now making fast; the water was nearly waist high in the river, and half an hour more would render a crossing impossible for that day. William could no longer delay his movements on the left, and so, ordering Sir John Hanmer and the Prince of Nassau to reform his demoralized troops at the centre, and lead them on for the relief of his guards, he hastened to the left to make a last effort to restore the battle.
Had Sarsfield and Maxwell now appeared with the reserves, and left de Lausun to watch Count Schomberg, the battle had been won, or, at least, suspended; for at this moment the balance leaned to the Jacobite arms, and delay would have been tantamount to a victory. During the approaching night, the division of Count Schomberg, cut off from support, and lost in the intricacies of the ground behind Donore, could have been totally destroyed; there were three thousand troops within a few hours' march of the field, and the morning would have opened with fairer prospects of success.30 But all these chances were lost by the fears of the king for his capital; no support appeared for the centre; and Hamilton, after performing prodigies of valor, was forced to retire again to the right, to oppose the passage of the Prince of Orange.
William, whose design through the day had been to strike the Irish army in the rear of its right, turn it from the direction of the capital, and form a junction with Count Schomberg, was now compelled to abandon that project, and lead his left to the support of his centre. For this purpose he marshalled a force of about 12,000 infantry and cavalry. The Danish and Dutch horse, bearing the standard of Nassau, were placed in the advance; after them came the foot, and the Enniskillen horse brought up the rear. Placing himself between the cavalry and infantry, he entered the river, the water rising to the flanks of the horses as they reached the mid-current. Hamilton, who had just returned from the Irish centre, watched their approach with great anxiety, until they began to ascend the southern side and had gained a surer footing; when, ordering his infantry to retire, he withdrew the cavalry also, to reform for the charge. William, on seeing this movement, believed that they were abandoning the field, and urged his cavalry more hastily forward. He was soon undeceived: the Irish horse had but withdrawn for greater impulse; in another moment they dashed forward; the Danes were scattered right and left, bearing back the Prince among them, and the flanks of his infantry lay completely exposed. The Irish cavalry had, for the third time that day, asserted their superiority.
William's situation was now desperate. His Danish and Dutch horse were scattered and swimming in the river; his infantry were hardly able to bear up against its current; the Irish cavalry lay on his front, and their infantry had opened with effect on his flanks. But he was equal to the emergency, and his gallantry at this trying moment would go far to erase a very dark record. Making his way to the head of his Enniskilleners, now about to advance, he asked promptly "What they would do for him?" They cried out with one impulse that they would follow where he led, and hastening forward after him, they threw themselves between their infantry and the Irish cavalry, now reformed on the bank above them. The sight of these troops, their own countrymen, protecting the foreign mercenaries of William, roused the spirit of vengeance in the breasts of the Irish, and, wheeling as before, they swept forward in one compacted mass. The Enniskilleners did not await the shock, but turned and fled across the river, deserting their general at his greatest need; nor could they again be rallied until the battle was decided.31
William, on being deserted by the Enniskilleners, again rode through his infantry and reformed their disordered ranks. The Danish and Dutch rallied, and formed round his person, and, with the desperate resolve to do or die, he pressed resolutely forward.
The scene along the whole line was now terribly grand and exciting. The entire left and centre of the English army were in motion, and, stirred to the highest daring by the danger of their Prince and the exigency of the hour, were pressing through the river simultaneously. Hanmer led the cavalry of the centre, and the Prince of Nassau the infantry, each vieing with the other for precedence. The latter was crossing at the ford lately attempted by Caillemotte and the Duke of Schomberg, and the former at one hitherto neglected, which lay nearer to Old Bridge, and offered more immediate support to the Prince of Orange. This disposition nearly connected the English left and centre, and caused another derangement of the Irish lines opposite. The Dutch Guards, too, who still held their lodgement on the side of Donore, rallied as their succor approached, and drew a portion of their fire from the compacted masses of Nassau on their front. Three regiments of the Irish Guards—those of Tyrconnell, Parker, and Gordon O'Neil—the exempts under Nugent, and a few squadrons of cavalry, were thrown against Hanmer, and, animated by Tyrconnell and Dorrington, were opposing a most deadly resistance; while Berwick and Hamilton still disputed the passage of William, and held him in check on the right.
But the balance of the day was inclining, and the fates were again propitious to William. Nassau pressed fiercely on. The Dutch Guards assumed the offensive, and their fire became destructive. The Irish generals exhausted every effort to animate their troops, but in vain. Attacked in front and rear by superior numbers, they at last broke, abandoned the river, and withdrew in good order towards Donore. The command of Nassau, on ascending from the river, were joined by the Dutch Blues, and both turned their attention to where the Irish Guards were still offering a stern resistance to Hanmer.32 The position of these troops now became critical in the extreme, and a short time would see them either all slain or captured by the enemy. There was scarce an alternative, when Berwick arrived with a portion of the cavalry of the right, charged vigorously, and held the enemy in check until the remnant of these famous guards retired. This was the most destructive conflict of the day to the Irish; "for," says King James in his Memoirs, "the greater part of the exempts and brigadiers in both corps were killed, likewise the Earl of Carlingford, M. d'Amande, and several other volunteers that served with them. Nugent and Casanova were wounded in Tyrconnell's, Major O'Meara and Sir Charles Tooke were killed, and Bada wounded. In Parker's, the Colonel was wounded; Green, the Lieutenant-Colonel, Doddington, the Major, and several officers were killed; and in both squadrons there remained but thirty men unhurt."
Hamilton, with the remaining cavalry, no longer able to offer an effectual resistance on the river, retired before William, who crossed, wheeled to his right, and pressed on towards his centre. As the English forces united, the Irish horse also converged, and formed on their front for the protection of their infantry, forming in line of battle on the hill. A series of conflicts now ensued between the Irish cavalry and the converging forces of the English left and centre, which are described by the annalist Story, as of the most desperate character: for more than half an hour, during which all "were completely enveloped in dust and smoke," neither gained or lost an inch; and when no longer able to withstand the overwhelming force against them, the Irish cavalry retired, reformed, charged the enemy again and again, "ten times in succession," and at last fell back to the flanks of their infantry, to make another effort to redeem the day. William advanced boldly on the position now assumed by the Irish army, but, astonished at the imposing front they still presented, he halted to array his troops, when the Irish infantry, taking advantage of this hesitation, bore down on him. The first and second line gave way; but their force was spent against the Dutch Guards, and they retired; the cavalry now charged again and broke the guards, but the wings closing on them, they were completely surrounded. A terrific struggle took place; General Hamilton was wounded, unhorsed, and captured; Berwick had his horse killed, but was saved by a trooper; Colonel Sheldon cut his way through at the head of the cavalry, and again reformed them on the front; and while the two armies stood thus, neither advancing nor receding, the order for a general retreat sounded along the Irish line.
While the events just described were transpiring on the river, Count Schomberg continued to hold de Lausun inactive, wearing slowly round by his right; and as the Irish centre retreated on Donore, he had reached the termination of the lowland, and thrown forward his cavalry on the road leading to Dublin. King James, on seeing this, got alarmed for the safety of the capital—should Schomberg get the start of him,—so directing de Lausun to defend the road, he issued an order for a general retreat, and, taking the regiments of Brown and Purcell as an escort, withdrew from the field and pursued his way to Dublin. On receipt of this order, "the Irish army retreated" from the hill, bringing off all their standards and artillery;33—they crossed the lowlands to the north of Donore;—and the Boyne was lost.
It was six o'clock in the evening. The infantry soon reached the town of Duleek, the French bringing up the rear, and formed in line of battle behind the river Nanny. The cavalry arrived soon after, and had just crossed the river as Count Schomberg drew up and formed on the other side. Both armies then remained facing each other for over an hour; the Irish, seeing that the enemy did not advance, began to retire, and Schomberg followed. The Irish halted and reformed again, in a long ravine, near the village of Neal; the enemy also halted, but did not attack; and in this posture night settled down on the two armies. It was now nine o'clock; the Irish resumed their march, and the enemy following no farther, they continued their way unmolested towards Dublin. William remained on the field. Some say that sorrow for the death of Schomberg was the cause of his not pressing the foe. It might have been caused by a lack of artillery, as his train had not crossed the river. Perhaps he might have been apprehensive that the garrison of Drogheda would issue out and capture or destroy it in his absence, as they might have done during the latter events of the day; but whether it was one of those causes, or a combination of them, now matters but little; he had won the Battle of the Boyne, and it was enough for a day.
The principal personages killed in the Jacobite army were Lord Dungan, Taaf Earl of Carlingford, Sir Neale O'Neil, and the Marquis de Hoquincourt; in that of the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Schomberg,34 Caillemotte, and Walker of Derry, who commanded a regiment of Enniskilleners. Besides these, several officers of distinction fell on both sides; among whom were two colonels, two lieutenant-colonels, in the division of Caillemotte, and Sir Charles Tooke, Majors Arthur and O'Meara, and the Chevalier de Vaudry, in Tyrconnell's. The number of officers of subordinate rank killed and wounded on each side was very great, considering the loss in private soldiers, which did not exceed one thousand in either. The number of the wounded in the army of William is not known, and, excepting Hamilton, there is no mention of prisoners being taken on either side.
Such was the Battle of the Boyne. Memorable for the extinction of the Stuart dynasty, for the politico-religious government it entailed on England, and for the wrongs innumerable it bequeathed to Ireland; but for nothing more memorable than as a well-contested and long-doubtful battle. It was one fought by twenty thousand men, 35 indifferently armed, with only six pieces of artillery, and under a king whose conduct would have disconcerted the best army in the world, from six in the morning until six in the evening, on a river fordable at every rood of its length, against an army of thirty thousand36 veteran mercenaries, with experienced leaders, cannon at will, and a prince of great military skill and daring. From the beginning their temerity seemed almost madness, to the bravest and most experienced, and their king was besought to relinquish it. Yet three times through the day the battle seemed equally poised, and once victory was assuredly within their grasp, had their king but displayed one-half the courage and intrepidity of his rival. Through the loss of this field the future was foreshadowed. There the Irish army lost prestige abroad—and at home every thing but their manhood: yet seldom was that better vindicated than on that "ill-fated river;" and as they turned their last look on it, and saw the long lines of William winding up to Donore, well might they exclaim in their anguish, "Change kings, and we'll fight the battle again!" The kings were changed, but not for them. On that river their web of destiny was woven, and though they battled on bravely for a time, patriotic devotion and heroic sacrifice were in vain.