Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/47

A.D. 1690.] were from time to time landing, amongst them regiments of German and Scandinavian mercenaries. By the time of William's arrival the army was in a fine and vigorous condition, and amounted to thirty thousand men.

Not so the army of James; it had grown more and more disorderly, James and his court had returned to Dublin, where they spent the winter in the grossest dissoluteness and neglect of all discipline or law. Gambling, riot, and debauchery scandalised the sober catholics, who had hoped for a saviour in James. Of all the army the cavalry alone had been maintained by its officers in discipline. The foot soldiers roamed over the country at pleasure, plundering their own countrymen. James's own kitchen and larder were supplied by his foragers from the substance of his subjects, without regard to law or any prospect of payment. It was in vain that remonstrances were made, James paid no attention to them. His bad money was all gone; he had used up all the old pots, pans, and cracked cannon, and applied to Louis for fresh remittances, which did not arrive. To complete the ruin of his affairs, he requested the withdrawal of Rosen and Avaux, who, heartless as they were, saw the ruinous course things were taking, and remonstrated against it. Lauzan, an incompetent commander, was sent over to take their place, accompanied by about seven thousand French infantry. When Lauzan arrived in Ireland, the desolation of the country, the rude savagery of the people, and the disorders of the court and capital, were such as to strike him and his officers with astonishment and horror. He declared in his lettera to the French minister, Louvois, that the country was in so frightful a state that no person who had lived in any other could conceive; that James's chief functionaries pulled each his different way, instead of assisting the king; and that "such were the wants, disunions, and dejection, that the king's affairs looked like the primitive chaos."

Unfortunately, Lauzan was not the man to reduce chaos to order. He had accompanied Mary, the queen of James, in her flight from London to Paris, and had there too won the good graces of Madame Maintenon; and by the influence of these ladies, who imagined him a great general, he obtained this important command. He had to fill the place of both Avaux and Rosen, of ambassador and general, without the sagacity and skill which would have fitted him for either. He conceived the greatest contempt and hatred of the Irish, and was not likely to work well with them. Such was the condition in which James was found on the landing of king William.

William on landing pushed on without delay to Belfast, and thence, without permitting himself to be delayed by the congratulatory multitudes that surrounded him, he hastened forward to his main army at Loughbrickland. The news of his arrival was carried all over Ulster by the firing of cannon and by bonfires on the heights. The protestants were in a state of wild exultation, the Irish in one of equal consternation. Dublin was thrown into a dread panic. The hour, it was felt, was at hand, when the great contest must be decided; and to all reflecting men the condition of James's army, or the prudence and abilities of its commanders, wove not such as to inspire much confidence. On the other hand, the protestant inhabitants were full of confidence that the moment of their deliverance was arrived. Their elevated spirits did not escape the eyes of their enemies. Deep suspicions of their rising and seizing the city in the absence of the army fell on the authorities, and they issued a proclamation ordering all protestants to confine themselves to their houses from sunset to sunrise on pain of death, nor during the day were they to assemble in numbers more than five under the same penalty. Nor did they stop here, but they seized such numbers of leading men, both laity and clergy, that the prisons could not contain them, and they confined them in the churches under strong guards.

Meantime the two monarchs were actively engaged in the north preparing for the great struggle. William found his forces at Loughbrickland amounted to thirty-six thousand men; James was encamped at Dundalk with thirty thousand. There was, however, now a wonderful difference in the quality and discipline of the two armies. James's Irish infantry was thoroughly demoralised by neglect of discipline and by indulging in tho loosest habits of plunder and riot, being more like lawless rapparees than soldiers. His cavalry and the French forces were better; but James, Lauzun, Berwick, Tyrconnel, Hamilton, and Antrim were no match for such generals aa William, Schomberg, Ginckel, Ormond, Oxford, Solmes, Portland, prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, duke Charles Frederick of Würtemberg, Michelbourne—who had led the men of Londonderry—Sir Albert Conyngham, with the Enniskilleners, and Douglas, who commanded the Scotch foot-guards, besides other brave officers who had acquired a high reputation on the continent, as Sir John Francis, who commanded the Dragoon guards, and Caillemot, who led on the Huguenots.

The soldiers of William's army consisted of a variety of nations, many of whom had won fame under great leaders. There were Dutch, which had fought under William and his great generals against those of Louis of France; Germans, Danes, Finlanders, French Huguenots, now purged of their false countrymen; English and Scotch troops, which had fought also in Holland, in Tangiers, at Killiecrankie; and Anglo-Irish, which had won such laurels at Londonderry, Enniskillen, and Newton Butler. All were animated by the presence of the king, and of his assembled generals of a wide renown, and with the confidence of putting down the popish king with his French supporters and his Irish adherents, who had robbed and expelled them and their families. The Germans and Dutch burned to meet again the French invaders of their country, the desolators of the palatinate; and the French protestants were as much on fire to avenge themselves on their catholic countrymen, who had been their oppressors. It was not merely English troops acting on ordinary grounds of hostility against Irish ones, but representatives of almost all protestant Europe collected to avenge the wrongs of protestants and of their own countries.

William was confident in his army, and declared that he was not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. Schomberg still recommended caution when it was no longer needed, and thus gave a colour to the words of those who accused him of having shown too much caution already, which they insinuated was but the result of old age. On the 21st of June, only ten days after landing, William was in full march southward. James did not wait for his