Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/149

 he, finding his numbers so unequal to the Irish, resolved to he on the defensive. . . If he had pushed matters and had met with a misfortune, his whole army and consequently all Ireland would have been lost; for he could not have made a regular retreat. The sure game was to preserve his army; and that would save Ulster, and keep matters entire for another year. This was censured by some. Better judges thought the managing this campaign as he did was one of the greatest parts of his life.” “He obliged the enemy,” says Harris, “to quit the province of Ulster. The North of Ireland was thus secured for winter quarters.” “My skilful temporizing,” says Professor Veiss, “he contrived in some sort to create an Orange territory, and so to prepare the great victory of the following year.” Whatever praise is due as to this camjjaign, Schomberg earned it all. The officers of the army had been demoralized under the Stewarts’ unpatriotic rule, and so had the officials of the commissariat. Peculation and embezzlement were the business and object of their lives, which some of the officers but partially atoned for by flashes of bellicose impetuosity and English pluck. Soldiers and ammunition were sacrificed to the thoughtlessness and laziness of officers who did not look after them; and those who ought to have been the Duke of Schomberg’s coadjutors were practically spies and enemies in his camp. Abundance of criticism as the slow growth of afterthought was often forthcoming at his side, or behind his back, but he was favoured with no suggestive counsel as the ripe fruit of experienced forethought and military education. “Hitherto,” he says in his despatch from Carrickfergus, 27th Aug. 1689, “I have been obliged to take upon myself all the burden of the provisions, the vessels, the artillery, the cavalry, all the payments, and all the details of the siege.” And although he found officers to accept rank and pay, the work was done as before. Mr Story testifies, “He had the whole shock of affairs upon himself, which was the occasion that he scarce ever went to bed until it was very late, and then had his candle, with book and pencil, by him. This would have confounded any other man.”

The ringleader of intestine traitors was Sir Henry Shales, the Purveyor-General. When his villanies came to light, intelligent Englishmen ceased to find fault with Schomberg.

Page 104. — The Jacobite army was the first to go into winter quarters. Schomberg followed their example, sending the sick by sea, and taking the body of his army by land to Lisburn as headquarters, and to the surrounding towns and villages. He had still to defend himself against unfavourable criticism. He wrote to his sovereign from Lisburn, 27th Dec. 1689, “I have made many reflections on what your Majesty had the goodness to write to me on the 20th, and witiiout tiring you with the state of my indisposition, I can assure you that my desire to go to England arises only from that cause, and the physicians’ opinion that the air and the hot waters will cure me of the ailment which my son informed you of. There are people in England who believe that I make use of this ailment as a pretence; that is not true. I confess. Sir, that, without the profound submission which I have for your Majesty’s will, I would prefer the honour of being permitted to be near your person to the command of an army in Ireland, composed as that of last campaign was. If I had risked a battle, I might have lost all that you have in this kingdom, not to speak of the consequences which would have followed in Scotland, and even in England. . . . What most repels me from the service here is that I see by the past it would be difficult for the future to content the parliament and the people, who are prepossessed with the notion that any English soldier, even a recruit [qu ’un soldat quoy que nouvellement levé], can beat above six of the enemy.”

Page 105. — The campaign of 1690 began with the taking of Charlemont, the last fortress in Jacobite hands in Ulster. The carrying of war into the south was delayed till June, when William himself came over to take the chief command. On the 24th of June, the march southward commenced. The king, who by letter had twice pressed Schomberg to fight the enemy during the last campaign, was determined to give battle without delay, and in a way that should astound the natives, and create a sensation among all the newsmongers of the three kingdoms. Rut it must be remembered that His Majesty was at the head of a finer army, superior both in numbers and discipline, a large portion of whom had been entirely trained by