Schomberg on landing had taken Carrickfergus, Newry, and Dundalk, where he entrenched himself. He had found the country through which he passed a perfect waste. It could afford him no provisions, and, if he were compelled to fall back, no shelter. James, on his landing, had advanced from Dublin to Drogheda, where he was with twenty thousand men, besides vast numbers of wild Irish, armed with scythes, pikes, and skeans. But Schomberg found himself in no condition for fighting. His baggage could not reach him for want of waggons, and from the state of the roads. His arms were many of them good for nothing, being the vile rubbish furnished by the contractors under the management of the fraudulent Ministry and the infamous Commissary-General Shales. His soldiers were suffering from want of proper clothing, shoes, beds, and tents. Worse still, the soldiers were fast perishing with fever. Bad food, bad clothing, bad lodging, and drenching and continual rains without proper shelter, were fast doing their work on the English army. Schomberg did his best. He stimulated his soldiers to make roofs to their huts of turf and fern, and to make their beds of heather and fern, raised on dry mounds above the soaking rains. But all was in vain. The soldiers were become spiritless and demoralised. They were either too listless to move or too excited by whisky, which they managed to get, to follow his recommendations. Scenes like those which appeared in London during the Plague now horrified his camp. The soldiers gave way to wild license, drank, swore, sang bacchanalian songs, drank the Devil's health, and made seats of the corpses of their dead comrades at their revels, which they declared were the only ones they had to keep them out of the wet.
The sickness appeared at the same time in the English fleet which lay off the coast at Carrickfergus, and swept away almost every man from some of the vessels. By the commencement of November, Schomberg's army could not number more than five thousand effective men. The Irish in James's army did not suffer so much, and they rejoiced in the pestilence which was thus annihilating their heretic enemies. But the weather at length compelled James to draw off, first to Ardee, and then into winter quarters in different towns. Schomberg, thus set at liberty, quickly followed his example, and quartered his troops for the winter in the different towns of Ulster, fixing his headquarters at Lisburn. His army had, however, lost above six thousand men by disease.
In February, 1690, the campaign was begun by the Duke of Berwick, James's natural son, who attacked William's advanced post at Belturbet; but he met with such a reception that he nearly lost his life, being severely wounded and having his horse killed under him. In fact, the condition of the two armies had been completely changed during the winter by the different management of the two commanders. Schomberg had been diligently exerting himself to restore the health and to perfect the discipline of his troops. As spring advanced he received the benefit of William's exertions and stern reforms in England. Good, healthy food, good clothing, bedding, tents, and arms arrived. Fresh troops 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 compatriots. 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 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 D'Avaux, who, heartless as they were, saw the ruinous course things were taking, and remonstrated against it. Lauzun, an incompetent commander, was sent over to take their place, accompanied by about seven thousand French infantry. When Lauzun 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 letters 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 it; 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, Lauzun 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 D'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, we have said, pushed on immediately 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 soldiers of his army consisted of a variety of nations, many of whom had won fame under great leaders. There were Dutch, who 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 Scottish troops, who had fought also in Holland, in Tangier, at Killiecrankie; and Anglo-Irish, who 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 wide renown, and with the confidence of putting down the Popish king, and his French supporters and 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 24th of June, only ten days after landing, William was in full march southwards. James did not wait for his coming, but abandoned Dundalk and retreated into Drogheda. His generals, indeed, represented to him that caution and delay were his best policy against so powerful a force, and even recommended that he should retreat beyond Dublin and entrench himself at Athlone, as a more central and defensible position; but James would not listen to this, and Tyrconnel strengthened him in the resolution.
JAMES ENTERING DUBLIN AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. (See p. [431].)