692 ([return])
[ Story's Impartial History; History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army; Hop to the States General, June 30/July 10. 1690.]
693 ([return])
[ London Gazette, July 7. 1690; Story's Impartial History; History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Lord Marchmont's Memorandum; Burnet, ii. 50. and Thanksgiving Sermon; Dumont MS.]
694 ([return])
[ La Hoguette to Louvois, July 31/Aug 10 1690.]
695 ([return])
[ That I have done no injustice to the Irish infantry will appear from the accounts which the French officers who were at the Boyne sent to their government and their families. La Hoguette, writing hastily to Louvois on the 4/14th of July, says: "je vous diray seulement, Monseigneur, que nous n'avons pas este battus, mais que les ennemys ont chasses devant eux les trouppes Irlandoises comme des moutons, sans avoir essaye un seul coup de mousquet."
Writing some weeks later more fully from Limerick, he says, "J'en meurs de honte." He admits that it would have been no easy matter to win the battle, at best. "Mais il est vray aussi," he adds, "que les Irlandois ne firent pas la moindre resistance, et plierent sans tirer un seul coup." Zurlauben, Colonel of one of the finest regiments in the French service, wrote to the same effect, but did justice to the courage of the Irish horse, whom La Hoguette does not mention.
There is at the French War Office a letter hastily scrawled by Boisseleau, Lauzun's second in command, to his wife after the battle. He wrote thus: "Je me porte bien, ma chere feme. Ne t'inquieste pas de moy. Nos Irlandois n'ont rien fait qui vaille. Ils ont tous lache le pie."
Desgrigny writing on the 10/20th of July, assigns several reasons for the defeat. "La première et la plus forte est la fuite des Irlandois qui sont en verite des gens sur lesquels il ne faut pas compter du tout." In the same letter he says: "Il n'est pas naturel de croire qu'une armee de vingt cinq mille hommes qui paroissoit de la meilleure volonte du monde, et qui a la veue des ennemis faisoit des cris de joye, dut etre entierement defaite sans avoir tire l'epee et un seul coup de mousquet. Il y a en tel regiment tout entier qui a laisse ses habits, ses armes, et ses drapeaux sur le champ de bataille, et a gagne les montagnes avec ses officiers."