In spite of these successes, the Ulstermen must have been crushed if the long-expected English army had not begun to cross the channel. But in October a force at last appeared in Down, under the Duke of Schomberg, a veteran French officer in the service of William. Schomberg had been expelled from the French army for refusing to become a Romanist, and devoted the last years of his life to a crusade against the bigoted Lewis XIV., who had driven him from home and office for religion's sake.
William lands in Ireland.
Through the winter of 1689, the Irish and English faced each other in Ulster without coming to a decisive engagement. But in the spring of 1690, William arrived in person with large reinforcements, and began to advance on Dublin with an army of 35,000 men.
James had done but little to strengthen his position during the eighteen months that Ireland had been in his hands. His army was still half trained and unpaid. He had caused untold distress to all classes by issuing a forced currency of copper crowns and shillings, which his creditors were compelled to accept or incur the charge of treason. His councillors, English and Irish, were quarrelling fiercely. His troops were unwisely dispersed, so that on the news of William's approach he found himself unable to concentrate them in time.
The Battle of the Boyne.
He gathered, however, some 30,000 men, of whom 6000 were French, and took up a strong position behind the river Boyne, to cover Dublin. In this position he was attacked by William, whose troops forded the river and charged up the opposite slope. The Irish cavalry fought well enough, but many regiments of their undisciplined infantry broke and fled after a few discharges. The wreck of the Jacobite army was only saved by the French auxiliaries, who stubbornly defended the pass of Duleek till the fugitives had got away (July 1, 1690).
Ireland subdued.—"The Pacification of Limerick."
James seemed panic-stricken by the result of the battle of the Boyne. Abandoning Dublin without firing a shot, he fled in craven haste and took ship for France. His deserted followers, however, made a long and gallant resistance in the West. William returned to England, leaving his army under the Dutch general Ginckel to subdue Connaught and Munster (September, 1690). The task proved harder than had been expected; Ginckel was unable to move till the next spring for want of food and transport. He forced the line of the Shannon by storming Athlone in June, 1691, but did not break the back of the Irish resistance till he had won the well-fought battle of Aughrim, scattered the army of Connaught, and slain its commander, the French marshal St. Ruth. Even after this decisive fight, Limerick held out for nearly three months. It surrendered on October 3, 1691, on terms which permitted the Irish army to take ship for France, and 11,000 men passed over-seas to serve Lewis XIV. At the same time, the representatives of William signed the "Pacification of Limerick," which granted an amnesty to all Irish who did not emigrate, and stipulated that they should be left unmolested in possession of the very limited civil and religious rights that they had enjoyed under Charles II.
The Protestant ascendency.
These terms were broken in a most faithless manner by the Irish Parliament, now entirely in the hands of the victorious Protestant minority, only a few years after they had been signed (1697). By a new penal code that body prohibited Romanists from practising as lawyers, physicians, or schoolmasters, took away from them the right of sitting in Parliament, made marriages of Protestants and Romanists illegal, banished all monks and all clergy except registered parish priests from the realm, and prohibited any Romanist from possessing arms. But their worst device was a cruel scheme for promoting conversions, by a law which gave any son of a Romanist who abjured his religion, the right to succeed to all his father's property, to the exclusion of his unconverted brothers and sisters. Under this harsh code the Irish groaned for a whole century, but they had been so crushed by William's blows that they never rose in rebellion again till 1798.