Among King James’s chosen intimates and advisers during his residence in Dublin, the most distinguished were the Duke of Tyrconnel, the Earl of Melfort, Secretary of State; Count D’Avaux, the French Ambassador; Lord Mountcashel, Colonel Sarsfield, afterward so famous; Most Rev. Dr. McGuire, Primate of Ireland, and Chief Justice Lord Nugent. He generally attended Mass every morning in the Chapel Royal, and, on Sundays, assisted at solemn High Mass. One Sunday, he was attended to the entrance of the chapel by a loyal Protestant lord, whose father had been a Catholic, as James’s had been a Protestant. As he was taking his leave, the king remarked, rather dryly: “My lord, your father would have gone farther.” “Very true, sire,” responded the witty nobleman, “but your Majesty’s father would not have gone so far!”
The Dublin of that time was not, in any sense, the attractive city it is to-day. Beyond the great cathedrals and the ancient Castle, there was little to attract the eye, except the beauty of the surroundings, which are still the admiration of all visitors. A century after the reign of King James, Dublin, from an architectural standpoint, became one of the most classical of European capitals; and the Houses of Parliament, the Four Courts, the Custom House, and other public buildings, became the pride of the populace. These monuments of Irish genius still exist, although shorn of their former glory; but they serve, at least, to attest what Ireland could accomplish under native rule. There is not a penny of English money in any of these magnificent structures. All the credit of their construction belongs to the Irish Parliaments of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER IV
Composition of the Hostile Armies—King William Arrives in Ireland—Narrowly Escapes Death on Eve of Battle
DURING the spring and early summer of 1690, the war clouds began to mass themselves heavily in the northeastern portion of the island, where Duke Schomberg, his depleted army somewhat recruited, still held his ground at Dundalk, with small garrisons posted throughout Ulster. But it was soon known that William of Orange, in person, was to command in chief in this fateful campaign. Several engagements, with varying fortune, had occurred between the rival armies in different parts of the north country, where the Duke of Berwick waged a vigorous campaign against the Williamites. James, dissatisfied with the French Ambassador, D’Avaux, and Lieutenant-General De Rosen, demanded, and obtained, their recall by King Louis. By an arrangement between the two monarchs, Mountcashel’s command of 6,000 men was exchanged for 6,000 French troops, under Lieutenant-General De Lauzun, who eventually proved to be even a greater marplot and blunderer than the odious De Rosen. Mountcashel’s force formed the Old Irish Brigade, of immortal memory, in the French service, and almost immediately after its arrival in France was sent to operate under the famous Lieutenant-General St. Ruth in Savoy. It also served in several campaigns under the great Marshal Catinat, “Father Thoughtful,” as he was fondly called by the French army. The exchange proved a bad bargain for Ireland, as will be seen in the course of this narration. James hoped much from the skill and daring of the French contingent, but was doomed to bitter disappointment. “His troops,” says McGee, “were chiefly Celtic and Catholic. There were four regiments commanded by O’Neills, two by O’Briens, one each by McCarthy More, Maguire, O’More, O’Donnell, McMahon, and Magennis, chiefly recruited among their own clansmen. There were also the regiments of Sarsfield, Nugent, De Courcy, Fitzgerald, Grace, and Burke, chiefly Celts in the rank and file. On the other hand, Schomberg led into the field the famous Blue and White Dutch regiments; the Huguenot regiments of Schomberg (the Younger), La Millinier, Du Cambon, and La Caillemotte; the English regiments of Lords Devonshire, Delamere, Lovelace, Sir John Lanier, Colonels Langston, Villiers, and others; the Anglo-Irish regiments of Lords Meath, Roscommon, Kingston, and Drogheda, with the Ulstermen under Brigadier Wolseley and Colonels Gustavus Hamilton, Mitchellburn, Lloyd, White, St. John, and Tiffany.”
The absence of a fleet, the entire navy having gone over to William, placed James at a great disadvantage, and explains why there were no sea fights of importance in British and Irish waters during this war. Isolated French squadrons could not be expected to make headway against the united navies of Britain and Holland. William, on the contrary, had the seas wide open to him, and, on June 14, 1690, he landed at Carrickfergus with reinforcements and supplies for his army in Ireland, and accompanied by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Portland, Manchester, Oxford, and Scarborough; General Mackay, General Douglas, and many other warriors well known to British and Continental fame. He established headquarters at Belfast and caused a muster of all his forces, which showed him to be at the head of about 40,000 men, mostly veterans, and made up of contingents from Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland, Brandenburg, England, Scotland, Ulster, together with the exiled Huguenot regiments of France and the Anglo-Irish battalions of the Pale. Allowing for detachments, William had under him an army of, at least, 36,000 effective men, officered by the best military talent of the period.
James, according to all Irish and some British authorities, commanded a force of 17,000 Irish, of whom alone the cavalry, numbering, probably, from five to six thousand men, were considered thoroughly trained. In addition, he had 6,000 well-appointed French infantry, under De Lauzun, which brought his total up to some 23,000 men, with only twelve pieces of cannon. William, on the other hand, possessed a powerful and well-appointed artillery. Once again, James was advised not to oppose his comparatively weak and ill-disciplined army to an encounter with the veteran host of William, and again the advantages of the defensive line of the Shannon were pointed out to him. But he would not listen to the voice of prudence, and marched northward to meet his rival, almost immediately after learning of his debarkation at Carrickfergus. The Stuart army reached Dundalk about June 22, when William was reported to be at Newry. His scouts were soon seen on the neighboring heights, and the Franco-Irish forces fell back on the river Boyne, and took post on the southern bank, within a few miles of Drogheda. The Irish camp was pitched immediately below the hill of Donore and near the small village of Oldbridge, in the obtuse salient, pointing northwestward, formed by the second bend in the river in its course from Slane—about six miles from Oldbridge—to the sea. In the chart of the battle, published by the Rev. George Story, King William’s chaplain, in 1693, three strong batteries are shown in front of the right of the Irish army, on the south bank of the Boyne, and one protecting its left opposite to the point where the Mattock rivulet falls into the main river. But no Irish account mentions these batteries. Some critics have thought it strange that the Williamites, instead of making a long and tedious movement by Slane, did not endeavor to attack both sides of the river salient at once, and thus place the Irish army between two fires. The water, apparently, was no deeper above than below the rivulet, but even were it deeper, William had with him a well-appointed bridge train, and the feeble battery, if any existed at all, would be insufficient to check the ardor of his chosen veterans. On the summit of Donore Hill, which slopes backward for more than a mile from the river, stood a little church, with a graveyard and some huts beside it. Even in 1690, it was an insignificant ruin, but it is noted in Anglo-Irish history as marking the headquarters of King James during the operations on the Boyne.
The right wing of the Irish army extended itself toward that smaller part of Drogheda which is situated on the south bank of the river, in the County Meath. The centre faced the fords in front of Oldbridge, where several small shoals, or islands, as marked in Story’s map, rendered the passage of an attacking force comparatively easy of accomplishment. The left wing stretched in the direction of Slane, where there was a bridge, and, nearer to the Irish army, a ford practicable for cavalry. James was urged to strengthen this wing of his army, sure to be attacked, the day before the battle, but he could only be induced to send out some cavalry patrols to observe the ground. When the tide, which backs the water up from below Drogheda, is out, many points on the river in front of the Irish position are easily fordable, and there has been little or no change in the volume of the current during the last two centuries. Therefore, the Boyne presented no such formidable obstacle to a successful crossing as some imaginative historians have sought to make out. Neither did nature, in other respects, particularly favor the Irish in the choice of their ground. Their army occupied a fairly good defensive position, if its advantages had been properly utilized. King James interfered with the plans of his generals, as it was his habit to interfere in every department of his government, not at all to the advantage of the public service. An able general, such as William or Schomberg was, might have made the Irish ground secure; that is, with sufficient cannon to answer the formidable park brought into action by the enemy. The Irish army was in position on June 29, and on the following day, King William, accompanied by his staff and escort, appeared on the opposite heights. His main army was concealed behind the hills in the depression now known as King William’s Glen. With his customary daring activity, the astute Hollander immediately proceeded to reconnoitre the Jacobite position, of which he obtained a good view, though some of the regiments were screened by the irregularities of the ground. Although within easy range of the Irish lines, he was not molested for some time. Having concluded his observations, William, with his officers, dismounted. Lunch was spread on the grass by the attendants, and the party proceeded to regale themselves. They were allowed to finish in peace, but when they remounted and turned toward their camp, the report of a field-piece came from the Irish side. A round shot ricochetted and killed a member of the escort. A second ball caught the king upon the shoulder, tore his coat and broke the skin beneath it. He fell forward on his horse, but immediately recovered himself, and the entire party rode rapidly out of range. The Irish officers, who had observed the confusion caused by the second shot, imagined that William had been killed. The news was circulated in the camp, speedily traveled to Dublin, and soon found its way to Great Britain and the Continent. But William was not dead. After the surgeons had dressed his wound, he insisted on again mounting his horse, and, like Napoleon when he was wounded in front of Ratisbon, in 1809, showed himself to the army, whose shouts of joy speedily informed the Irish troops that their able enemy was still in the saddle. A brisk cannonade, which did but little damage, was then exchanged between the two armies. It was the noisy prelude of a much more eventful drama. On the morrow was to be decided the fate not alone of the ancient Stuart dynasty, but also of Ireland, with all Europe for witnesses. Night put an end to the artillery duel, and the hostile hosts, except the sentinels, disposed themselves to sleep. History fails to record the watchword of King James’s army, but Chaplain Story is authority for the statement that the word in William’s camp was “Westminster.” The soldiers on both sides, to use the military phrase, “slept upon their arms.”