William had chosen Marshal Schomberg to command the expedition. Though past fourscore, the veteran was still active and fit for duty; and in reputation there was no better officer in Europe. On the 13th of August he landed with his army at Bangor and detached twelve regiments to besiege Carrickfergus. The garrison held out for a week, and was then permitted to capitulate and to march away to Newry. But that week was sufficient to open Schomberg's eyes. The new regiments proved to be mobs of undisciplined boys. Their officers were ignorant, negligent, and useless. The arms served out from the Tower were so ill-made, and the men so careless in the handling of them, that nearly every regiment required to be re-armed. The officers of artillery were not only ignorant and lazy, but even cowardly,[234] while their guns were so defective that a week of easy work had sufficed to render most of them unserviceable.[235] Senior officers were as deficient as junior: there was not one qualified to command a brigade; and the commissary, in spite of reports that he had made all needful provision, had failed to supply sufficient stores. Lastly, in spite of the warning given by the experience of Cunningham and Richards, the transport across St. George's Channel was so shamefully conducted that one regiment of horse, that now known as the Queen's Bays, lost every charger and troop-horse in the passage.[236] The result was that all was confusion, and that every detail in every department required the personal supervision of the Commander-in-Chief.
Fortunately James's Irish were so far demoralised by previous failures that his officer at Belfast thought it prudent to evacuate that town. Schomberg therefore threw a garrison into it, and marched with his whole force upon Newry. The Duke of Berwick, who was guarding the road, fell back on his approach to Drogheda, where James had collected twenty thousand men; and Schomberg, advancing through a wasted and deserted country, halted, and entrenched himself at Dundalk. James struggled forward to within a league of him to try and tempt him to an action, but Schomberg was not to be entrapped; and by the second week in September the campaign was over.
The fact was that a month's service in the field had completely broken the English Army down. By the time when it reached Dundalk it was on the brink of starvation. The Commissary-General, one Shales, was a man of experience, for he had been purveyor to King James's camp at Hounslow; and he had accumulated stores—bad stores, it is true, but nevertheless stores—at the base, Belfast. But he had made no provision for carrying any part of them with the Army. He had bought up large numbers of horses in Cheshire, but, instead of transporting them to Ireland, had let them out to the farmers of the district for the harvest, and pocketed their hire.[237] Again, the artillery could not be moved because the Ordnance Department looked to Shales to provide horses, while Shales declared the artillery to be no business of his. Moreover, had the horses been on the spot, there was not a shoe ready for their feet.[238] No measures had been taken, in spite of Schomberg's representations, to victual the troops by sea, though Cromwell had shown forty years before, in Scotland, how readily the work could be done. But indeed the expedition would have been better managed than it was by following the guidance of so old a master as King Edward the Third.[239] Never was there a more signal example of English ignorance, neglect, and sloth in respect of military administration.
By the 18th of September victuals at Dundalk were at famine price, and the men began to perish by scores and by hundreds. It was hardly surprising, for they were not only unfed but unclothed; there was not so much as a greatcoat in the whole of the English infantry; the cavalry were without cloaks, boots, and belts, and almost the entire force wanted shoes. Moreover, the English were shiftless; when ordered to build themselves huts they could not be at the pains to obey, even with the example of their Dutch and Huguenot comrades before them. Sickness spread rapidly among them, and there was no hospital; and had there been a hospital there were no medicines. Finally, the behaviour of the officers was utterly shameful. "The lions in Africa," wrote one who was on the spot, "are not more barbarous than some of our officers are to the sick."[240] "I never saw officers more wicked and more interested," wrote Schomberg almost on the same day.[241] The Commander-in-Chief did his best to interpose on behalf of the men, but his hands were already overfull. The colonels were perhaps the worst of all the officers; they understood pillage better than the payment of their men, and filled their empty ranks with worthless Irish recruits, simply because these were more easily cheated than English.[242] It cost Schomberg a week's work to ensure that the pay of the soldiers went into their own and not into their captains' pockets.
Yet on the whole it was not the military officers that were chiefly to blame. The constant complaint of Schomberg was that he could get no money; and for this the Treasurer of the Army was responsible. This functionary, William Harbord, a civilian and a member of the House of Commons, appears to have been on the whole the most shameless of all the officials in Ireland. By some jobbery he had contrived to obtain an independent troop of cavalry, for which he drew pay as though it were complete, though the troop in reality consisted of himself, two clerks whom he put down as officers, and a standard which he kept in his bedroom.[243] This was the only corps which was regularly paid. The other regiments he turned equally to his own advantage by sending home false muster-rolls[244] in order to draw the pay of the vacancies; but whenever the question of payment of the men was raised, he evaded it and went to England, pleading the necessity of attending to his duties in the House of Commons. It was Harbord again who was responsible for the failure of the hospital. He admitted, indeed, that if he had known as much about hospitals at the beginning as at the end of the campaign, he might have saved two-thirds of the men; but the truth was that he would never at any time supply a penny for it.[245] By Christmas Schomberg began to relent towards his officers, for he discovered that they were penniless, not having received a farthing of pay for four months.[246] Meanwhile civilians were growing fat. Shales was buying salt at ninepence a pound and selling it at four shillings;[247] and junior commissaries were acting as regimental agents and advancing money to the unhappy officers at exorbitant interest.[248]
Nov. 5.
In such a state of affairs Schomberg, rightly or wrongly, considered himself powerless. William ordered him from time to time to advance on Dublin; and Harbord, with incredible impertinence, urged him to march against the enemy.[249] Schomberg answered William by a plain statement of his condition, and Harbord by a surly and contemptuous growl. In truth his Dutch and Huguenot regiments, which alone were well clad and well looked after by their officers, were the only troops on which he could rely. The English continued to die like flies. Schomberg wisely endeavoured to distract their thoughts from their own misery by keeping them at drill. He found that not one in four had the slightest idea how to load or fire his musket, while the muskets themselves fell to pieces in the handling. Pestilence increased, and with it callousness and insubordination. The men used the corpses of their comrades to stop the draughts under their tent-walls, and robbed any man whose appearance promised hope of gain. Nor was this indiscipline confined to Dundalk. The Enniskilleners, who have generally been represented as superior to the English, were quite as fond of plunder, and robbed William Harbord himself, despite his protestations, in broad daylight.[250] Happily for Schomberg, James's forces were in as ill condition as his own, so that he was able to retire into winter quarters from Dundalk without molestation. Of fourteen thousand men in the camp, upwards of six thousand had perished.[251]
Gradually and painfully the winter wore away, but without abatement in the mortality of the troops. Meanwhile the House of Commons, awaking to the terrible state of things in Ireland, addressed the King for the arrest of Shales. William replied that he had already put him under arrest; and the name of Shales was accordingly constantly before the House in the course of the next few months, but without any result. He seems to have escaped scot-free; and indeed there was no lack of men as corrupt as he in the House of Commons and in all places of trust. William then took the extraordinary step of asking the House to appoint seven members to superintend the preparations for the next campaign; but this it very wisely declined to do. It appointed a Committee, however, to examine into the expenses of the war,[252] and finally passed a Mutiny Act with new clauses against false musters and other abuses—clauses which were as old as King Edward the Sixth, and for all practical purposes as dead. It was not legislation that was wanted, but enforcement of existing laws. William, however, appears early to have abandoned in despair the hope of finding an honest man in England.
1690.