Chapter XII: Reign of William and Mary (4)

Mary showed herself equal to the emergency in the absence of her husband. She applied to the Lord Mayor to know what state of defence the City was in, and received the most prompt and satisfactory answer. His lordship assured her that the City would stand by her to a man; that it had ten thousand men, well armed and disciplined, prepared to march, if necessary, at an hour's notice; that it would raise six regiments of foot and two regiments of horse at its own cost, and pay besides into the royal treasury a hundred thousand pounds. The country everywhere displayed the same loyalty. The yeoman cavalry of the different counties assembled in arms; those of Suffolk, Essex, Hertford, and Buckingham, marched to Hounslow Heath, where Mary received them amid acclamations of loyalty; she received the cavalry troops of Kent and Surrey on Blackheath. The militia was called out; noblemen hurried to their counties to take command of the forces there; and others, amongst whom was the lately recreant Shrewsbury, flocked to Whitehall to offer their lives and fortunes for the defence of the throne. The miners of Cornwall appeared, ten thousand in number, armed as best they might be, ready to expel the invaders. Those of the Jacobites who stubbornly retained their faith in James, who still designated him as the "stone which the builders had foolishly rejected," and who by their secret press urged the people to the assassination of William, and to vengeance on his Protestant supporters, slunk into hiding-places and remained prudently quiet. Even the non-juring clergy and bishops excited the indignation of the masses as men who encouraged by their conduct the hopes of the Papists; and the Bishop of Norwich was attacked in his palace, and was only rescued by the prompt measures of the authorities. The non-jurors were suspected of leaning not only to James, but to Popery; and a new liturgy, which had been printed and industriously circulated, praying, in no ambiguous words, for the restoration of James by a foreign invasion, and for the murder of William, was widely believed to proceed from them, although they strenuously denied it.

Such was the position of things in England when William returned from Ireland. In Scotland great changes had taken place. The remains of the Jacobite force in the Highlands had been effectually put down. In the spring of 1690 James had sent over an officer with the commission of General-in-Chief of the Jacobite forces in Scotland. General Buchan, therefore, took precedence of the drunken and incompetent Cannon; but all the troops that he could muster were not more than one thousand four hundred, and these were surprised and crushed by William's general, Sir Thomas Livingstone, who occupied Inverness. General Mackay completed the subjugation of the Highlands by building a fort at Inverlochy, called, after the king, Fort William, which effectually held the Camerons and Macdonalds in check. The last chance of James was over in that quarter.

At Edinburgh the battle with the disaffected politicians came very soon to a similar end. The most prominent of them, Montgomery, Ross, and Annandale, offered to yield their opposition if William would admit them to favour and office; but William disdained to purchase their adhesion, and they then, in resentment, flung themselves into the arms of James. The treaty was carried on through the medium of James's agent in London, one Neville Payne; and Mary, James's queen, sent over dispatches, creating Montgomery for his treason Earl of Ayr and Secretary of State, with a pension of ten thousand pounds to relieve his immediate necessities, for he was miserably poor and harassed by creditors. Ross was to be made an earl, and have the command of the Guards; and Annandale was to be a marquis, Lord High Commissioner, and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. But this measure, which the Court of St. Germains fondly fancied was going to give them the ascendency in the Scottish Parliament, produced an exactly contrary effect. The old Tory Jacobites were so much incensed at this favour shown to these renegade Whigs, whilst they themselves were passed over, that the whole plot went to pieces in an explosion of jealousy, and on the meeting of the nobles the new proselytes of Jacobinism, who were to have turned the scale in favour of the Stuart dynasty, were found to be utterly helpless and abandoned.

This turbulent and factious party being thus broken up, and some of them going over to the new Government voluntarily as the means of safety, and others being brought over by timely offers of place or money, the settlement of the affairs of Scotland became tolerably easy. The Presbyterian religion was declared the established religion of Scotland. Contrary to the will of William, a Toleration Act for that kingdom had been rejected. The confession of faith of the Westminster Assembly was adopted; the remaining Presbyterian ministers who had been rejected at the Restoration, now reduced from three hundred and fifty to sixty, were restored, and the Episcopalian ministers were forcibly ejected in turn, and Presbyterians installed. The old synodal polity was restored, and the sixty old restored ministers, and such as they should appoint, were ordered to visit all the different parishes, and see that none but godly ministers, sound in the Presbyterian faith, were occupying the manses and the pulpits. This, however, did not satisfy a section of the old Cameronian school. They complained that the Parliament had betrayed the Solemn League and Covenant, and had sworn, and had caused others to swear, to a non-Covenanting monarch, and they refused to bow the knee to this Baal. Thus a non-juring party sprang up also in Scotland. In William's opinion, however, too much had been done in the way of conformity; and on his return from Ireland he selected as Lord High Commissioner to Scotland Lord Carmichael, a nobleman of liberal mind, and accompanied this appointment by a letter to the General Assembly, declaring that he would never consent to any violent or persecuting measures, and that he expected the same from them. "We never," he nobly observed, "could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring churches expect from you, and what we recommend to you." And the determination of the monarch put a strong and beneficial restraint on the spirit of the religious zealots of the North.

William had returned from Ireland with a great accession of power and _éclat_. He had shown that the imbecile and bigoted James could not stand for a moment before him; he had reduced Ireland to such general subjection that the remaining insurgents in the south could not long hold out. To hasten this result, and to cut off the access of fresh reinforcements from France, he now sent out an expedition, which had been some time preparing under Marlborough, to reduce Cork and Kinsale, and garrison them for himself. That strange but able man, Marlborough, though he was at this very moment in full correspondence with the Court of St. Germains so as to meet all chances, and even the now remote one of James ever regaining the throne, though he was disliked and suspected by William and Mary, yet himself proposed this expedition, anxious to grasp some of the glory of re-conquering Ireland, and perhaps not inattentive to the equally attractive prospect of winning booty. Marlborough was already lying at Portsmouth with his squadron when William reached London; and sailing thence on the 18th, he landed at Cork on the 21st of September, with five thousand men. The Duke of Würtemberg there joined him with his four thousand Danes, together making a strong force, but which was in danger of becoming paralysed by the German duke insisting on taking the chief command on account of his superior rank. Marlborough was not a man willingly to resign any position likely to do him honour; but he consented to share the command, taking it on alternate days. With him he had also the Duke of Grafton, one of Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, who had fallen under suspicion of leaning to his uncle James, but, to prove his loyalty to William, came out as a volunteer. Cork was vigorously attacked, and in forty-eight hours it capitulated. The garrison, between four and five thousand men, surrendered as prisoners, and Marlborough promised to use his endeavours to obtain the favour of William for both them and the citizens. He forbade his troops to plunder, but was obliged to use force to repel the hordes of wild people who rushed in and began ransacking the Catholics. The Duke of Grafton fell in the attack.

Without losing a day, Marlborough sent forward his cavalry to Kinsale to demand its surrender, and followed with his infantry. The Irish set fire to the town, and retired into two forts, the Old Fort and the New Fort. The English, however, managed to put out the fire, and Marlborough arriving, invested the forts, and took the Old Fort by storm, killing nearly five hundred men, who refused to surrender. The garrison of the New Fort, after seeing Marlborough prepared to storm that too, yielded on condition that they might go to Limerick. They were twelve hundred strong. In this fort was found abundance of provisions, a thousand barrels of wheat, and eighty pipes of claret.

Having executed this mission, and secured the two forts for the king, Marlborough re-embarked, and reached London again in little more than a month from the day that he sailed from Portsmouth. William, astonished at the rapidity of this success, declared that there was no officer living who had seen so little service, who was so qualified for a general as Marlborough. The English people went still further, and declared their countryman had achieved more in a single month than the king's Dutch favourites in two campaigns.

On the 2nd of October William opened the new session of Parliament. He was received with the warmest demonstrations of attachment. He had shown himself strong, and James had shown himself weak. The country had been alarmed by the menace of invasion, and all parties were disposed to rally round the monarch who gave them every promise of security and pre-eminence. In his speech he paid the highest tribute to the bravery of the army, and declared that, had his affairs allowed him to have begun the campaign earlier, he should have been able to clear the whole country of the enemy. In order to do that in the ensuing campaign, and to put a check on the too conspicuous designs of the French, it would be essential to grant liberal supplies. He reminded them of the dishonour which had befallen the English flag, and of the necessity of promptness in Parliament to enable him to wipe away the stain, and to secure the reputation of England by crushing the efforts of the king of France.

His speech was received with loud acclamations. Thanks were voted for his achievements in Ireland, and to the queen for her able administration during his absence; and the Commons proceeded to vote supplies on a scale which had yet had no example. The army was fixed at sixty-nine thousand men, of whom twelve thousand were to consist of cavalry. The navy was to consist of twenty-eight thousand men; and the cost of the whole, including ordnance, was estimated at four million pounds. In return for this unprecedented force and unprecedented allowance for it, the Commons demanded that they should appoint a commission of nine to examine and bring forward the accounts: the commissioners to be all members of their own House. The proposition was acceded to without opposition by both the peers and the king, and a Bill, including the appointment of the commissioners, was prepared and passed. On the 15th of November a Bill received the royal assent for doubling the excise on beer, ale, and other liquors; and on the 20th of December another Bill passed for granting certain duties upon East India goods, wrought silks, and other merchandise; and a second Bill for increasing the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco.

In considering ways and means, the Commons proposed, as they had laid so many burdens on themselves, that the persons of all those who had been engaged in the rebellion in Ireland should be attainted, and their estates confiscated, and the proceeds be applied to the discharge of the expenses of the war; and they brought in and passed a Bill for that purpose. But the Lords did not appear inclined to sanction so wholesale a confiscation of the estates of all the Catholics of Ireland, as this would have amounted to; nor could it be very acceptable to the king, though they proposed to place a considerable portion of the forfeitures at his disposal. The Lords allowed the Bill to lie on their table, notwithstanding several urgent reminders from the Commons, and so at last it dropped. This must have been what William particularly desired, for it was contrary to his natural clemency to let loose the fiends of party fury after the sufficiently deadly evils of war, and it was contrary to his promises to many who had submitted on assurances of impunity; and having got the chief supplies which he wanted, he sought to shorten the Session as much as possible, by telling Parliament that, by a certain day, it was necessary for him to leave for Holland on important affairs. Yet, after the liberal votes of the Commons, still keeping in memory the disgrace of the navy, he added that, if some annual provision could be made for augmenting the navy, and building some new men-of-war, "it would be a very necessary care for that time, both for the honour and safety of the nation." The Commons thought so much the same that they voted an additional five hundred thousand pounds expressly for building new ships of war.

The last proceeding which marked this Session was the discovery of a fresh Jacobite plot. The Tory minister Caermarthen had long been the object of the particular enmity of the Whigs, and they were doing everything possible to undermine his influence. At last their efforts appeared to be growing perceptible. The king had introduced into the ministry, one after another, men to whom Caermarthen had a particular aversion, or who were particularly hostile to his power. Godolphin was made First Lord of the Treasury; Marlborough was rising fast in the military department; and Sidney was sent for by William from Ireland, without consulting Caermarthen, and appointed Secretary of State. His enemies were eagerly watching for the favourable moment to come down on the declining minister and complete his ruin, when he suddenly, at the very close of the year and the Session, laid before William all the particulars of a desperate plot of the Jacobites, which showed plainly enough that a minister of such vigilance was not to be lightly dispensed with. Fortune, however, rather than his own sagacity, had favoured the Prime Minister.

The anticipated absence of William from England in the spring appeared to offer a favourable conjuncture for James making another attempt for the recovery of the throne. The Jacobites, therefore, had met and concluded to send three of their number to St. Germains to consult with the Court there on the best means of effecting this object. It was proposed that James should make great protestations of his determination to allow of and secure the political and religious rights of all his subjects, and that he should come attended only by so moderate a force that it should not look like a French invasion. The opinions of the leading Jacobites were to be conveyed by these messengers in a packet of letters to be carefully concealed; and amongst the writers of these letters were the Earl of Dartmouth, Viscount Preston--so-called--and the Earl of Clarendon. This weak man, whom William had warned through Rochester of his knowledge of his practices, and who had declared that he would never again meddle with treason, was again as busy as ever. A vessel was engaged, called the _James and Elizabeth_, to carry over the three agents, namely, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott, who were to come on board on the last night of the year. The skipper of the _James and Elizabeth_, though offered extraordinary pay for the trip, suspecting what was the nature of his passengers, gave notice of the fact to Caermarthen, who sent and boarded the vessel at midnight, when the traitors were secured along with their papers, which were conveyed to the Secretary of State's office at Whitehall, where Caermarthen and Nottingham passed the night in examining the contents of the fatal packet, and the next morning laid them before the king.

This great discovery, which fell like a thunderbolt on the Jacobites, was scarcely less disconcerting to the Whigs. It was hopeless after this to attempt anything against so alert and trusty a minister. William, relieved from all apprehensions of danger by this timely discovery, left the three traitors in the custody of his Government, and the leaders yet at large under their eye, and hastened to get over to Holland. On the 5th of January he prorogued Parliament till the 31st of March; and in his farewell speech he said that he thought it proper to assure them that he should make no grants of the forfeited lands in England or Ireland; that those matters could be settled in Parliament in such a manner as should be thought most expedient. Unfortunately, this was a promise which William failed to keep, and which brought upon him no lack of trouble in the future. On the 6th, whilst his English subjects were indulging in all the festivities of the season, William set out, attended by a splendid train of courtiers, for the Hague, where a great Congress was appointed to consider the best means of resisting the aggressions of Louis of France. He was received by his subjects, after a dangerous voyage, with shouts of joy.

William's spirit and sound sense seemed to reanimate the drooping energies of the Allies. The quota of troops to be furnished by every prince was determined; it was agreed to bring two hundred and twenty thousand men into the field in spring, and never to rest till they had not only driven Louis from the territories of his neighbours, but had compelled him to give toleration to his Protestant subjects. These matters arranged, William made use of the influence which the new alliance with the Duke of Savoy gave him, to procure a cessation of the persecutions of the duke's Protestant subjects, the Waldenses. To him these simple mountain shepherds--Christians of a Church remaining independent of Rome from the earliest times--owed it that they could once more live in peace; that numbers of them were released from dungeons, and their children, who had been torn from them to be educated in Popery, were restored.

All being thus favourably settled, the princes dispersed to their several States, and William retired to obtain a short period of relaxation at Loo. But he was speedily roused from his repose. The proceedings of the Congress had been closely and anxiously watched by Louis of France. He saw that its deliberations were certain to produce a profound impression on Europe, and he resolved to neutralise this by one of his sudden and telling blows. At once all his available means and forces were put in motion. A hundred thousand soldiers were in rapid march on Mons, one of the most important fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands. Louis did not even trust the operations of this assault to his famous general, Luxemburg, and the greatest military genius of the age, Vauban; but he hurried to the scene of action himself, early as the season was--in March. Five days after the siege commenced Louis was there, accompanied by the Dauphin, the Dukes of Orleans and of Chartres. He pushed on the attack with vigour, to have it over before any assistance could arrive. Though suffering from the gout, he went about amongst the soldiers, encouraging them by the blandest and most familiar addresses; helped personally to bind up their wounds in the hospitals, and partook of the broth prepared for them. With his quick perception of the dangers from his adversaries, he had noticed the diversion which it was intended that the Duke of Savoy should make, by taking the field on that side; and he had suddenly thrown an army into Savoy, captured Nice, and provided the duke with enough to do to hold his own. By this means he had been able to bring from the Maritime Alps a large body of troops to this siege.

William was sensible of the disastrous effect which the fall of Mons would have on the spirits of his Allies, and on the Courts of Sweden and Denmark which had been brought to the point of joining the confederation; he therefore rushed from his place of temporary retirement, mustered the forces of the States-General, sent dispatches after the German princes, urging them to bring up all the troops they could collect to the rescue of Mons, and to the generals of the Spanish troops in Flanders. By forced marches he advanced towards the devoted city; but all the vices of confederations were now glaringly apparent in contrast to the single and prompt action of a despot. The German princes, naturally slow, were already far off; the Spanish generals were utterly unprepared for such an emergency; and William found it almost impossible to procure even horses to drag his artillery and stores. He sent on, however, hasty messengers to apprise the people of Mons of his approach; but the vigilance of the French prevented them from reaching the city. An immense quantity of artillery was thundering against the walls of Mons; breaches were made in them; a redoubt was carried, sword in hand; shells fell in showers on the roofs and streets of the town, which was burning in ten places. The inhabitants, appalled by the terrible destruction awaiting them, threatened to murder the garrison if they did not surrender; and the garrison, ignorant of the relief which William was bringing, surrendered on the 20th of April. William, deeply chagrined, returned to the Hague, and thence hastened back to London; whilst Louis, in proud triumph, returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations of his courtiers on his splendid _coup-de-main_.

On William's return to London, he found his Government had tried the traitors, Preston, Ashton, and Elliott. Preston and Ashton were found guilty, and sentenced to death; Elliott was not brought to trial. By some it has been asserted that the evidence of his being admitted into the real interior of the plot was not clear; by others, that he purchased his escape by disclosures. Ashton was hanged on the 18th of January--the very day on which William had embarked at Gravesend for Holland. Preston, after much vacillation between the desire to accept a proffered pardon and repugnance to the conditions attached to it--that of making a full disclosure of his accomplices--at length chose life and dishonour, and made charges against Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner Bishop of Ely, and William Penn. Clarendon was sent for a time to the Tower; Dartmouth, who was accused, as an admiral, of the heinous crime of intending to betray Portsmouth to the French, indignantly repelled the accusation, and died in the Tower without having been brought to trial. Turner escaped to France. Penn was accused of writing to James to assure him that, with thirty thousand men, he might command England. But this message to James rested on the evidence of the lying and infamous Melfort, who was totally unworthy of all belief; and Penn, so far from shrinking from the charge, went straight to Sidney, the Secretary of State, and denied the whole allegation. That he had a friendly feeling for and commiseration of James, he did not deny; but he declared himself a faithful subject of William and Mary, and, so far from being willing to aid any design against them, if he became aware of any such he would at once disclose it. Instead of clapping Penn in the Tower--which the Government would have done, had they any such letters inviting James to come over with thirty thousand men,--he was suffered to depart in full freedom. He afterwards made a religious journey on the Continent as a minister of the Society of Friends, and then he returned to England; but without any attempt on the part of Government to molest him.

But there were deeper and more real traitors than any of these around William--namely, Admiral Russell, Sidney Godolphin, and Marlborough. These men, encouraged by the fall of Mons and the triumphant aspect of Louis's affairs, renewed with fresh activity their intrigues with the Court of James. It was in vain that William heaped riches, honours, and places of confidence upon them; they were ready to receive any amount of favours, but still kept an eye open to the possible return of James, and made themselves secure of pardon from him, and kept him duly informed of all the intended movements of William both at home and on the Continent. Russell was made High Admiral in place of Torrington. He was Treasurer of the Navy, enjoyed a pension of three thousand pounds a year, and a grant from the Crown of property of great and increasing value near Charing Cross. But, with an insatiable greediness, he still complained of unrequited services; and, having a shoal of poor and hungry relatives badgering him for places and pensions, he complained that their incessant demands could not be gratified; and he cherished the hope that he could sell his treason at a favourable crisis to King James at no mean price. Godolphin was First Commissioner of the Treasury, sat in the Privy Council, and enjoyed the confidence of the sovereign; his former conduct in being one of the most pliant tools of James, ready to vote for his Act of Indulgence, being overlooked. Yet he was sworn, through the agency of a Mr. Bulkeley, to serve the interests of James. Hand in hand with him went Marlborough, who--though he was now fast overcoming the long-retained prejudices of William, and had been honoured by his commission in the expedition to Ireland, and by his warm approbation on his return, and had the prospect of a brilliant command of the army in Flanders, where he could indulge his highest ambition--was yet a most thorough traitor, making a hypocritical pretence of great sorrow to James for his desertion of him, and, through Colonel Sackville, and Lloyd, the non-juring Bishop of Norwich, offering, on a good opportunity, to carry over the whole army to James.

Amid these lurking treasons, the exultation of the Jacobites over the fall of Mons was open and insolent. They came by swarms out of their hiding-places, and thronged the Park and the neighbourhood of the Palace, even insulting the queen in her drives before William's return.

William's indignation on hearing these facts roused him to put the laws in force against the non-juring bishops. The most extraordinary lenity had been shown them. They had been suffered to reside in their sees and occupy their palaces; they had been offered to be excused taking the oaths on condition that they would live quietly, and discharge their ecclesiastical functions of ordaining ministers, confirming their young flocks, and other such duties, but without avail. Now that Turner was discovered in treasonable correspondence with St. Germains, and the rest refused to disavow what he had attributed to them in his letters, it was resolved to eject them. Sancroft was ejected from Lambeth, and Tillotson was nominated Archbishop of Canterbury in his place; Ken was removed from Bath and Wells, and Kidder instituted in his stead. In place of Turner, succeeded Dr. Patrick; Fowler was appointed to Gloucester, and Cumberland to Peterborough. Soon after Lamplugh, Archbishop of York, died and Dr. Sharp took his place. Sancroft continued to maintain all his old pugnacity, and nominated other bishops in opposition to William's Government as sees fell vacant. But perhaps the most savage outcry was raised on the appointment of Dr. Sherlock to the deanery of St. Paul's, vacated by the election of Tillotson to Canterbury. Tillotson himself was furiously assailed by the Jacobites as a thief and a false shepherd, who had stolen into the fold of the rightful pastor. Sherlock had been a zealous non-juror himself, but had been seriously convinced of the Scriptural ordinance to submit to any Government, whatever its origin, which was firmly established. He was, therefore, violently and scurrilously assailed as a perjured apostate. Amongst the ejected non-juring clergy, Henry Dodwell was so insolent, that William remarked, "That Dodwell wants me to put him in prison, but I will disappoint him." The magnanimous forbearance of William, and the audacious impertinence of the non-jurors in consequence, form a wonderful contrast.

Scarcely had William time to settle these affairs, and arrange the plan of campaign in Ireland, when he was compelled to return to Holland. Unaware as yet of the more recent treason of Marlborough, he took him with him. He had conceived the highest opinion of his military talents, and he was confirmed in this opinion, on his arrival at the Hague, by the Prince of Vaudemont, a distinguished commander in the Dutch service. He praised highly the Generals Talmash and Mackay; as to Marlborough, he declared that he had every quality of a general; that his very look showed it, and that he was certainly destined to do something great. William replied that he was of the same conviction.

William found himself at the head of seventy thousand men of various nations, the different contingents of the Allies, and the beginning of the campaign was very promising. He sent Marlborough on to Flanders to collect the forces there, and form a camp to cover Brussels against the advance of Luxemburg and the French. His convenient position no doubt suggested to James the idea of his immediate execution of his promised treason. James, therefore, sent him word that he expected his fulfilment of his engagement; but to this startling demand Marlborough replied that the time was not come. It was necessary to have first obtained a complete ascendency over the troops, or, instead of following him, they would abandon him, and the only consequence would be making things worse. William's immediate arrival put an end to the temptation, and he marched against Luxemburg, who retired before him. He next sent a detachment against Marshal Boufflers, who was besieging Liége, and, having succeeded in this, he crossed the Sambre, to endeavour to bring Luxemburg to an engagement. But this crafty general, who had an inferior though well-appointed army, took care to avoid a general action, calculating that William's army, made up of so many nonentities, would, if let alone, ere long go to pieces. Thus the summer was spent in marches and counter-marches without any result, except of wearying out the patience of William, who in September surrendered the command to the Prince of Waldeck, and retired to his favourite hunting-seat at Loo, and soon after returned to England.

The summer campaign was carried on by the Allies in other quarters with more or less success. In Spain the French made some barbarous inroads, but were vigorously repelled. They were more successful in their combat with the Duke of Savoy. Marshal Catinat took several of their towns, besieged Coni, and advanced within three leagues of Turin, the duke's capital. Just, however, as they were hoping for a signal triumph, they were arrested by the appearance of a new hero, destined, in co-operation with Marlborough, to shake to the foundations the power of Louis XIV. This was Eugene, Prince of Savoy. Eugene, being joined by young Schomberg with a few troops, and some money from William, at the suggestion of Schomberg made a sudden march across the mountains, raised the siege of Coni, and then, issuing on the plains, drove back Catinat, and regained Carmagnola. On the Rhine, where the Elector of Saxony commanded, nothing of moment was effected; but the French allies, the Turks, who were harassing Austria, received a severe defeat at Salankeman, on the Danube, which placed the Emperor of Germany at his ease.

The campaign in Ireland did not begin till June. The condition of that island during the winter was miserable in the extreme. The ravages which the Irish--mad with oppression, ignorance, and revenge, let loose by the frightful policy of James--had inflicted on the country from the north to the south, such as we have described them, must necessarily have left it a prey to famine, chaos, and crime. In the north, where the Protestants had regained the power, there was the commencement of restoration. Those who had fled to England with their movable property came swarming back. It was, indeed, to towns burnt down and fields laid waste; but they brought with them money, and, still more, indomitable energies, which impelled them instantly to begin rebuilding their dwellings, at least in such a manner as to shelter them from the elements, and to cultivate and sow their fields. Commerce came back with them; and the estuaries of the Foyle, the Lagan, the Bann, the Carlingford, and the Boyne were busy with ships and boats pouring in food, seed, and live-stock. So soon as Nature had time to do her part and to ripen her crops, there would be once more comparative plenty, and there was an animating prospect of a secure permanence of peace and order. But in the south, and still more the south-west, where the troops of James still held their ground, the condition of things was as appalling as can be conceived. In the north the Protestants kept a tight hand on the native Irish; they refused them the possession of arms; they forbade them to proceed more than three miles from their own dwellings, except to attend market; and not more than five Papists were to meet together on any occasion or pretence. They forbade them to approach the frontier within ten miles, to prevent them from communicating with the enemy. If outrages were committed, they were visited with unsparing severity. But if the north was strict and yet struggling, the south was in a fearful state of calamity. The soldiers traversed the country, levying contributions of cattle and provisions wherever they could find them. They were no better than so many bandits and rapparees, who swarmed over the desolated region, carrying violence, terror, and spoliation wherever they came. There was no money but James's copper trash, bearing high nominal values. Provisions and clothes, where they were to be had, fetched incredible prices; and merchants feared to approach the ports, because they were in as much danger of wholesale robbery as the shopkeepers and farmers on land.

In the Irish camp the utmost license, disorder, and destitution prevailed. The Duke of Berwick was elected to command during the absence of Tyrconnel in France; but his power was a mere fiction, and he let things take their course. Sarsfield was the only officer who had any real influence with the soldiers. But early in the spring Tyrconnel returned, bringing some supplies of money and clothing; and in April a fleet also arrived, bringing arms, ammunition, flour, and provisions. With these came what was much needed--two general officers--St. Ruth and D'Usson. St. Ruth was a general of considerable experience. He had lately served in Savoy, and had the _prestige_ of victory; but he was vain and cruel, was mortally hated by the Huguenots for his persecutions of them, and was called by them "the hangman." His very name, therefore, was a guarantee for the Huguenot troops in the English service fighting to the utmost. He was astonished and disgusted at the dirty, ragged, and disorderly crew that bore the name of the Irish army; but he began actively to repress their license, and to drill them into some discipline.

On the 6th of June Ginkell took the field against him with a body of efficient troops, reinforced by some excellent regiments from Scotland, and having now under his command Talmash and Mackay, two brave officers. At the head of the French refugees was the Marquis Ruvigny, the brother-in-law of General Caillemot, who fell at the Boyne. On the 7th Ginkell reached Ballymore, and compelled the fortress there, containing a garrison of one thousand men, to surrender, and sent all the prisoners to Dublin. Having placed the fortress, which stood on an island in the lake, in good defence, he marched forward, and, on the 18th, sat down before the very strongly-fortified town of Athlone. On his march he had been joined by the Duke of Würtemberg and his Danish division.

Athlone stood on the Shannon, the river cutting it in two. The stream there was deep and rapid, and was spanned by a bridge on which stood two mills, worked by the current below, and on the Connaught side was a strong fort, called King John's Fort, with a tower seventy feet high, and flanking the river for a distance of two hundred feet. The town on the Leinster side, where Ginkell was, was defended by bold earthen ramparts, the most indestructible of any kind by cannon. Ginkell, however, lost no time in attacking it. On the 20th his cannon were all in order for bombarding, and he opened a terrible fire on the town. Under cover of his fire the troops rushed to the walls, and the French refugees were the first to mount a breach, and one of them, flinging his grenade, fell with a shout of triumph. His example was quickly followed. The assailants sprang over the walls in hundreds, clearing the way with hand grenades; and the Irish giving way, there was a hot pursuit along the bridge, by which they sought to escape into the other half of the town. The crash and confusion there were such, that many of the flying Irish were trodden under foot, and others were forced over the parapets of the bridge, and perished in the Shannon. The near side of the town was in Ginkell's possession, with the loss of only twenty men killed and forty wounded.

The cannonade was continued on the bridge and on the town across the river, and the next day it was repeated with increased effect from batteries thrown up along the river bank. The next morning it was discovered that the mills were greatly damaged; one, indeed, had taken fire, and its little garrison of sixty men had perished in it. A great part of the fort had also been beaten down. The French officers had constructed a _tête-de-pont_ at the end of the bridge to assist the fort, had broken down some of the arches, and made the conquest of a passage by the bridge next to impossible. To add to the difficulty of the enterprise, St. Ruth had hastened from Limerick with an army superior in numbers to that of Ginkell. But this force was more imposing in appearance than formidable in reality. St. Ruth, calculating on the difficulty of the passage, imagined that he could hold the place with little loss till the autumnal rains drove the English from the field through sickness. He therefore ordered D'Usson to attend to the defence of the passage, and fixed his camp about three miles from the town.

There was a weak spot, however, which was pointed out to Ginkell--a ford at some little distance from the bridge. It is true that a force was posted to guard this ford, commanded by Maxwell, an officer who had recently been to St. Germains with dispatches from the Duke of Berwick, and was put into command at this ford by Tyrconnel in defiance of St. Ruth--the interference of Tyrconnel in military affairs, much to the disgust of St. Ruth, being as constant as if he were commander-in-chief as well as lord-lieutenant. Sarsfield soon became aware of the design of Ginkell to attempt this ford, and warned St. Ruth of it. But the vanity of that officer made him treat the warning with scorn. "What!" said he, "attempt the ford; they dare not do it, and I so near." Warned again, he exclaimed, "Monsieur! Ginkell's master ought to hang him for attempting to take Athlone, and mine ought to hang me if I let him." Sarsfield, who knew better what the enemy dared do, said as he withdrew, "He does not know the English."

Ginkell himself, after reconnoitring the ford and the breastwork opposite, had no great desire for the attempt. He continued the cannonade on the fort and town till the end of June, and it became necessary, from the want of forage, to advance or retreat. A council of war was called. Mackay was against the attempt, but Würtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny were for it, and Ginkell, though hesitatingly, consented. There was observed a degree of carelessness in the Irish soldiers guarding the ford; there had been a rumour in their camp that the English were about to retreat in despair, and the light-hearted Hibernians had begun to relax their vigilance, and to gamble and idle about. It was resolved to seize the opportunity and dash over at once. Fifteen hundred grenadiers were selected for the service, and a handsome present was distributed to each man. The Duke of Würtemberg, Talmash, and a number of other officers volunteered to accompany them as privates, and the spirits of the men rose to enthusiasm. In memory of the auspicious day at the Boyne they stuck each a green twig in their hats, and, locking their arms twenty abreast, they plunged into the stream. In their ardour they lifted up the Duke of Würtemberg and bore him on their shoulders. Six battalions were drawn up ready to support them, under the command of Mackay. The stream, even at the ford, was deep enough to reach their chins, and very strong; but the resolute men pressed on, and soon got firm footing, and, with a stunning shout, reached the other bank. The Irish, suddenly aroused to the danger, hurried to the bank, fired a single volley, and broke. The grenadiers the next moment were over the breastwork, and in full pursuit of the enemy. In a few minutes they had chased the guards from the head of the bridge; planks were thrown over the broken arches, and the troops, rushing over, enabled others to cross in rude pontoons; and in less than an hour the English were masters of the town, with the loss of only twelve men killed and about thirty wounded.

D'Usson made a vain attempt to regain the town; he was repelled with ruinous loss, and was himself thrown down by the flying rout and nearly trampled to death. St. Ruth, when he heard that the town was taken, exclaimed, "Taken! that is impossible, and I close at hand." But he found it no longer safe to be so close at hand. In the night, covered with shame at his folly and absurd confidence, he struck his tents, and made a hasty retreat towards Aghrim, where, encouraged by the natural strength of bogs and hills, he halted and entrenched himself. There was the fiercest bickering in the camp; the French party and the Irish charging each other with the misfortune. St. Ruth, to excuse himself, laid the blame on Maxwell, whose duty it was to guard the ford. Maxwell was not there to defend himself, for his soldiers fled faster than he, and he was made prisoner. But Tyrconnel, who had always supported Maxwell, protested that he had done his duty like a brave man, and had, along with himself, repeatedly warned St. Ruth of his temerity. The dispute rose so high that Tyrconnel quitted the camp, and retired to Limerick in high dudgeon.

Being relieved from the presence and interference of Tyrconnel, St. Ruth again resolved to fight. He was stung by the loss of reputation which he had sustained at Athlone, and by the reflection of its injurious impression at the Court of France. Sarsfield, one of those Cassandra-like counsellors who give the most prudent advice but are never listened to, attempted to dissuade him. He pointed out how far superior in discipline and bottom were the troops of Ginkell to those which he now commanded, and recommended a system of excursive warfare, which should harass and, by seizing favourable crises, defeat the English piecemeal. His words were lost on St. Ruth, who prepared for the approach of Ginkell by going amongst his soldiers personally to rouse their desire to reconquer their good name, and by sending the priests amongst them to stimulate them by religious motives. Ginkell did not let him wait long. As soon as he had settled the defences of Athlone, he pursued his march towards Aghrim.

On the 12th of July he came up with the army of St. Ruth, and found it very strongly posted. Before him was a morass of half a mile across; beyond the morass rose the hills round the old ruined castle of Aghrim, and at their feet, between them and the bog, the infantry were strongly entrenched, and supported by the cavalry posted commandingly on the slopes of the hills. Difficult as was the approach, it was recommended by Mackay to make an instant attack, whilst the spirits of the troops were high from the first sight of the enemy they had so lately beaten. The battle was determined on, though it was getting late in the afternoon. The infantry struck boldly into the red bog, and plunged on courageously, though often up to their waists in mud and water. Mackay led his horse against their right, and Eppinger's dragoons and Portland's horse advanced against their left. The cavalry found their way through the bogs very difficult; the Dutch and English dragoons met with a repulse in the pass of Urachree, and the infantry were in front of the enemy long before the cavalry could operate on the wings. The Irish infantry that day fought bravely. They poured a fierce fire into the English, and were well supported by the horse. The battle became desperate; the English fought their way into the entrenchments, and drove the Irish up one of the hills; but there they found two old Danish forts, the old castle of Aghrim, and every hedge and thicket lined with muskets. The contest was unequal, and the infantry found themselves at length driven back to the margin of the bog. Elated at the sight, St. Ruth exclaimed, "The day is ours! Now will we drive these English back to the gates of Dublin!"

But he was deceived. Talmash rallied the foot, and led them again to the conflict; and whilst the struggle was renewed and the day fast closing, St. Ruth perceived the horse of Mackay and Ruvigny, the English and Huguenot cavalry, approaching on the right. They came over but a few soldiers abreast, through a narrow track between the bogs; but they soon formed in a dense body, and St. Ruth rode off to encounter them and stop them from out-flanking his force. As he galloped up towards them, a cannon-shot carried off his head. The officers threw a cloak over his body to prevent his fall from disheartening his men. But the absence of command was soon felt. The English fought with fresh fury; and Sarsfield, who was in the rear with the reserve, waiting orders, did not advance till the Irish ranks were broken and all was over. The flight became general. The English horse pursued and hewed down the fugitives as long as they could see; and had not Sarsfield covered the miserable fugitives with his horse, scarcely a man of the infantry would have been left.

The English army camped for the night on the ground which had been occupied by the enemy. Nearly twenty thousand English and their allies entered the battle against something more than the same number of Irish and French. On the side of the English six hundred were killed and one thousand wounded. On the part of the Irish four thousand fell on the field, and nearly as many are said to have perished in the flight. The panic-stricken multitude, flinging their arms away, continued their flight, some of them to Limerick, and others to Galway, where D'Usson was now in command. Whole waggon-loads of muskets and other arms were picked up and purchased by Ginkell at a few pence apiece.

The English spent the next day in burying their own dead; but left the corpses of the Irish on the field, and marched forward to attack Galway. D'Usson, who had about two thousand five hundred men in Galway, made at first a show of resistance, calculating on the assistance of Baldearg O'Donnell. But O'Donnell, after endeavouring in vain to bargain for an earldom, consented to accept five hundred pounds a year and a commission in William's army. This unexpected event compelled D'Usson to surrender, on condition that he might march out and join the Irish army in its last place of retreat, Limerick.

Ginkell soon followed and invested the town. The last struggle for a monarch little worthy the cause of so much bloodshed was now to be fought out. At Limerick the Irish were to make their last stand for the possession of their native country. If they failed here, the Saxon remained absolute lord of their soil.

On the 14th of August the advanced guard of Ginkell's army appeared in sight of Limerick. On the same day Tyrconnel, who was in authority in this city, died of apoplexy, and D'Usson and Sarsfield were left in full command of the troops. A commission was produced, which appointed three lords-justices--Plowden, Fitton, and Nagle; but the city was in reality a military garrison, and the military ruled. There were fifteen thousand infantry in the town, and three or four thousand cavalry posted on the Clare side of the Shannon, communicating with the town on the island by the Thomond bridge. By this means communication was kept up with the country on that side, so that provisions might be brought in; and several cargoes of biscuits and other dry stores were imported from France. The country all around, however, had been so swept by successive forages, that it was difficult to collect any cattle or corn, and the stoutest hearts were little confident of being able to maintain a long defence.

Ginkell took possession of the Limerick side of the town, and reoccupied the ground before held by the besiegers. He commenced by erecting fresh batteries of far heavier cannon than William brought to bear on the city, and soon poured a fiery storm of balls and shells into it, which crashed in the roofs and laid whole streets desolate. At the same time a squadron of English men-of-war sailed up the Shannon, and closed access to the city or escape from it by water. The town, however, held out till the 22nd of September, when Ginkell, beginning to fear the rains and fevers of autumn, and that they might compel him to draw off, and thus continue the war to another year, determined to obtain possession of the bridge, and attack the cavalry on the other side. He therefore passed the river by a bridge of William's tin boats, and, assaulting the cavalry, put them to utter rout. They left their camp with many arms and much store of provisions, and fled with as much precipitation as they had done from Aghrim, scattering again the whole country with their arms. Ginkell next attacked the fort which defended the bridge, carried it and the bridge, and thus was able to invest the whole town. In the haste to draw up the movable part of the bridge nearest to the city, the soldiers retreating from the fort were shut out, and a terrible massacre was made of them on the bridge. Out of eight hundred men only one hundred and twenty escaped into Limerick.