and Manchester, Mr. Boyle, and many other persons of distinction. He appointed the whole of his army to rendezvous at Loughbrickland, and immediately set about organising his plans, and preparing his stores for an active campaign. Before we enter upon that, however, we must take a hasty glance at what Schomberg had done during the autumn, winter, and spring.
This was little for so numerous an army, commanded by so experienced a general. Schomberg was—it is true, eighty years of age—and many complained that time had diminished his fire, and that much more ought to have been effected. But William, who may be supposed a most competent judge, cast no blame upon him; on the contrary, he thanked him for having preserved his army at all, his troops having had to contend with all the horrors of a deficient and most villanous commissariat, as we have already shown.
Schomberg on landing had taken Carrickfergus, Newry, and Dundalk, where he entrenched himself. He had found the country through which he passed a perfect waste. It could afford him no provisions, and, if he were compelled to fall back, no shelter. James, on his landing, had advanced from Dublin to Drogheda, where he was with twenty thousand men, besides vast numbers of wild Irish, armed with scythes, pikes, and skeans. Cut Schomberg found himself in no condition for fighting. His baggage could not reach him for want of wagons, and from the state of the roads. His arms were many of them good for nothing, being the vile rubbish furnished by the contractors under the management of the fraudulent ministry and the infamous commissary-general Shales. His soldiers were suffering from want of proper clothing, shoes, beds, and tents. James advanced to Ardee, and the Irish were eager to fight, but Schomberg lay still, and wrote to William on the 27th of September, that the best thing ho could do was to lie still under the circumstances. This was very different conduct to what the coffee-house politicians of London were expecting from him. They contended that, with such an army, Schomberg ought very speedily to overrun all Ireland and drive James into the sea. William, however, was too old a general to expect any man to fight with soldiers who were half starving, fast falling into fever from bad food or none, and from lying in Irish bogs without bedding amid the rains and fogs of autumn. On the 12th of October Schomberg wrote again—"If your majesty was well informed of the state of our army and that of our enemy, the nature of the country, and the situation of the two camps, I do not believe you would incline to risk an attack. If we did not succeed, your majesty's army would be lost without resource. I make use of the term, for I do not believe, If it was once put into disorder, that it could be re-established." In fact, there was no fighting with an army sent out as English contractors and war ministers generally send out English armies if they be not well looked after. James, encouraged by Schomberg's caution, advanced from Ardee, posted his army in the face of Schomberg, and dared him to battle. Schomberg lay still, and he had good cause. Besides the disabling circumstances mentioned, he had got mutiny in his camp. Amongst the Huguenots in his service had enlisted a number of French refugees of a very low character, vagabonds, thieves, and deserters, who had passed themselves off as protestants, to escape from the French in Flanders; and these wretches were now discovered to be in full correspondence with Avaux, the French minister, engaging, for a pardon and employment under James, to play the traitors whenever they should be brought out to battle. Had Schomberg, therefore, been weak enough to be induced by James's bravado to go out, he would have seen several companies of the French go over to the enemy in the midst of the action—a circumstance which would have produced a fatal effect on his troops, many of them raw and undisciplined, and discontented with their treatment. Schomberg probed into the conspiracy, which was revealed through some intercepted letters; six of the ringleaders were hanged, and two hundred others sent under guard to England. This discovery cast suspicion on all the French refugees, and the English soldiers were in a state of indignation against them almost amounting to insubordination. This was no state of things for action.
Worse still, the soldiers were fast perishing with fever. Bad food, bad clothing, bad lodging, and drenching and continued rains without proper shelter, were fast doing their work on the English army. Schomberg did his best. He stimulated his soldiers to make roofs to their huts of turf and fern, and to make their beds of heather and fern, raised on dry mounds above the soaking rains. But all was in vain. The soldiers were become spiritless and demoralised. They were either too listless to move, or too excited by whisky, which they managed to get, to follow his recommendations. Scenes like those which appeared in London during the plague now horrified his camp. The soldiers gave way to wild license, drank, swore, sung bacchanalian songs, drank the devil's health, and made seats of the corpses of their dead comrades at their carouses, which they declared were the only ones they had to keep them out of the wet.
The sickness appeared at the same time in the English fleet which lay off the coast at Carrickfergus, and swept away almost every man from some of the vessels. By the commencement of November, Schomberg's army could not number more than five thousand effective men. The Irish in James's army did not suffer so much, and they rejoiced in the pestilence which was thus annihilating their heretic enemies. But the weather at length compelled James to draw off, first to Ardee, and then into winter quarters in different towns. Schomberg, thus set at liberty, quickly followed his example, and quartered his troops for the winter in the different towns of Ulster, fixing his head-quarters at Lisburn. His army had, however, lost above six thousand men by disease.
In February, 1690, the campaign commenced by the duke of Berwick, James's natural son, who attacked William's advanced post at Belturbet; but he met with such a reception that he nearly lost his life, being severely wounded and his horse killed under him. In fact, the condition of the two armies had been completely changed during the winter by the different management of the two commanders. Schomberg had been diligently exerting himself to restore the health and to perfect the discipline of his troops. As spring advanced he received the benefit of William's exertions and stern reforms in England. Good, healthy food, good clothing, bedding, tents, and arms arrived. Fresh troops
