No More Learning

As he had
no connection with the United Provinces, and had never belonged to the
little Court of the Hague, the preference given to him over English
captains was justly ascribed, not to national or personal partiality,
but to his virtues and his abilities. His deportment differed widely
from that of the other foreigners who had just been created English
peers. They, with many respectable qualities, were, in tastes, manners,
and predilections, Dutchmen, and could not catch the tone of the society
to which they had been transferred. He was a citizen of the world, had
travelled over all Europe, had commanded armies on the Meuse, on the
Ebro, and on the Tagus, had shone in the splendid circle of Versailles,
and had been in high favour at the court of Berlin. He had often been
taken by French noblemen for a French nobleman. He had passed some time
in England, spoke English remarkably well, accommodated himself easily
to English manners, and was often seen walking in the park with English
companions. In youth his habits had been temperate; and his temperance
had its proper reward, a singularly green and vigorous old age. At
fourscore he retained a strong relish for innocent pleasures: he
conversed with great courtesy and sprightliness: nothing could be in
better taste than his equipages and his table; and every cornet of
cavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the veteran appeared in
Hyde Park on his charger at the head of his regiment, [426] The House
of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated his losses and
rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before
he set out for Ireland, he requested permission to express his gratitude
for this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the bar. He
took his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in a
few graceful words returned his thanks and took his leave. The Speaker
replied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under which
they already lay to His Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the
head of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal
and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always
be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on
this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a
hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting
still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had
acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July
1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return
thanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude. Few things
illustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the English
government and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons,
a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, have
adhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College of
Heralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering,
should have been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in the
nineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace which
had been held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held in
the same position at the right hand of Wellington, [427]

On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantly
engaged in business during seven months, broke up, by the royal command,
for a short recess. The same Gazette which announced that the Houses had
ceased to sit announced that Schomberg had landed in Ireland, [428]

During the three weeks which preceded his landing, the dismay and
confusion at Dublin Castle had been extreme. Disaster had followed
disaster so fast that the mind of James, never very firm, had been
completely prostrated. He had learned first that Londonderry had
been relieved; then that one of his armies had been beaten by the
Enniskilleners; then that another of his armies was retreating, or
rather flying, from Ulster, reduced in numbers and broken in spirit;
then that Sligo, the key of Connaught, had been abandoned to the
Englishry. He had found it impossible to subdue the colonists, even when
they were left almost unaided. He might therefore well doubt whether it
would be possible for him to contend against them when they were backed
by an English army, under the command of the greatest general living.
The unhappy prince seemed, during some days, to be sunk in despondency.
On Avaux the danger produced a very different effect. Now, he thought,
was the time to turn the war between the English and the Irish into a
war of extirpation, and to make it impossible that the two nations could
ever be united under one government. With this view, he coolly submitted
to the King a proposition of almost incredible atrocity. There must be
a Saint Bartholomew. A pretext would easily be found. No doubt, when
Schomberg was known to be in Ireland, there would be some excitement in
those southern towns of which the population was chiefly English. Any
disturbance, wherever it might take place, would furnish an excuse for a
general massacre of the Protestants of Leinster, Munster, and
Connaught, [429] As the King did not at first express any horror at this
suggestion, [430] the Envoy, a few days later, renewed the subject, and
pressed His Majesty to give the necessary orders. Then James, with a
warmth which did him honour, declared that nothing should induce him to
commit such a crime. "These people are my subjects; and I cannot be
so cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under my
government. " "There is nothing cruel," answered the callous diplomatist,
"in what I recommend. Your Majesty ought to consider that mercy to
Protestants is cruelty to Catholics. " James, however, was not to be
moved; and Avaux retired in very bad humour. His belief was that the
King's professions of humanity were hypocritical, and that, if the
orders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only because
His Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country would
fall on the Protestants without waiting for orders, [431] But Avaux
was entirely mistaken. That he should have supposed James to be as
profoundly immoral as himself is not strange. But it is strange that
so able a man should have forgotten that James and himself had quite
different objects in view. The object of the Ambassador's politics was
to make the separation between England and Ireland eternal. The object
of the King's politics was to unite England and Ireland under his
own sceptre; and he could not but be aware that, if there should be a
general massacre of the Protestants of three provinces, and he should
be suspected of having authorised it or of having connived at it, there
would in a fortnight be not a Jacobite left even at Oxford, [432]

Just at this time the prospects of James, which had seemed hopelessly
dark, began to brighten. The danger which had unnerved him had roused
the Irish people. They had, six months before, risen up as one man
against the Saxons. The army which Tyrconnel had formed was, in
proportion to the population from which it was taken, the largest that
Europe had ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession of
defeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It
was the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe those
defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] That
this was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every
war which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during five
generations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formed
existed in great abundance among the Irish. Avaux informed his
government that they were a remarkably handsome, tall, and well made
race; that they were personally brave; that they were sincerely attached
to the cause for which they were in arms; that they were violently
exasperated against the colonists. After extolling their strength and
spirit, he proceeded to explain why it was that, with all their strength
and spirit, they were constantly beaten. It was vain, he said, to
imagine that bodily prowess, animal courage, or patriotic enthusiasm
would, in the day of battle, supply the place of discipline. The
infantry were ill armed and ill trained. They were suffered to pillage
wherever they went. They had contracted all the habits of banditti.
There was among them scarcely one officer capable of showing them their
duty. Their colonels were generally men of good family, but men who had
never seen service. The captains were butchers, tailors, shoemakers.
Hardly one of them troubled himself about the comforts, the
accoutrements, or the drilling of those over whom he was placed. The
dragoons were little better than the infantry. But the horse were, with
some exceptions, excellent. Almost all the Irish gentlemen who had
any military experience held commissions in the cavalry; and, by
the exertions of these officers, some regiments had been raised and
disciplined which Avaux pronounced equal to any that he had ever seen.
It was therefore evident that the inefficiency of the foot and of the
dragoons was to be ascribed to the vices, not of the Irish character,
but of the Irish administration, [434]

The events which took place in the autumn of 1689 sufficiently proved
that the ill fated race, which enemies and allies generally agreed
in regarding with unjust contempt, had, together with the faults
inseparable from poverty, ignorance, and superstition, some fine
qualities which have not always been found in more prosperous and more
enlightened communities. The evil tidings which terrified and bewildered
James stirred the whole population of the southern provinces like the
peal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was lost, that the
English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile
nations was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three and
twenty counties. One last chance was left; and, if that chance failed,
nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxon
colony and of the heretical church. The Roman Catholic priest who had
just taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the Roman
Catholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of the
shouting tenantry into the hall of his fathers, would be driven forth to
live on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable,
could spare. A new confiscation would complete the work of the Act
of Settlement; and the followers of William would seize whatever the
followers of Cromwell had spared. These apprehensions produced such an
outbreak of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a time
the inevitable day of subjugation. Avaux was amazed by the energy which,
in circumstances so trying, the Irish displayed. It was indeed the wild
and unsteady energy of a half barbarous people: it was transient: it
was often misdirected: but, though transient and misdirected, it did
wonders. The French Ambassador was forced to own that those officers
of whose incompetency and inactivity he had so often complained had
suddenly shaken off their lethargy. Recruits came in by thousands. The
ranks which had been thinned under the walls of Londonderry were soon
again full to overflowing. Great efforts were made to arm and clothe the
troops; and, in the short space of a fortnight, every thing presented a
new and cheering aspect, [435]

The Irish required of the King, in return for their strenuous exertions
in his cause, one concession which was by no means agreeable to him. The
unpopularity of Melfort had become such, that his person was scarcely
safe. He had no friend to speak a word in his favour. The French hated
him. In every letter which arrived at Dublin from England or from
Scotland, he was described as the evil genius of the House of Stuart. It
was necessary for his own sake to dismiss him. An honourable pretext was
found. He was ordered to repair to Versailles, to represent there the
state of affairs in Ireland, and to implore the French government to
send over without delay six or seven thousand veteran infantry. He laid
down the seals; and they were, to the great delight of the Irish, put
into the hands of an Irishman, Sir Richard Nagle, who had made himself
conspicuous as Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Commons.
Melfort took his departure under cover of the night: for the rage of
the populace against him was such that he could not without danger show
himself in the streets of Dublin by day. On the following morning James
left his capital in the opposite direction to encounter Schomberg, [436]

Schomberg had landed in Antrim. The force which he had brought with him
did not exceed ten thousand men. But he expected to be joined by the
armed colonists and by the regiments which were under Kirke's command.
The coffeehouse politicians of London fully expected that such a general
with such an army would speedily reconquer the island. Unhappily it soon
appeared that the means which had been furnished to him were altogether
inadequate to the work which he had to perform: of the greater part
of these means he was speedily deprived by a succession of unforeseen
calamities; and the whole campaign was merely a long struggle maintained
by his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune.

He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by two
regiments of infantry. Schomberg battered the walls; and the Irish,
after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they should
depart unharmed; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. The
people of the town and neighbourhood were generally Protestants of
Scottish extraction. They had suffered much during the short ascendency
of the native race; and what they had suffered they were now eager
to retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes, exclaiming that the
capitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. They
soon proceeded from words to blows. The Irish, disarmed, stripped, and
hustled, clung for protection to the English officers and soldiers.
Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol in
hand, through the throng of the enraged colonists, [437]

From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, through
towns left without an inhabitant, and over plains on which not a cow,
nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Here
he was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses,
and arms locked strange to eyes accustomed to the pomp of reviews, but
who in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and who
had, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired many
of the essential qualities of soldiers. [438]

Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The few
Irish troops which remained in the south of Ulster retreated before
him, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thriving
Protestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford too
had perished. The spot where the town had once stood was marked only by
the massy remains of the old Norman castle. Those who ventured to wander
from the camp reported that the country, as far as they could explore
it, was a wilderness. There were cabins, but no inmates: there was rich
pasture, but neither flock nor herd: there were cornfields; but the
harvest lay on the ground soaked with rain, [439]

While Schomberg was advancing through a vast solitude, the Irish forces
were rapidly assembling from every quarter. On the tenth of September
the royal standard of James was unfurled on the tower of Drogheda;
and beneath it were soon collected twenty thousand fighting men, the
infantry generally bad, the cavalry generally good, but both infantry
and cavalry full of zeal for their country and their religion, [440] The
troops were attended as usual by a great multitude of camp followers,
armed with scythes, half pikes, and skeans. By this time Schomberg had
reached Dundalk. The distance between the two armies was not more than
a long day's march. It was therefore generally expected that the fate of
the island would speedily be decided by a pitched battle.

In both camps, all who did not understand war were eager to fight; and,
in both camps; the few who head a high reputation for military science
were against fighting. Neither Rosen nor Schomberg wished to put every
thing on a cast. Each of them knew intimately the defects of his own
army, and neither of them was fully aware of the defects of the other's
army. Rosen was certain that the Irish infantry were "worse equipped,
worse officered, and worse drilled," than any infantry that he had ever
seen from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Atlantic; and he supposed that the
English troops were well trained, and were, as they doubtless ought
to have been, amply provided with every thing necessary to their
efficiency. Numbers, he rightly judged, would avail little against a
great superiority of arms and discipline. He therefore advised James to
fall back, and even to abandon Dublin to the enemy, rather than hazard a
battle the loss of which would be the loss of all. Athlone was the best
place in the kingdom for a determined stand. The passage of the Shannon
might be defended till the succours which Melfort had been charged to
solicit came from France; and those succours would change the whole
character of the war. But the Irish, with Tyrconnel at their head, were
unanimous against retreating. The blood of the whole nation was up.
James was pleased with the enthusiasm of his subjects, and positively
declared that he would not disgrace himself by leaving his capital to
the invaders without a blow, [441]

In a few days it became clear that Schomberg had determined not to
fight. His reasons were weighty. He had some good Dutch and French
troops. The Enniskilleners who had joined him had served a military
apprenticeship, though not in a very regular manner. But the bulk of his
army consisted of English peasants who had just left their cottages. His
musketeers had still to learn how to load their pieces: his dragoons
had still to learn how to manage their horses; and these inexperienced
recruits were for the most part commanded by officers as inexperienced
as themselves. His troops were therefore not generally superior in
discipline to the Irish, and were in number far inferior. Nay, he found
that his men were almost as ill armed, as ill lodged, as ill clad, as
the Celts to whom they were opposed. The wealth of the English nation
and the liberal votes of the English parliament had entitled him to
expect that he should be abundantly supplied with all the munitions of
war. But he was cruelly disappointed. The administration had, ever since
the death of Oliver, been constantly becoming more and more imbecile,
more and more corrupt; and now the Revolution reaped what the
Restoration had sown. A crowd of negligent or ravenous functionaries,
formed under Charles and James, plundered, starved, and poisoned the
armies and fleets of William. Of these men the most important was Henry
Shales, who, in the late reign, had been Commissary General to the camp
at Hounslow. It is difficult to blame the new government for continuing
to employ him: for, in his own department, his experience far surpassed
that of any other Englishman. Unfortunately, in the same school in
which he had acquired his experience, he had learned the whole art of
peculation. The beef and brandy which he furnished were so bad that
the soldiers turned from them with loathing: the tents were rotten: the
clothing was scanty: the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbers
of shoes were set down to the account of the government: but, two months
after the Treasury had paid the bill, the shoes had not arrived in
Ireland. The means of transporting baggage and artillery were almost
entirely wanting. An ample number of horses had been purchased in
England with the public money, and had been sent to the banks of the
Dee. But Shales had let them out for harvest work to the farmers of
Cheshire, had pocketed the hire, and had left the troops in Ulster to
get on as they best might, [442] Schomberg thought that, if he should,
with an ill trained and ill appointed army, risk a battle against a
superior force, he might not improbably be defeated; and he knew that a
defeat might be followed by the loss of one kingdom, perhaps by the
loss of three kingdoms. He therefore made up his mind to stand on the
defensive till his men had been disciplined, and till reinforcements and
supplies should arrive.

He entrenched himself near Dundalk in such a manner that he could not
be forced to fight against his will. James, emboldened by the caution of
his adversary, and disregarding the advice of Rosen, advanced to Ardee,
appeared at the head of the whole Irish army before the English lines,
drew up horse, foot and artillery, in order of battle, and displayed
his banner. The English were impatient to fall on. But their general had
made up his mind, and was not to be moved by the bravadoes of the enemy
or by the murmurs of his own soldiers. During some weeks he remained
secure within his defences, while the Irish lay a few miles off. He set
himself assiduously to drill those new levies which formed the greater
part of his army. He ordered the musketeers to be constantly exercised
in firing, sometimes at marks and sometimes by platoons; and, from the
way in which they at first acquitted themselves, it plainly appeared
that he had judged wisely in not leading them out to battle. It was
found that not one in four of the English soldiers could manage his
piece at all; and whoever succeeded in discharging it, no matter in what
direction, thought that he had performed a great feat.

While the Duke was thus employed, the Irish eyed his camp without daring
to attack it. But within that camp soon appeared two evils more terrible
than the foe, treason and pestilence. Among the best troops under his
command were the French exiles. And now a grave doubt arose touching
their fidelity. The real Huguenot refugee indeed might safely be
trusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestant
regarded the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm
feeling when compared with that inextinguishable hatred which glowed
in the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, expatriated Calvinist of
Languedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French heretic
neither gave nor took quarter, [443] Now, however, it was found that
with those emigrants who had sacrificed every thing for the reformed
religion were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserters
who had run away from their standards in the Low Countries, and had
coloured their crime by pretending that they were Protestants, and that
their conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor of
their Church. Some of these men, hoping that by a second treason they
might obtain both pardon and reward, opened a correspondence with Avaux.
The letters were intercepted; and a formidable plot was brought to
light. It appeared that, if Schomberg had been weak enough to yield to
the importunity of those who wished him to give battle, several French
companies would, in the heat of the action, have fired on the English,
and gone over to the enemy. Such a defection might well have produced
a general panic in a better army than that which was encamped under
Dundalk. It was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators were
hanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent in irons to England.
Even after this winnowing, the refugees were long regarded by the rest
of the army with unjust but not unnatural suspicion. During some
days indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy would be
entertained with a bloody fight between the English soldiers and their
French allies, [444]

A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a general
muster of the army was held; and it was observed that the ranks of the
English battalions looked thin. From the first day of the campaign,
there had been much sickness among the recruits: but it was not till
the time of the equinox that the mortality became alarming. The autumnal
rains of Ireland are usually heavy; and this year they were heavier
than usual. The whole country was deluged; and the Duke's camp became a
marsh. The Enniskillen men were seasoned to the climate. The Dutch were
accustomed to live in a country which, as a wit of that age said, draws
fifty feet of water. They kept their huts dry and clean; and they had
experienced and careful officers who did not suffer them to omit any
precaution. But the peasants of Yorkshire and Derbyshire had neither
constitutions prepared to resist the pernicious influence, nor skill
to protect themselves against it. The bad provisions furnished by the
Commissariat aggravated the maladies generated by the air. Remedies
were almost entirely wanting. The surgeons were few. The medicine chests
contained little more than lint and plaisters for wounds. The English
sickened and died by hundreds. Even those who were not smitten by the
pestilence were unnerved and dejected, and, instead of putting forth the
energy which is the heritage of our race, awaited their fate with the
helpless apathy of Asiatics. It was in vain that Schomberg tried to
teach them to improve their habitations, and to cover the wet earth on
which they lay with a thick carpet of fern. Exertion had become more
dreadful to them than death. It was not to be expected that men who
would not help themselves should help each other. Nobody asked and
nobody showed compassion. Familiarity with ghastly spectacles produced
a hardheartedness and a desperate impiety, of which an example will not
easily be found even in the history of infectious diseases. The moans of
the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their comrades.
Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning,
might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singing
loose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. When
the corpses were taken away to be buried the survivors grumbled. A dead
man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was
so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were
people to be exposed to the cold air and forced to crouch on the moist
ground? [445]

Many of the sick were sent by the English vessels which lay off the
coast to Belfast, where a great hospital had been prepared. But scarce
half of them lived to the end of the voyage. More than one ship lay
long in the bay of Carrickfergus heaped with carcasses, and exhaling the
stench of death, without a living man on board, [446]

The Irish army suffered much less. The kerne of Munster or Connaught
was dune as well off in the camp as if he had been in his own mud cabin
inhaling the vapours of his own quagmire. He naturally exulted in the
distress of the Saxon heretics, and flattered himself that they would be
destroyed without a blow. He heard with delight the guns pealing all
day over the graves of the English officers, till at length the funerals
became too numerous to be celebrated with military pomp, and the
mournful sounds were succeeded by a silence more mournful still.

The superiority of force was now so decidedly on the side of James that
he could safely venture to detach five regiments from his army, and to
send them into Connaught. Sarsfield commanded them. He did not, indeed,
stand so high as he deserved in the royal estimation. The King, with
an air of intellectual superiority which must have made Avaux and
Rosen bite their lips, pronounced him a brave fellow, but very scantily
supplied with brains. It was not without great difficulty that the
Ambassador prevailed on His Majesty to raise the best officer in the
Irish army to the rank of Brigadier. Sarsfield now fully vindicated
the favourable opinion which his French patrons had formed of him. He
dislodged the English from Sligo; and he effectually secured Galway,
which had been in considerable danger, [447]

No attack, however, was made on the English entrenchments before
Dundalk. In the midst of difficulties and disasters hourly multiplying,
the great qualities of Schomberg appeared hourly more and more
conspicuous. Not in the full tide of success, not on the field of Montes
Claros, not under the walls of Maestricht, had he so well deserved the
admiration of mankind. His resolution never gave way.
His prudence never
slept. His temper, in spite of manifold vexations and provocations, was
always cheerful and serene. The effective men under his command, even
if all were reckoned as effective who were not stretched on the earth
by fever, did not now exceed five thousand. These were hardly equal to
their ordinary duty; and yet it was necessary to harass them with double
duty. Nevertheless so masterly were the old man's dispositions that with
this small force he faced during several weeks twenty thousand troops
who were accompanied by a multitude of armed banditti. At length early
in November the Irish dispersed, and went to winter quarters. The Duke
then broke up his camp and retired into Ulster. Just as the remains
of his army were about to move, a rumour spread that the enemy was
approaching in great force. Had this rumour been true, the danger would
have been extreme. But the English regiments, though they had been
reduced to a third part of their complement, and though the men who were
in best health were hardly able to shoulder arms, showed a strange
joy and alacrity at the prospect of battle, and swore that the Papists
should pay for all the misery of the last month. "We English," Schomberg
said, identifying himself good humouredly with the people of the country
which had adopted him, "we English have stomach enough for fighting.
It is a pity that we are not as fond of some other parts of a soldier's
business. "

The alarm proved false: the Duke's army departed unmolested: but
the highway along which he retired presented a piteous and hideous
spectacle. A long train of waggons laden with the sick jolted over the
rugged pavement. At every jolt some wretched man gave up the ghost. The
corpse was flung out and left unburied to the foxes and crows. The whole
number of those who died, in the camp at Dundalk, in the hospital at
Belfast, on the road, and on the sea, amounted to above six thousand.
The survivors were quartered for the winter in the towns and villages of
Ulster. The general fixed his head quarters at Lisburn, [448]

His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he had
surpassed himself, and that there was no other captain in Europe who,
with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, having
to contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force,
against a villanous commissariat, against a nest of traitors in his own
camp, and against a disease more murderous than the sword, would have
brought the campaign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. On
the other hand, many of those newly commissioned majors and captains,
whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had not
one qualification for their posts except personal courage, grumbled
at the skill and patience which had saved them from destruction. Their
complaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Some
of the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents, who had
sent a gallant lad, in his first uniform, to fight his way to glory,
might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp of
straw without medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp without
any Christian or military ceremony, their affliction made them hasty and
unreasonable. But with the cry of bereaved families was mingled another
cry much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abused
the general who furnished them with so little news to hear and to tell.
For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement that they far more
readily forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander who
declines one. The politicians, who delivered their oracles from the
thickest cloud of tobacco smoke at Garroway's, confidently asked,
without knowing any thing, either of war in general, or of Irish war in
particular, why Schomberg did not fight. They could not venture to
say that he did not understand his calling. No doubt he had been an
excellent officer: but he was very old. He seemed to bear his years
well: but his faculties were not what they had been: his memory was
failing; and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoon
what he had done in the morning. It may be doubted whether there ever
existed a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty
as at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been little
impaired by years is sufficiently proved by his despatches, which
are still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse,
perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressed
into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he
sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures
thrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any
military operation more important than the relieving of the guard at
Whitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain
great victories in any situation and against any odds, and by sturdy
patriots who were convinced that one English tarter or thresher, who had
not yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for any
five musketeers of King Lewis's household, [449]

Unsatisfactory as had been the results of the campaign in Ireland, the
results of the maritime operations of the year were more unsatisfactory
still. It had been confidently expected that, on the sea, England,
allied with Holland, would have been far more than a match for the power
of Lewis: but everything went wrong. Herbert had, after the unimportant
skirmish of Bantry Bay, returned with his squadron to Portsmouth. There
he found that he had not lost the good opinion either of the public or
of the government. The House of Commons thanked him for his services;
and he received signal marks of the favour of the Crown. He had not been
at the coronation, and had therefore missed his share of the rewards
which, at the time of that solemnity, had been distributed among the
chief agents in the Revolution. The omission was now repaired; and he
was created Earl of Torrington. The King went down to Portsmouth, dined
on board of the Admiral's flag ship, expressed the fullest confidence
in the valour and loyalty of the navy, knighted two gallant captains,
Cloudesley Shovel and John Ashby, and ordered a donative to be divided
among the seamen, [450]

We cannot justly blame William for having a high opinion of Torrington.
For Torrington was generally regarded as one of the bravest and most
skilful officers in the navy. He had been promoted to the rank of Rear
Admiral of England by James, who, if he understood any thing, understood
maritime affairs. That place and other lucrative places Torrington had
relinquished when he found that he could retain them only by submitting
to be a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more active,
a more hazardous, or a more useful part in effecting the Revolution. It
seemed, therefore, that no man had fairer pretensions to be put at the
head of the naval administration. Yet no man could be more unfit for
such a post. His morals had always been loose, so loose indeed that the
firmness with which in the late reign he had adhered to his religion
had excited much surprise. His glorious disgrace indeed seemed to have
produced a salutary effect on his character. In poverty and exile he
rose from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity returned,
the hero sank again into a voluptuary; and the lapse was deep and
hopeless. The nerves of his mind, which had been during a short time
braced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was
utterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar
courage of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admiral and
as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month after
month the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay in
harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punning
upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarry-in-town. When he
came on shipboard he was accompanied by a bevy of courtesans. There was
scarcely an hour of the day or of the night when he was not under the
influence of claret. Being insatiable of pleasure, he necessarily became
insatiable of wealth. Yet he loved flattery almost as much as either
wealth or pleasure. He had long been in the habit of exacting the most
abject homage from those who were under his command. His flagship was a
little Versailles. He expected his captains to attend him to his cabin
when he went to bed, and to assemble every morning at his levee. He even
suffered them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig; another
stood ready with the embroidered coat. Under such a chief there could be
no discipline. His tars passed their time in rioting among the rabble of
Portsmouth. Those officers who won his favour by servility and adulation
easily obtained leave of absence, and spent weeks in London, revelling
in taverns, scouring the streets, or making love to the masked ladies
in the pit of the theatre. The victuallers soon found out with whom they
had to deal, and sent down to the fleet casks of meat which dogs would
not touch, and barrels of beer which smelt worse than bilge water.
Meanwhile the British Channel seemed to be abandoned to French rovers.
Our merchantmen were boarded in sight of the ramparts of Plymouth. The
sugar fleet from the West Indies lost seven ships. The whole value
of the prizes taken by the cruisers of the enemy in the immediate
neighbourhood of our island, while Torrington was engaged with his
bottle and his harem, was estimated at six hundred thousand pounds. So
difficult was it to obtain the convoy of a man of war, except by giving
immense bribes, that our traders were forced to hire the services of
Dutch privateers, and found these foreign mercenaries much more useful
and much less greedy than the officers of our own royal navy, [451]

The only department with which no fault could be found was the
department of Foreign Affairs. There William was his own minister; and,
where he was his own minister, there were no delays, no blunders, no
jobs, no treasons. The difficulties with which he had to contend were
indeed great. Even at the Hague he had to encounter an opposition
which all his wisdom and firmness could, with the strenuous support of
Heinsius, scarcely overcome. The English were not aware that, while
they were murmuring at their Sovereign's partiality for the land of his
birth, a strong party in Holland was murmuring at his partiality for the
land of his adoption. The Dutch ambassadors at Westminster complained
that the terms of alliance which he proposed were derogatory to the
dignity and prejudicial to the interests of the republic; that wherever
the honour of the English flag was concerned, he was punctilious and
obstinate; that he peremptorily insisted on an article which interdicted
all trade with France, and which could not but be grievously felt on
the Exchange of Amsterdam; that, when they expressed a hope that the
Navigation Act would be repealed, he burst out a laughing, and told them
that the thing was not to be thought of. He carried all his points; and
a solemn contract was made by which England and the Batavian federation
bound themselves to stand firmly by each other against France, and
not to make peace except by mutual consent. But one of the Dutch
plenipotentiaries declared that he was afraid of being one day held
up to obloquy as a traitor for conceding so much; and the signature
of another plainly appeared to have been traced by a hand shaking with
emotion, [452]

Meanwhile under William's skilful management a treaty of alliance had
been concluded between the States General and the Emperor. To that
treaty Spain and England gave in their adhesion; and thus the four great
powers which had long been bound together by a friendly understanding
were bound together by a formal contract, [453]

But before that formal contract had been signed and sealed, all the
contracting parties were in arms. Early in the year 1689 war was raging
all over the Continent from the Humus to the Pyrenees. France, attacked
at once on every side, made on every side a vigorous defence; and her
Turkish allies kept a great German force fully employed in Servia and
Bulgaria. On the whole, the results of the military operations of the
summer were not unfavourable to the confederates. Beyond the Danube,
the Christians, under Prince Lewis of Baden, gained a succession of
victories over the Mussulmans. In the passes of Roussillon, the French
troops contended without any decisive advantage against the martial
peasantry of Catalonia. One German army, led by the Elector of Bavaria,
occupied the Archbishopric of Cologne. Another was commanded by Charles,
Duke of Lorraine, a sovereign who, driven from his own dominions by
the arms of France, had turned soldier of fortune, and had, as
such, obtained both distinction and revenge. He marched against the
devastators of the Palatinate, forced them to retire behind the Rhine,
and, after a long siege, took the important and strongly fortified city
of Mentz.

Between the Sambre and the Meuse the French, commanded by Marshal
Humieres, were opposed to the Dutch, commanded by the Prince of Waldeck,
an officer who had long served the States General with fidelity and
ability, though not always with good fortune, and who stood high in the
estimation of William. Under Waldeck's orders was Marlborough, to whom
William had confided an English brigade consisting of the best regiments
of the old army of James. Second to Marlborough in command, and second
also in professional skill, was Thomas Talmash, a brave soldier,
destined to a fate never to be mentioned without shame and indignation.
Between the army of Waldeck and the army of Humieres no general action
took place: but in a succession of combats the advantage was on the side
of the confederates. Of these combats the most important took place at
Walcourt on the fifth of August. The French attacked an outpost defended
by the English brigade, were vigorously repulsed, and were forced to
retreat in confusion, abandoning a few field pieces to the conquerors
and leaving more than six hundred corpses on the ground. Marlborough, on
this as on every similar occasion, acquitted himself like a valiant and
skilful captain. The Coldstream Guards commanded by Talmash, and the
regiment which is now called the sixteenth of the line, commanded
by Colonel Robert Hodges, distinguished themselves highly. The Royal
regiment too, which had a few months before set up the standard of
rebellion at Ipswich, proved on this day that William, in freely
pardoning that great fault, had acted not less wisely than generously.
The testimony which Waldeck in his despatch bore to the gallant conduct
of the islanders was read with delight by their countrymen. The fight
indeed was no more than a skirmish: but it was a sharp and bloody
skirmish. There had within living memory been no equally serious
encounter between the English and French; and our ancestors were
naturally elated by finding that many years of inaction and vassalage
did not appear to have enervated the courage of the nation, [454]

The Jacobites however discovered in the events of the campaign abundant
matter for invective. Marlborough was, not without reason, the object
of their bitterest hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle malice
itself could find little to censure: but there were other parts of his
conduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy. Avarice is rarely
the vice of a young man: it is rarely the vice of a great man: but
Marlborough was one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved
lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the height of greatness,
loved lucre more than power or fame. All the precious gifts which nature
had lavished on him he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At
twenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he made
money of his genius and his glory. The applauses which were justly due
to his conduct at Walcourt could not altogether drown the voices of
those who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got,
this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon; that, though he drew a
large allowance under pretence of keeping a public table, he never asked
an officer to dinner; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up;
that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of men
who had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedgemoor;
that there were twenty such names in one troop; that there were
thirty-six in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage and
commanding powers of mind with a bland temper and winning manners
could have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminently
unsoldierlike, the good will of his soldiers, [455]

About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europe
were going into winter quarters, a new Pontiff ascended the chair
of Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had been
strange indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Church
of which he was the head had induced him, at one of the most critical
conjunctures in her history, to ally herself with her mortal enemies.
The news of his decease was received with concern and alarm by
Protestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and hope at
Versailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank was
instantly despatched by Lewis to Rome. The French garrison which had
been placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the Conclave
had been united in favour of Peter Ottobuoni, an ancient Cardinal who
assumed the appellation of Alexander the Eighth, the representative
of France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the new
Pontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which the
most Christian King declared that he renounced the odious privilege of
protecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to his
lips, embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospect
of reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a hope that the influence of
the Vatican might be exerted to dissolve the alliance between the House
of Austria and the heretical usurper of the English throne. James was
even more sanguine. He was foolish enough to expect that the new Pope
would give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himself
of his mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness to
contribute something towards the good work of upholding pure religion
in the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, though
he might hold language different from that of his predecessor, was
determined to follow in essentials his predecessor's policy. The
original cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was not
removed. The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to
refuse their institution: and the consequence was that a fourth part of
the dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing any
episcopal function, [456]

The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than the
Gallican Church. The first of August had been fixed by Act of Parliament
as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and all
persons holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swear
allegiance to William and Mary. During the earlier part of the
summer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of nonjurors would be so
considerable as seriously to alarm and embarrass the Government. But
this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Few
were Tories of that moderate school which acknowledged, reluctantly and
with reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in
resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the profession
still held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was now
divided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution,
had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though
sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficially
considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of
passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that obedience
due? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there
was no room for doubt: but the hereditary right and the possession were
now separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was reigning at
Westminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sending
forth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes. His Sheriffs
arrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, would
cease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but for
his Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was living
abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the
duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as
violent as those by which he had been displaced, to which of these two
princes did Christian men owe allegiance?

To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letter
of Scripture required them to submit to the Sovereign who was in
possession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powers
which the Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines of
that age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are not the powers that
can be traced back to a legitimate origin, but the powers that be. When
Jesus was asked whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to
Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Caesar could
make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but
whether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury came
from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessed
the authority and performed the functions of a ruler.

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most
trustworthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to be
found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice
can be satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the times
during which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in the
highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political
change. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four
Emperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of the
third century a great proportion must have been able to remember ten
or twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often to
consider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power by
a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the
fear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation
which no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any
proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the
early Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience
to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At
one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty
competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus.
All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not
appear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submitting
to the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions.
While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyons
obeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day and
night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,
addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus,--"day and
night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our
Emperors. " Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their
predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus,
who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor
Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his
predecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had,
in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance
to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the
Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary? A
hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged
their more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the
primitive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper; and a
hundred times the challenge was evaded. The nonjurors had little to say
on this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to
principles, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a school
which had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for the
authority of the Fathers, [457]

To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect
was due. But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, the
nonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve their
purpose. In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary
right, had filled the throne but it had never been thought inconsistent
with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. The
usurpation of Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard
the Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurper
was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains:
Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies;
nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince in
possession was deadly sin, [458]

With the practice of the whole Christian world the authoritative
teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. The
Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured
terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers.
Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound
to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God
shall in anger set over them for their sins. And surely it would be
the height of absurdity to say that we must accept submissively such
usurpers as God sends in anger, but must pertinaciously withhold our
obedience from usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was a
crime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to join him, a crime
to make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation
and of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providence
had brought good out of evil? And what theologian would assert that, in
such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrine
that to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, conceived that
William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist.

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant
by the powers that be the rightful powers that be; and that to put any
other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense,
to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an
occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must be
shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear
his title, however wise and good his administration, is expelled by
traitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to range
themselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity
to a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all ages
and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side
which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than
Whiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereign
was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for which
specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave
and generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine
grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance,
merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but
dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures
than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a
sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard
as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found the
history of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son,
and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right:
Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of the
sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that
occasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai,
who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinance
of God, and receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son of
the Church of England seriously affirm that a man who was a strenuous
royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the
Parliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became an
obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had been
ejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was more
deserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier
who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charles
the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in
peril, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of any
of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained
possession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction was
there between that case and the case which had now arisen? That Cromwell
had actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more power than
William, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as the
power of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin, no divine who held the
doctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible for
such a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yet
to affirm that it was due to William? To suppose that there could be
such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but weakness.
Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would
do better to speak out, and to say, what every body knew, that they
complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong.
That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with
dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But
he would do well to remember that, however terrible might be the day of
suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come
two other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day of
judgment, [459]

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed by
this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy which
the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation
of Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that age
no High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to an
absurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying that
the Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was
impossible to prove that William was more fully in possession of supreme
power than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided coming
to close quarters with the nonjurors on this point as carefully as the
nonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with the swearers on the
question touching the practice of the primitive Church.

The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taught
by the clergy was so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity.
Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear,
he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he
swore, he could vindicate his swearing only by laying down propositions
against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by
proclaiming that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous
cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strengthen the
hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as
were the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine
of the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still. According to him, a
Christian nation ought always to be in a state of slavery or in a state
of anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty
to preserve order. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices
order to preserve liberty. For liberty and order are two of the greatest
blessings which a society can enjoy: and, when unfortunately they appear
to be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take either
side.