XXXIII. CHAP. a universal shout of joy pervaded the Irish camp, the news flew rapidly to Dublin, and thence was carried to Paris, where extravagant rejoicings, and the damp of disappointment on the receipt of the true intelligence, marked the high opinion malignantly entertained by Louis of the abilities of William, While some squadrons of the jacobite cavalry descended to the river to take advantage of the supposed consternation among the Williamite forces from the imagined death of their king, the prince rode through his camp to prevent false alarms, his artillery fired on the hostile troops, and the cannonade continued on both sides till the close of the evening. Of deserters from the enemy one, who appeared of some note, so magnified their numbers, as seemed somewhat to alarm king William; but Cox, the under-secretary of Sir Robert Southwell, the secretary of state, leading the deserter through the English camp, and asking him to what number he computed the Williamite forces, received an answer indicating more than double the real amount, At nine o'clock in the evening William held a council of war, not to deliberate, but to receive his orders for passing the river on the next morning in face of the enemy. Duke Schomberg, unable to persuade him to relinquish his hazardous enterprize, or to seize the bridge of Slane, distant three miles to the west, so as to flank the enemy, and prevent their retreat through the pass of Duleek, retired in disgust, and received the order of battle in his tent, declaring that it was the first ever sent to him.” XXXIII. This bridge also in the camp of James was likewise CHAP. Boyne. 1690. In respect of numbers the armies of James and Battle of the William were not widely unequal, the former consisting of thirty-three thousand, the latter of thirty-six thousand men; nor in point of discipline was the difference great, as the French troops of James were veterans, and the Irish a considerable time practised in military operations. The advantage of tactics may, on the whole amount, have been on the side of William, whose forces were composed of English, Enniskilleners, Dutch, Danes, Brandenburghers, and Hugonots, or French protestants, who had fled from their native country on account of religious persecution. The advantage of James lay in the strength of his position; that of William in his own. mental abilities, which had long proved the bulwark of Europe against the otherwise irresistible power of France. The camp of the Jacobites extended in two lines, from the fortified town of Drogheda on their right, filled with Irish soldiers, to a morass, hardly passable, on their left, three miles eastward XXXIII. nore. CHAP eastward of the bridge of Slane. In their front was the Boyne, fordable in some places, but the fords were deep and dangerous, with rugged banks, defended by some breastworks, with huts and hedges convenient to be lined with infantry. James with his guards took his station in the rear, on an eminence where stood the church and village of DoThree miles farther to the south was the pass of Duleek, through which he was to retire in case of defeat. William arranged his army in three divisions with orders to pass the river in three different places; the right wing under count Schomberg, son of the duke, and general Douglas, the former commanding the cavalry, the latter the foot, at some fords discovered on the west near the bridge of Slane; the centre under duke Schomberg in front of the Irish army; and the left wing under the king in person, at a ford on the east between his camp and Drogheda. The right wing, early in the morning, marching with rapidity up the river, crossed, before the troops, sent to oppose them, arrived, unresisted, except by a regiment of dragoons, who fled after the loss of seventy of their men. The Jacobite forces, who had come too late to dispute the passage of the river, formed in two lines to prevent the further progress of the enemy; while Douglas and count Schomberg advanced against them, at first with their squadrons of horse intermingled with the battalions of infantry, but afterwards with the cavalry drawn to the right, by which they considerably outflanked XXXIII. their antagonists. But the ground was unfavour- CHAP. able to the Williamites, intersected, next the fords, by deep ditches, hardly surmountable by the cavalry, and occupied beyond these by the bog which flanked the Jacobite camp on the west. Having forced their way through the intersected grounds, the infantry of Douglas plunged into the bog, while the cavalry found a firm passage to the right. Their opponents, astonished at the intrepidity and perseverance, with which they surmounted every obstacle, fled toward Duleek, and were pursued with some slaugh ter. In the centre the passage was not effected without opposition. Opposite to Oldbridge, the Dutch guards first on the right, and, next in order on the left, the Hugonots, Enniskilleners, Brandenburghers, and English, plunged into the river to the middle or the breast, supporting their muskets above. their heads. The Dutch, having gained the opposite bank, in the midst of an ineffectual fire poured from the breastworks, hedges, and houses, drove the Irish from their posts; and, advancing, sustained the successive attacks of one body of infantry and two of cavalry, till the Hugonots and Enniskilleners, coming to their assistance, repulsed a third body of horse with considerable slaughter. General Hamilton, in the mean time, to oppose the passage of the English and Hugonots, had led the Irish infantry to the margin of the Boyne, as the post of honour, which their officers had insisted on holding, as natives, in preference to the French, whom James would XXXIII. CHAP. Would have appointed to that important station. The Irish infantry, however, were driven from their post, but their horse charged with such fury, that they broke a squadron of Danes, and pursued them across the river. On their return from this pursuit, they broke also the Hugonot infantry, who were unfortunately not furnished with pikes, the chief weapon against cavalry, before the bayonet came into general use. The bayonet, invented by the French, was used three years after with extraordinary success, by marshal Catinat, at the battle of Marsaglia in Italy. Here the brave Caillemote received his mortal wound, and cried with his last breath to his men in their own language, as he was carried away bleeding, "to glory, my boys! to glory!" A general shout of "horse! horse!" excited by the want of cavalry to oppose the Irish in this place, was mistaken for "halt! halt!" and caused some confusion, even in the right wing, whither it was rapidly conveyed, and whose pursuit it for some time retarded. Duke Schomberg, rushing through the river to rally the Hugonots, put himself at their head, and exclaimed in the French tongue, as he pointed to some French regiments in their front, "Come on, gentlemen, behold your persecutors!" At this moment sixteen of the Irish cavalry, escaping from the slaughter of their associates, who, in wheeling through Oldbridge to join their main body, after their successful charge on the Hugonots, had been cut to pieces by the Enniskilleners and Dutch, were at first mistaken for friends by the soldiers about Schomberg, and permitted to pass, |