THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE.

The Boyne, which finds its head-waters near Carbery, in the County of Kildare, takes a meandering course towards the west and north, until it enters Meath, through which it flows in a north-easterly direction through Trim, Navan, Slane, and Drogheda, four miles below which it falls into the Irish Sea. At tide-water it is navigable to Navan, a distance of nineteen miles, for barges of fifty tons burden; but at low-water, from Navan to Slane, it is a shallow stream, brawling over a rocky bottom of a few yards in width; and from that to Old Bridge it is fordable by horse and foot at almost every rood of its length. Below Slane, its course is due east for nearly a mile, when, dipping abruptly towards the south, it takes a semicircular sweep of nearly three miles to Old Bridge, and the curve so formed embraces its memorable battle-ground. The northern bank, for nearly half a mile back, is high and firm down to the water's edge, while the opposite one is low and sedgy, and the ground behind it broken, back to the base of Donore, which is over a mile from its mid-current:—the chord of the arc indicated is nearly two miles, and the distance from Old Bridge to Slane, in a direct line, is somewhat under three.

On the evening of the 29th, when James crossed the river, the distance between his rear-guard and William's advance, was about eight miles, and on the morning of the 30th the latter appeared, and halted his army facing the concave bend of the river, behind a line of hills which partially concealed it from observation, while awaiting his artillery, which was still some miles in his rear.

With that promptitude which characterized all his movements since his arrival in the country, he immediately ordered an examination of the river from Old Bridge to Slane, and proceeded himself with a detachment of cavalry to reconnoitre the position of the royal army. While so engaged he was struck by a cannon-shot that grazed his shoulder and drew a little blood. This caused a report of his death to be spread throughout the camp, and created the greatest alarm among his followers; but, calling for a napkin, he stopped the blood, and, putting on another coat, passed through the ranks to restore the confidence of his soldiers, and then completed his reconnoissance.24 Towards noon he moved his army forward to the river, when, his cannon having arrived, he established his batteries along the heights, ordered a heavy cannonade to be kept up against the Irish centre, and, retiring within his lines, summoned his generals to receive his plan of action.

It was the intention of William at first to cross the river at Slane during the advanced hours of the night, and falling on James by surprise, to strike his left, and turn it from the road to Dublin. The Duke of Schomberg, with characteristic caution, would have opposed this proposition, on the ground that though James's army appeared small from the English line of sight, he might have large reserves behind Donore. But the duke was again rebuked by the prince, and notified to retire, which he did, deeply mortified, and received his orders afterwards in his tent, with the querulous remark, that "they were the first that had ever been sent him!" Bating this, the utmost harmony pervaded the council of William, and confidence reigned supreme throughout his camp.

But, notwithstanding the discourtesy shown by William to the Duke of Schomberg, the advice of that old veteran had its due weight in his council; the determination to assail the Irish left during the night was abandoned, and the following plan of action was adopted: Of the 40,000 men of which the prince's army now consisted, about 13,000, composed of the Dutch Guards, the Enniskillen infantry, and the Brandenburg and Huguenot regiments, under the command of Duke Schomberg and Caillemotte,25 formed his centre, opposite to the same division of the royal army. His right, 10,000 horse and foot, under Count Schomberg and General Douglas, respectively, was extended in the direction of Slane; and his left, about 12,000 strong, comprising the Dutch, Danish, and Enniskillen horse, and the British and Scotch infantry, was drawn up towards Old Bridge, and to be commanded by himself in person. His immense train of artillery, variously estimated at from fifty to sixty pieces, including several mortars, was portioned out to each division, the weight of it being placed against the Irish centre; and his reserves, about 5,000, were stationed in the low ground to his rear, within easy supporting distance of his right and left, and not more than a mile from either. The Count of Schomberg was to open the battle at daybreak by forcing the Pass of Slane, and turning the Irish left; when this should be accomplished, the duke was to cross at the centre, and, carrying the intrenchments opposite, press them back from the river; biding these results, the prince himself would cross at Old Bridge, and, flanking their right, cut off their retreat to Dublin. Thus, by a general movement, the royal army would be completely overthrown, and the war terminated by a single blow:—the chances of defeat had no place in his calculation.

As William had the advantage of ground—that is to say, the northern bank of the river was steep and firm down to its margin, while the southern side was low and broken—James had thrown his army well back towards the hill of Donore, and during the interval had made the following disposition: His centre, about 8,000 men of all arms, was arranged in two lines; one, comprising the musketeers and pikemen, under Major-General Dorrington and the Marquis de Hoquincourt, was placed in the intrenchments along the river, and the other, composed of the exempts, under General Nugent and Taafe, Earl of Carlingford, in the broken ground behind it. For the support of these the infantry regiments of Tyrconnell, Parker, and Gordon O'Neil, and the dragoons of Lords Clare and Dungan, were held between a small village and the hill of Donore, as the ground nearer to the river was low, and commanded by the enemy's artillery. His right wing, about 3,000 men, of whom but eight battalions were infantry, rested near the town of Old Bridge, opposed to William's left, under the command of Lieutenant-General Hamilton and the Duke of Berwick. His left, composed of the French troops under the Duke de Lausun and M. de la Hoquette, stood about a mile from his centre, in the direction of Slane; while that important Pass, which, he tells us in his Memoirs, he expected to be William's first point of assault, and which lay three miles from his centre, by the course of the river, was entirely neglected until late at night, when, at the urgent request of his generals, it was occupied by Sir Neale O'Neil and his regiment of dragoons. A strip of moor-land, extending from Old Bridge to the Pass of Slane, ran behind his right and centre, traversing the base of Donore round to the southeast; and behind this, but well drawn up against the hill, he held a reserve of nearly 3,000 infantry and cavalry, the former under Sir Charles Carney, and the latter under Sarsfield and Brigadier-General Maxwell.

How little soever conversant in military affairs, one cannot fail to see the almost insuperable disadvantages of the Jacobite army. Lying on the convex of the river, with an army scarce half the number of the opposing force; its supporting distance to the Pass of Slane treble to that of the enemy; the ground near the river unsuited to the action of cavalry, which was its main dependence; and its ordnance miserably inferior in number and calibre, it was barely possible to repulse the enemy, but almost impossible to turn a repulse into a victory. To an ordinary observation the chances of battle would thus present themselves: by intrepidity and superior valor, James might hold his ground until the return of tide, which would suspend it, or if the enemy succeeded in crossing without his ordnance, he might draw up all his force on the heights, and by one of those desperate and sudden efforts that man is sometimes capable of, hurl him back into the river. There was no other alternative between him and defeat; the vast numerical advantage of the Prince of Orange rendered the former improbable, and the lack of military ardor in the king himself was not calculated to evoke the latter.

With a will concentrated on the object of his mission, exultant in power, and personally brave and enterprising, William's plan was simple, bold, and aggressive. Weak in numbers, and straitened in resources, that of James was tortuous, cautious, and weakly defensive. Fortitude and military capacity he is said to have possessed, and they would seem not to have entirely deserted him on this occasion; but in that desperate daring which alone could wring success from the surrounding disadvantages, he was utterly deficient. His army was gallant, and even eager for the conflict, and a rival whose persistent malignity would have roused the meekest spirit, confronted him; but the blood did not course warmly in his veins at the devotion of the one, nor did vengeance steel him to action at the sight of the other. Trepidity was manifest in all his motions, and he had not even the self-control to hide it from his soldiers. The Pass of Duleek, in his rear, claimed more of his attention than the enemy on his front; for, while ordering the battle, he was devising a retreat, and had, in their sight, dispatched one-half his artillery in the evening for the defence of the capital. It therefore mattered very little how he disposed of the remainder—six pieces, on a line of four Irish miles.26

So stood the hosts on the night of June 30th, 1690, prepared to deliver battle on the dawn of the morrow; and, as darkness settled down and hid each from the view of the other, the feelings that swayed them may be easier felt than depicted. One feeling, that in such moments pervades every bosom alike, from the private to the king, must have been theirs in common—the hope to survive the carnage;—in all else their thoughts must have been as different as the causes they represented. The mercenary can have but one passion and one object—to slay and to dominate. The patriot has many, and all are sacred. The poetry of emotion is his, and over none does it exert a more boundless influence than over the race of which this king's army was mainly composed. The memories of the past, standing out like the immemorial hills; the voices of futurity coming up the long vista of time, and all pleading the reversal of a fate more cruel than Egyptian bondage: while clearer to the ear and nearer to the heart come the pleadings of kindred, and the anxious household lifting up their prayers to heaven for the devoted hearts that shield them from ruin, death—dishonor. All these speak to them, and a thousand fancies, taking the form of life, pass in solemn review, till the hardiest soldier, with moistened eye, and heart full to breaking, grasps his sword, compresses his lip, looks out for the dawning, and sighs for relief in conflict.

But did not the Irish of that day deceive themselves? This king, whose cause they had espoused, was not their king. His restoration would still leave their country an appanage of the British Crown, and his house was a name of woe and desolation throughout the land! Would her future, under it, be much brighter than her past? There was, no doubt, many a thoughtful mind in that Irish army that had all those misgivings; but this was not the time to indulge them. Nor should we of the present day be hypercritical. Royalty was then something more than a name, and we should not judge the events of the seventeenth century by the light of the nineteenth, nor the Ireland of untoward circumstances as the nation of her people's will. To the memory of this unhappy king this truth should be generously conceded.... He could have retained his throne had he violated his conscience. He could have ruled the Irish people as his predecessors had done, and at that time they had no power to stay him; for the Catholic descendants of the Palesmen were firm in their allegiance to the English throne, and the native race was destitute of means to strike for separation. He had forfeited his crown and jeopardized his power, for right. He had emancipated them from a bondage servile to mind and body. He was the first royal champion of civil and religious liberty. He had offered them justice in his power, and appealed to their loyalty in his adversity. His cause was their cause. He was banished by his own people, outraged by his own family; he came to them in his bereavement, and to their honor, be it recorded, they did not forsake him! His very injuries threw a sacred influence around him, and as he sacrificed to justice, they paid him the homage of their blood!

Yet, in truth, he was not their king;—not the ideal king of the Irish race. That should be a native king; one infusing nationality through every hamlet in the land, and defending its liberties against a world in arms! Six hundred years had failed to eradicate the hope of such a king from the hearts of every successive generation, and every outrage of the invader only rendered it the more indelible. The place, too, was historic. Every hill and valley, from Drogheda to Clonard, in rath and ruin, bore ample testimony of their aspiration for native rule. Tara and Skreen, now plainly visible in the soft moonlight of summer, stood out in relief against the southern sky, and it is no stretch of the imagination to say: from that same Pass of Slane, the ancestor of Sir Neale O'Neil, had, nearly 900 years before, reconnoitred the Danish host and marked it for destruction. Many a chief and many a clan of his martial house had, since then, crossed the Boyne to do battle with the invader, but never a braver soldier than he, nor a more devoted following than that which now counted the moments by the reverberation of the enemy's cannon along its banks, and looked through the night for the eventful dawning.27

The night wore slowly away, and as its shadows were blending into the gray dawn of morning, the cannonade which had been kept up since the preceding noon from William's batteries ceased for a time, and the beat to arms was distinctly heard on the heights of Donore. It was promptly answered by a roll from the Irish camp, and the troops on each side were immediately in motion, and deploying down towards the river. An hour of hurried preparation now passed on, when the waters of the gentle river were again startled from their short repose by a heavy peal along the whole English line, the smoke of which having cleared away, William's left, the cavalry in advance, was seen doubling the curve in the river, and advancing steadily towards the Pass of Slane. The firing thus resumed, was now kept up incessantly from the English left and centre, and as the sun appeared above the hills, and both armies stood out bolder on the foreground, William himself, accompanied by Prince George of Denmark, the Prince of Nassau, and the Duke of Wurtemberg, and surrounded by a grand cavalcade, was observed reviewing his army, and, by word and example, infusing hope and courage through all its ranks.

King James saw all that was passing from the heights of Donore, and as Count Schomberg and Douglas moved in the direction of Slane, he ordered de Lausun to move his troops in the same direction. Then, after seeing the remainder of his baggage on its way to Dublin,28 whither the half of his artillery had already been sent, he stood to watch the issue of the day, with much composure of manner and much Christian resignation, but none of that military ardor by which a gallant general often imparts a spirit and energy to a small army that render it invincible in the hour of battle. Not so, however, with the Duke of Tyrconnell. Though bowed by age, and broken in health, he moved from rank to rank, exhorting all to bravery; and it is very questionable which felt most solicitude at that hour—that king for the fate of his crown, or that patriot for the cause of his country. As for Sarsfield, he had little to do in the affairs of that day; for both he and General Maxwell were in continual attendance on the king's person, and his attention, with the exception of one visit to his right, was entirely divided between the reserve on Donore and the French troops on his left. Hamilton and Berwick were at their post on the right, and well had it been for James and his cause had he tarried in Dublin and committed the marshalling of his army to those generals, and the issue of the day to the King of battles.

Apprised of the design of the enemy on his position, O'Neil had made such preparations as time allowed for his reception. Around the pass on both sides of the river he had drawn intrenchments, and as the morning dawned had thrown forward a small detachment to impede his progress. The ground over which he approached was favorable to defensive operations, being much broken and interspersed with hedges: these natural impediments, and the weight of his artillery, rendered his movements slow and irregular; the fire of the skirmishers met him at every step as he neared the pass, so that it was eight o'clock before he had forced them back within their intrenchments.

Here the fight was renewed with great stubbornness, and continued for two hours longer, when Schomberg, with the loss of two hundred men, forced the position, and the dragoons retired with the loss of one-fourth their number, bearing away the body of their leader, mortally wounded, and renewed the contest on the other side of the river. Schomberg immediately commenced to cross, and the king, apprised of the state of affairs here, sent Sarsfield, with sixty dragoons and a piece of artillery, to oppose him; but these succors only arrived in time to see the defenders driven from their intrenchments, and the troops of Schomberg drawn out on the southern bank to receive them.

All further attempts to check the progress of the assailants were now futile; the dragoons retired on their supports; the gun brought down by Sarsfield got "bogged," and had to be abandoned, and Schomberg, his artillery being got over, deployed by his right, on the outer side of the marsh, to turn the left of the king's army. He had, however, scarcely got clear of the river, when the troops of de Lausun appeared on the inner side of the marsh to oppose him. The force of the latter was 6,000 men, within support of a reserve of 3,000; it was fresh, finely appointed, and the marsh at this place was narrow and practicable to horse and foot; but he showed no disposition to engage, although Schomberg halted and drew up to offer him battle. After some time the troops on both sides were put in motion, Schomberg still moving by his right, and de Lausun by his left in the same direction, the marsh gradually widening round towards the rear of Donore, until nearly a mile intervened, when an engagement became impracticable, and the Irish left was flanked.

In the mean time, King James, seeing that Count Schomberg had crossed the river, believed that the other division of William's army would also move in the same direction, and that the entire battle would be finally transferred to his left. He therefore determined to withdraw his own right and centre from the river, to the support of de Lausun, and with this intention he now proceeded to his right. There seeing that William's left and centre were still drawn up on the opposite bank, and being opposed in his design by Tyrconnell, he returned to his left, where Count Schomberg and de Lausun were still confronting each other. Posting his reserves on the right of the latter, and riding up to him, he ordered him to charge the enemy across the intervening ground; but the order was disobeyed, although Schomberg halted again and formed to invite an action. In this state of perplexity the king rode back to the reserves, placed the infantry at the edge of the marsh, supported on each side by his cavalry, with the foot dragoons filling up the intervals, and approaching M. de la Hoquette, "whispered him" to lead on the French infantry. The latter was about to comply with this request, when he was checked by de Lausun; at this time, Sarsfield and Maxwell, who had been out inspecting the ground in front, returned, and pronounced it impracticable to cavalry, it being traversed by two double ditches with a rivulet flowing between them. So the king was convinced, and de Lausun was relieved from his............