himself. Five days after his arrival he began his advance from
Loughbrickland near Newry, and on the 1st of July he engaged
James’s main army on the river Boyne, close to Drogheda. Schomberg
was killed and William himself wounded, but the Irish army was routed.
No stand was made by the defeated party either in the Dublin or in the Waterford district. Lauzun, the commander of the French auxiliary corps in James’s army, and Tyrconnel both discountenanced any attempt to defend Limerick, where the Jacobite forces had reassembled; but Patrick Sarsfield (earl of Lucan), as the spokesman of the younger and more ardent of the Irish officers, pleaded for its retention. He was left, therefore, to hold Limerick, while Tyrconnel and Lauzun moved northward into Galway. Here, as in the north, the quarrel enlisted the active sympathies of the people against the invader, and Sarsfield not only surprised and destroyed the artillery train of William’s army, but repulsed every assault made on the walls that Lauzun had said “could be battered down by rotten apples.” William gave up the siege on the 30th of August. The failure was, however, compensated in a measure by the arrival in Ireland of an expedition under Lord Marlborough, which captured Cork and Kinsale, and next year (1691) the Jacobite cause was finally crushed by William’s general Ginckell (afterwards earl of Athlone) in the battle of Aughrim in Galway (July 12th), in which St Ruth, the French commander, was killed and the Jacobite army dissipated. Ginckell, following up his victory, besieged Limerick afresh. Tyrconnel died of apoplexy while organizing the defence, and this time the town was invested by sea as well as by land. After six weeks’ resistance the defenders offered to capitulate, and with the signing of the treaty of Limerick on the 1st of October the Irish war came to an end. Sarsfield and the most energetic of King James’s supporters retired to France and were there formed into the famous “Irish brigade.” Sarsfield was killed at the battle of Neerwinden two years later.
The campaign of 1690 on the continent of Europe is marked by two battles, one of which, Luxemburg’s victory of Fleurus, belongs to the category of the world’s great battles. It is described under Fleurus, and the present article only deals summarily with the conditions in which it was fought. These, though they in fact led to an encounter that could, in itself, fairly be called decisive, were in closer accord with the general spirit of the war than was the decision that arose out of them.
Luxemburg had a powerful enemy in Louvois, and he had consequently been allotted only an insignificant part in the first campaign. But after the disasters of 1689 Louis re-arranged the commands on the north-east frontier so as to allow Humières, Luxemburg and Boufflers to combine for united action. “I will take care that Louvois plays fair,” Louis said to the duke when he gave him his letters of service. Though apparently Luxemburg was not authorized to order such a combination himself, as senior officer he would automatically take command if it came about. The whole force available was probably close on 100,000, but not half of these were present at the decisive battle, though Luxemburg certainly practised the utmost “economy of force” as this was understood in those days (see also Neerwinden). On the remaining theatres of war, the dauphin, assisted by the duc de Lorge, held the middle Rhine, and Catinat the Alps, while other forces were in Roussillon, &c., as before. Catinat’s operations are briefly described below. Those of the others need no description, for though the Allies formed a plan for a grand concentric advance on Paris, the preliminaries to this advance were so numerous and so closely interdependent that on the most favourable estimate the winter would necessarily find the Allied armies many leagues short of Paris. In fact, the Rhine offensive collapsed when Charles of Lorraine died (17th April), and the reconquest of his lost duchy ceased to be a direct object of the war.
Luxemburg began operations by drawing in from the Sambre country, where he had hitherto been stationed, to the Scheldt and “eating up” the country between Oudenarde and Ghent in the face of a Spanish army concentrated at the latter place (15th May–12th June). He then left Humières with a containing force in the Scheldt region andFleurus, 1690. hurried back to the Sambre to interpose between the Allied army under Waldeck and the fortress of Dinant which Waldeck was credited with the intention of besieging. His march from Tournay to Gerpinnes was counted a model of skill—the locus classicus for the maxim that ruled till the advent of Napoleon—“march always in the order in which you encamp, or purpose to encamp, or fight.” For four days the army marched across country in close order, covered in all directions by reconnoitring cavalry and advanced, flank and rear guards. Under these conditions eleven miles a day was practically forced marching, and on arriving at Jeumont-sur-Sambre the army was given three days’ rest. Then followed a few leisurely marches in the direction of Charleroi, during which a detachment of Boufflers’s army came in, and the cavalry explored the country to the north. On news of the enemy’s army being at Trazegnies, Luxemburg hurried across a ford of the Sambre above Charleroi, but this proved to be a detachment only, and soon information came in that Waldeck was encamped near Fleurus. Thereupon Luxemburg, without consulting his subordinate generals, took his army to Velaine. He knew that the enemy was marking time till the troops of Liége and the Brandenburgers from the Rhine were near enough to co-operate in the Dinant enterprise, and he was determined to fight a battle at once. From Velaine, therefore, on the morning of the 1st of July, the army moved forward to Fleurus and there won one of the most brilliant victories in the history of the Royal army. But Luxemburg was not allowed to pursue his advantage. He was ordered to hold his army in readiness to besiege either Namur, Mons, Charleroi or Ath, according as later orders dictated; and to send back the borrowed regiments to Boufflers, who was being pressed back by the Brandenburg and Liége troops. Thus Waldeck reformed his army in peace at Brussels, where William III. of England soon afterwards assumed command of the Allied forces in the Netherlands, and Luxemburg and the other marshals stood fast for the rest of the campaign, being forbidden to advance until Catinat—in Italy—should have won a battle.
In this quarter the armed neutrality of the duke of Savoy had long disquieted the French court. His personal connexions with the imperial family and his resentment against Louvois, who had on some occasion treated him with his usual patronizing arrogance,inclined him to join the Allies, while on the other hand he could hope for extensionsStaffarda. of his scanty territory only by siding with Louis. In view of this doubtful condition of affairs the French army under Catinat had for some time been maintained on the Alpine frontier, and in the summer of 1690 Louis XIV. sent an ultimatum to Victor Amadeus to compel him to take one side or the other actively and openly. The result was that Victor Emmanuel threw in his lot with the Allies and obtained help from the Spaniards and Austrians in the Milanese. Catinat thereupon advanced into Piedmont, and won, principally by virtue of his own watchfulness and the high efficiency of his troops, the important victory of Staffarda (August 18th, 1690). This did not, however, enable him to overrun Piedmont, and as the duke was soon reinforced, he had to be content with the methodical conquest of a few frontier districts. On the side of Spain, a small French army under the duc de Noailles passed into Catalonia and there lived at the enemy’s expense for the duration of the campaign.
In these theatres of war, and on the Rhine, where the disunion of the German princes prevented vigorous action, the following year, 1691, was uneventful. But in the Netherlands there were a siege, a war of manœuvres and a cavalry combat, each in its way somewhat remarkable. The siege was that of Mons, which was, like many sieges in the former wars, conducted with much pomp by Louis XIV. himself, with Boufflers and Vauban under him. On the surrender of the place, which was hastened by red-hot shot (April 8th), Louis returned to Versailles and divided his army between Boufflers and Luxemburg, the former of whom departed to the Meuse. There he attempted by bombardment to enforce the surrender of Liége, but had to desist when the elector of Brandenburg threatened Dinant. The principal armies on either side faced one another under the command respectively of William III. and of Luxemburg. The Allies were first concentrated to the south of Namur, and Luxemburg hurried thither, but neither party found any tempting opportunity for battle, and when the cavalry had consumed all the forage available in the district, the two armies edged away gradually towards Flanders. The war of manœuvre continued, with a
