keep matters entire for another year. This was censured by some. Better judges thought the managing this campaign as he did was one of the greatest parts of his life.” “He obliged the enemy,” says Harris, “to quit the province of Ulster. The North of Ireland was thus secured for winter quarters.” “By skilful temporizing,” says Professor Weiss, “he contrived in some sort to create an Orange territory, and so to prepare the great victory of the following year.” Whatever praise is due as to this campaign, Schomberg earned it all. The officers of the army had been demoralized under the Stewart’s unpatriotic rule, and so had the officials of the commissariat. Peculation and embezzlement were the business and object of their lives, which some of the officers but partially atoned for by flashes of bellicose impetuosity and English pluck. Soldiers and ammunition were sacrificed to the thoughtlessness and laziness of officers who did not look after them; and those who ought to have been the Duke of Schomberg’s coadjutors were practically spies and enemies in his camp. Abundance of criticism, as the slow growth of after-thought, was often forthcoming at his side, or behind his back, but he was favoured with no suggestive counsel as the ripe fruit of experienced forethought and military education. “Hitherto,” he says in his despatch from Carrickfergus, 27th August 1689,[1] “I have been obliged to take upon myself all the burden of the provisions, the vessels, the artillery, the cavalry, all the payments, and all the detail of the siege.” And although he found officers to accept rank and pay, the work was done as before. Mr. Story testifies, “He had the whole shock of affairs upon himself, which was the occasion that he scarce ever went to bed till it was very late, and then had his candle, with book and pencil, by him. This would have confounded any other man.”
The ringleader of intestine traitors was Mr. Henry Shales, the Purveyor-General. When his villanies came to light, intelligent Englishmen ceased to find fault with Schomberg. The House of Commons was roused. “Mr. Walker, Colonel and Minister in Londonderry,” writes Oldmixon, “gave information that the miscarriages were owing chiefly to the neglect of Mr. Shales, Purveyor-General to the army, by whose default Duke Schomberg had waited for artillery, horses, and carriages, above a month, that the soldiers had all along been almost without bread, the horses without shoes and provender, and the surgeons without proper medicines for the sick. Upon which the Parliament addressed the king, that the said Shales be forthwith taken into custody, and all his accounts, papers, and stores secured.” The king replied on the 20th November that, having been previously informed of “Captain Shales’s misdemeanours,” he had anticipated the request of the House, having already written to the Duke of Schomberg to put him under arrest. This was done, and Shales was arrested and disgraced.
The misconduct in all departments of the commissariat had also defrauded Schomberg of the necessary time for doing anything considerable before winter. A pamphlet, entitled “The Last Year’s Transactions Vindicated,” which goes over William’s first year under English skies, from 5th November 1688 to 5th November 1689, lucidly sets forth how impossible it was to do much for Ireland in that first year of transition. “Their Majesties,” says the writer, “were proclaimed on the 13th February (1689), and the first Money-Bill was not passed in Parliament till the 21st March; nor did it amount to the half of the arrears due to the Army and Navy, and other necessary debts. The next supply was that of the Poll Bill, passed the 1st of May, which for some months thereafter was not all got into the Exchequer, and fell far short of the Parliament’s estimation of it. Now, notwithstanding all this slowness in coming in of money, his Majesty shewed his earnestness to relieve Ireland to that height as to order ammunition and provision to be sent to Londonderry even before he was proclaimed king (which supply came in good time); and thereafter within two weeks after his accession, he ordered another supply of forces to be sent (which miscarried and unhappily returned). His Majesty applied himself in the meantime to send over a greater force under Major-General Kirk, which were shipped for Ireland in May. . . . While these forces were on their way for relief of Londonderry, his Majesty was incessantly giving orders to his army to march from all places of England to Chester and Liverpool, in order to their transportation under the command of the Duke of Schomberg. In spite of a thousand discouragements not to be here named, the General took journey for Chester on the 17th of July, and after having taken time to review and give necessary orders for his army, he set sail on the 12th of August, and landed at Bangor the next day, having some days before despatched four other ships with provisions for Londonderry. Here we are come to the latter end of August in an account of the affairs of Ireland, and pray what more could have been done all this time, considering the circumstances
- ↑ Despatch, No. 3.
