THE FINAL DEPARTURE OF KING JAMES--A RETROSPECT OF HIS CHARACTER.
The consequences of "the Boyne" are too well known for comment;
what a reversal of that day's events might have done, it is painful
to contemplate. A suspension of the battle for a week--even for a
day--would have changed the whole complexion of the war, and turned the
finger of destiny. The very hour that William drew up at Townly Hall,
on the 30th of June, the combined fleets of England and Holland had
been almost utterly destroyed by Admiral Tourville at Beachy Head: and
as he crossed the Boyne next day, the combined armies of the League,
under Prince Waldeck, had been overthrown at Fleurus by the French army
under the renowned Marshal Luxemburg. While James was hastening to
Dublin to quit his dominions forever, the fleet of Admiral de Seignelay
was unmoored, waiting a favorable wind to sail for Ireland to destroy
William's transports round the coast; the fleet of Tourville was riding
triumphant at the mouth of the Thames, and "there were not," says Hume,
"ten thousand armed men in all England." There, disaffection was on the
increase, the Jacobite cause was gaining strength, and it was not easy
to decide, even with the loss of the Boyne, which was at that moment in
the more critical plight--the victor or the vanquished.
Had any nominal force been thrown into England at this moment, all
had been at once recovered; for William, if indeed he could, would
have to withdraw his army from Ireland "to save the larger stake," and
that country, relieved of his foreign veterans, would soon rectify
itself; or, if compelled to remain in Ireland, and continue the war for
awhile, he would certainly lose the other two kingdoms, and the third
would follow as a consequence. His affairs in Holland, too, were in an
unpromising condition. The arms of France were everywhere predominant,
and this was a matter of deeper importance to William, than even the
loss of the English throne, which, 'tis said, he ambitioned only so
far as it enabled him to cope with his proud and detested enemy, Louis
XIV. Such a happy combination of events, dashed but by a single defeat,
in which only about one thousand men were lost, would have imparted
courage and hope to any heart, but that of this unfortunate king. But
from the first to the last his course, if not leading to the ruin of a
noble people, might be read as a great "Comedy of Errors." He seemed
continually under the spell of some evil genius that lulled him to a
sense of security, while leading him to destruction:--and from his
refusal of the first generous offer of King Louis, through M. Bonrepas,
while he was yet upon the throne of England, the series of mishaps and
miscalculations through which he stumbled, seems indeed to mark out a
manifest destiny.
At Salisbury, when deserted by his nobles, he had but to choose
generals from the ranks, and pledging his army the estates forfeited by
this treason, he could have created a revolution within a revolution,
and held his throne at will as the sovereign of the people. If, instead
of going to Ireland, where four-fifths of the people were unalterably
attached to him, he had gone to Scotland, we are told that the whole
country would have risen under Dundee; and William would have had two
countries to conquer instead of one. On his arrival in Ireland, he
weakened the strength of that country by sending 3,000 trained soldiers
to the assistance of Dundee; under the advice of Secretary Melford, a
Scotchman, and against the advice of Tyrconnell, who had seen the fate
of the soldiers sent under Hamilton to England. He next disconcerted
the arrangements for the surrender of Derry, and afterwards, through a
weak punctilio, refused the second offer, and protracted the rebellion
of Ulster until the arrival of Schomberg. Again, deaf to the entreaties
of his generals, he virtually saved the army of invasion from total
destruction, on the plea that winter and desertion would do the work of
war, on the foreigners. As time advanced, and the war assumed greater
proportions, his blunders became more glaring and more fatal. In the
spring of 1690, he sent Lord Mountcashel, the best general then in the
country, and 6,000 men, "the flower of the Irish army," to France, in
lieu of 6,000 nondescripts, under the lead of de Lausun, a man, if
not of dubious courage, of very dubious loyalty, and to sustain this
equivalent in Louis' army, sent 4,000 more the same year. He fought
the Battle of the Boyne against the counsel of his generals, and
when fortune seemed to favor his army, he lost an offered victory by
trepidity and indecision. And, now, to complete a series of blunders by
one more fatal than all: instead of sending Tyrconnell, or some other
statesman of diplomatic ability, to plead his necessities before his
"brother of France," he formed the resolution of appearing in person
at the French court, where the general rejoicing over recent victories
could only render his forlorn condition the more marked, and his suit
the more neglected. And, yet, through all, the people of Ireland loved
him, and followed him with a devotion deepened and intensified by each
successive misfortune. Her young men presented themselves in thousands,
aye, in tens of thousands, at every call for new levies, but to go
away and fold their arms, while their country was sacrificed! Such a
country! and such a king! We read the history of La Vendée in vain, for
an exemplification of the fidelity of the one; and there is no parallel
in the category of royal refugees, save that of the fabled Lear, for
the misfortunes and melo-dramatism of the other!
When he arrived in Dublin, he summoned his council, and communicated
his intention of quitting the country to solicit aid from France. It
is but justice to state that he says they were unanimous in their
approval; that de Lausun was importunate in his persuasion to that
effect, and that letters, lately received from his queen, were still
more urgent, and that so his resolution was confirmed. Ordering that
the army should rendezvous at Limerick, each colonel leading his
men thither as he might, he committed the government of the kingdom
again to Tyrconnell, and, after giving some salutary advice on the
regulation of affairs in the city until the arrival of the Prince of
Orange, he made an exposition of his principles, and of the hopes
he yet entertained of establishing them; then, in a very simple and
affecting address, he bade farewell to his friends, and left the
city under escort of two regiments of the Guards, those of Brown and
Purcell. From Dublin he proceeded to Bray, where he left those troops
to defend the bridge there in case of pursuit, and continued his route
to Wicklow, where he spent the night at the residence of a gentleman
named Hacket; from Wicklow he journeyed to Duncannon, and thence to
Waterford. The detail of this route in the "Memoirs" forms a chapter,
highly interesting and suggestive to a writer of romance, although of
little import to the general reader. It tells how on the way he was
almost startled from his propriety at every step by Messieurs de la
Hoquette, Famechon, Chamarante, and Merode, colonels in the French
contingent, who had, no doubt, been sent by de Lausun to urge him to
swifter flight; for this general had many intrigues of his own at the
French court, and, as they were spoiling in his absence, he encouraged
the king's departure as the surest way of procuring his own recall
from Ireland. But, as the subject is irrelevant here, the curious are
referred to the notes of Berwick's Memoirs, where they may contemplate
the web woven around this unfortunate king by the general for whom he
had made the powerful Louvois his inveterate enemy.
At Waterford he heard that the French ship De Lausun, of twenty guns,
was moored at Passage, with a cargo of corn and supplies; and in this
he sailed from Waterford to Kinsale, where, after a short delay, he
embarked, and arrived at Brest on the 9th of July, escorted by the
_fleet of M. de Seignelay, which he met on its way to destroy William's
transports around the Irish coast_!
So ended the reign of James II.; and with it, virtually, the dynasty
of the Stuarts. He died at St. Germains, in France, on the 16th of
September, 1701, surviving his daughter Mary by seven years; and
on the 8th of March, 1702, his death was followed by that of the
Prince of Orange, who broke his collar-bone by a fall from his horse;
surviving his much injured father-in-law only by six months. The son
and grandson of the expatriate monarch, each in turn, tried to regain
his inheritance, but the Hanoverian line prevailed, and with Prince
Charles, "The young Chevalier," the grandson of the renowned Sobieski,
the noblest and bravest of his race, the royal house of Stuart became
extinct.
James was an ascetic and religious prince, sincerely devoted to the
Catholic religion, but perfectly tolerant of the religious doctrines
of others. A just man, generous in great things, and yet scrupulously
exacting and punctilious in small ones; a king solicitous for the
welfare of his subjects and the glory of England, but, above all,
unalterably devoted to the principle of civil and religious liberty,
which he endeavored to establish in his realms, but which the
intolerant spirit of the times prevented. He was the generous patron
and consistent friend of William Penn, and the fosterer and protector
of the American colonies, which received his charters with adulation,
and repaid them with ingratitude. He was the first and last sovereign
of England that stretched out the hand of justice towards Ireland;
and her people served him with devotion, and, notwithstanding his
many military blunders, which justify their irony, they appreciated
his motives, and their descendants recall with pity, not unmingled
with reverence, the name of this much maligned king, who, in trying
to ameliorate the condition of their country, became the victim of
intolerance, and died a discrowned exile.
Two characteristics, seemingly irreconcilable, are attributed to him by
his enemies;--that he was at once an "enthusiast" and a "bigot,"--and
they may be accepted. His enthusiasm was that of a good, rather than of
a great mind; but that he was a "bigot," in the repulsive application
of that term, cannot be accepted from histories which are in themselves
but tissues woven of the darkest intolerance. "_Enthusiasm_" and
"_bigotry_" are terms much at variance; but when applied to his whole
life, they are easily reconcilable, and not unlovely. He was a _bigot_
so far as to be a firm believer in the doctrines of the Catholic
Church, but not to the extent of prescribing them as the _panacea_
for the sins of others, nor of making it penal not to believe as he
believed: and he was an _enthusiast_ in so far as he imagined that he
could harmonize the discordant religious elements of the country to
abide in peace and good-will, and establish a name and an era in the
history of England to which all her people henceforth could point with
gratitude and admiration. He was a _bigot_ and an _enthusiast_ just to
the extent that Washington and O'Connell were bigots and enthusiasts,
and no more. The good that he intended for his own kingdom died with
him, but his principles were carried to the Western continent by the
Irish emigrants, and established there.[37] He failed; not because his
object was unjust, or his reforms unnecessary, but because an evil
spirit, not yet cast out, rendered the hearts of his people obdurate
and insensate. Two things, however, that should not be forgotten, are
manifest from the history of that period and the century succeeding it:
that Ireland is the precursor and exemplar of American liberty, and
that James II. was the first, the only English king that had the true
idea of popular government; the first that had the virtue to practise
it, and was at once its apostle and its martyr.