CHAPTER X.

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.