Page 239 - Demo

Chapter Seven 239
After a long stay in the lough, on 30 July, the relieving vessels inally succeeded in break- ing through the boon and carried relief to the brave defenders. The siege had lasted for 105 days. On the same day that the relief of Derry was accomplished, the Jacobites sufered another reverse. A force sent to besiege Enniskillen, the other great Williamite stronghold, under the command of Justin McCarthy, Lord Mountcashel, was defeated at Newtownbut- ler by a detachment from the Enniskillen garrison.
With the relief of both Derry and Enniskillen, Ulster was efectively lost to the Jaco- bites. A fortnight later, on 13 August, 1689, William’s senior commander, the octogenarian, Marshal Frederick Herman Von Schomberg, a man once referred to as the ‘ablest soldier of his day,’ landed at Belfast Lough with 20,000 men. Following a siege of eight days, Car- rickfergus Castle was surrendered to Schomberg after which he settled down to winter in an entrenched camp near Dundalk, in an ‘unhealthful position,’ it was said: during his stay he lost a large part of his army to disease and desertion. At the same time, James’ army was chiely at Drogheda. In March 1690, following the aptly described “winter without initia- tives,” James exchanged ive regiments of Irish soldiers under Lord Mountcashel, for 7,000 French led by Count Lauzun; while in June, William himself landed at Carrickfergus with a large and well-disciplined army and immediately linked up with Schomberg. William now commanded an army 36,000 strong, about half of which were foreigners, excellent expe- rienced soldiers, a formidable mixture of French, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and Prussians or Brandenburghers, as they were also known. One chronicler of the day noted:
“In almost every way the odds were heavily against the Jacobites. The silent, ungain- ly, ambitious, asthmatic William, with his pale face and penetrating eye, was a capa- ble commander; the hapless fugitive, James, showed little interest and less courage. William’s forces, moreover, outnumbered James’s by some ten or twelve thousand men, and had all the further advantages of experience, equipment, and artillery.”