ities; and the whole campaign was merely a long struggle maintained
by his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune.

He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by two
regiments of infantry. Schomberg battered the walls; and the Irish,
after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they should
depart unharmed; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. The
people of the town and neighbourhood were generally Protestants of
Scottish extraction. They had suffered much during the short ascendency
of the native race; and what they had suffered they were now eager
to retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes, exclaiming that the
capitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. They
soon proceeded from words to blows. The Irish, disarmed, stripped, and
hustled, clung for protection to the English officers and soldiers.
Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol in
hand, through the throng of the enraged colonists, [437]

From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, through
towns left without an inhabitant, and over plains on which not a cow,
nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Here
he was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses,
and arms locked strange to eyes accustomed to the pomp of reviews, but
who in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and who
had, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired many
of the essential qualities of soldiers. [438]

Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The few
Irish troops which remained in the south of Ulster retreated before
him, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thriving
Protestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford too
had perished. The spot where the town had once stood was marked only by
the massy remains of the old Norman castle. Those who ventured to wander
from the camp reported that the country, as far as they could explore
it, was a wilderness. There were cabins, but no inmates: there was rich
pasture, but neither flock nor herd: there were cornfields; but the
harvest lay on the ground soaked with rain, [439]

While Schomberg was advancing through a vast solitude, the Irish forces
were rapidly assembling from every quarter. On the tenth of September
the royal standard of James was unfurled on the tower