inforcements and
supplies should arrive.

He entrenched himself near Dundalk in such a manner that he could not
be forced to fight against his will. James, emboldened by the caution of
his adversary, and disregarding the advice of Rosen, advanced to Ardee,
appeared at the head of the whole Irish army before the English lines,
drew up horse, foot and artillery, in order of battle, and displayed
his banner. The English were impatient to fall on. But their general had
made up his mind, and was not to be moved by the bravadoes of the enemy
or by the murmurs of his own soldiers. During some weeks he remained
secure within his defences, while the Irish lay a few miles off. He set
himself assiduously to drill those new levies which formed the greater
part of his army. He ordered the musketeers to be constantly exercised
in firing, sometimes at marks and sometimes by platoons; and, from the
way in which they at first acquitted themselves, it plainly appeared
that he had judged wisely in not leading them out to battle. It was
found that not one in four of the English soldiers could manage his
piece at all; and whoever succeeded in discharging it, no matter in what
direction, thought that he had performed a great feat.

While the Duke was thus employed, the Irish eyed his camp without daring
to attack it. But within that camp soon appeared two evils more terrible
than the foe, treason and pestilence. Among the best troops under his
command were the French exiles. And now a grave doubt arose touching
their fidelity. The real Huguenot refugee indeed might safely be
trusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestant
regarded the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm
feeling when compared with that inextinguishable hatred which glowed
in the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, expatriated Calvinist of
Languedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French heretic
neither gave nor took quarter, [443] Now, however, it was found that
with those emigrants who had sacrificed every thing for the reformed
religion were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserters
who had run away from their standards in the Low Countries, and had
coloured their crime by pretending that they were Protestants, and that
their conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor of
their Church. Some of these men, hoping that by a second treason they
might obtain both pardon and reward, opened a corres