The journey was so difficult that it was not till the 6th of January that he reached Inverary. Under the circumstances, the sheriff there consented, though after the prescribed date, to receive the oath, and sent it, with a certificate stating the circumstances to Edinburgh. The slowness of Macdonald had played into the hands of his enemies the Campbells. Breadalbane and Argyle were at one in their determination to use their advantage, and they found a ready assistant in the Master of Stair, whose views, free from all local feeling, were of the sternest description, and who thought the Highlanders should be treated as uncivilized barbarians. He had been disappointed at the submission of the clans, and rejoiced at the opportunity of making one example. By his means the certificate granted by the sheriff appears to have been suppressed, and an order was drawn up and laid before William, in which, along with other instructions to the commander of the army in Scotland, were these words with regard to the clan of Glencoe: "It will be proper, for the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of thieves." William signed the order, probably without carefully reading it, almost certainly without understanding what Dalrymple meant by extirpation. His scheme was one of the utmost barbarity. A detachment of soldiers was sent into the glen as though on a friendly mission. They were kindly received and hospitably kept for more than a week. Then, at a fixed date, when other troops were to have stopped all the passes, they suddenly fell upon their kindly hosts and cruelly murdered them. The plan was but partially carried out. The passes had not been stopped, and not more than thirty-eight of the Highlanders were actually killed. But the villages were destroyed, the cattle driven off, and it is unknown how many more perished as they fled in the dead of winter in the wild mountains which surrounded their glen.
Threatened invasion of England.
It was just after this event, in March, that William went abroad to resume the Continental war. As usual, his absence was the time of danger for England. An invasion from France had long been planned, and was on the point of taking place. Excited by the constant untruthful account of his agents in England, encouraged by the artful and well-planned treachery of Marlborough and William's other ministers, James had never ceased to press upon Louis the wisdom of an assault upon England. His urgent instances had always been met by the opposition of the war minister Louvois. Conscious that his superiority lay in the organization of large disciplined armies in the field, and led by the experience of his life to look to the great operations of regular warfare on the Rhine and in Italy as the real sources of greatness for France, that minister had always set his face against little wars. He was moreover jealous of the influence of Lauzun at the Court of St. Germains, and had repeatedly pointed out what was very true, the falseness of the Jacobite accounts, the weak character of James, the total untrustworthiness of his resources, and the consequent necessity which would be laid upon France of carrying out such an invasion, in fact, entirely unaided. He had dwelt also upon the strong national feeling of the English, repeatedly exhibited when an invasion was threatened, and the uncertainty, even were the attempt successful, of the continued assistance and alliance of a Prince so ignorant and selfish as James. Nevertheless, in this instance James was right, not that all and more than all that Louvois urged was not true, but that the separation of England from the coalition, the command of the sea, and the blow which would be dealt to William's influence, were worth any sacrifice which France might make. Louvois' arguments, however, had hitherto prevailed; the assistance given to James had been but slight. But Louvois' death (which took place on the 16th of July 1691) opened brighter hopes to the exiled King. Louis was at length persuaded; and a vast plan was made which, had it been carried out as intended, might well have been successful. An army was secretly collected during the winter on the coast of Normandy. Two fleets were assembled at Brest and at Toulon, numbering together 80 ships of the line, and placed under the command of Tourville and D'Estrées, to convoy this army to England. James, misled by his hopes and by the double-dealing of Russell, believed, and made Louis believe, that the English fleet was thoroughly disaffected. Secure in this belief, it was without much anxiety that the invaders found the spring far advanced, while still the weather prevented the junction of the fleets.
Battle of La Hogue. May 19.
But meanwhile all secresy had been lost. The Queen in England, and William in Holland, had put forth all their energy, and a combined Dutch and English fleet of 90 ships was in the Channel under command of Russell. At last one French squadron, that of Tourville, consisting of 44 ships, made its appearance. It was supposed that, weak as it was, it was sufficient for all necessary purposes; it could probably beat the Dutch contingent, and the English fleet was of no account, for neither Russell nor his men were likely to fight. Relying on this false belief, Louis issued peremptory orders to his admiral to cover the invasion, and fight the enemy wherever he met them. But James's folly had already gone far to thwart any hopes based upon the temper of the English. He had issued a Declaration, the work of his counsellor Melfort, excepting from all hope of pardon, not only a long list of gentlemen by name, but whole classes of Englishmen, all judges, jurymen, and lawyers who had been employed in any of the prosecutions of Jacobites, all magistrates who did not instantly (regardless of where they might be) make common cause with him upon his appearance, all spies and informers who had divulged his secrets, even the insignificant fishermen of Sheerness who had hindered him on his first attempt to escape from England. So ridiculous, so ill-judged was the Declaration, that, far from suppressing it, the English Council reprinted it, and distributed it largely, with a few pungent criticisms of their own. Even Jacobites had to confess that at least 500 men were excepted. It is easy to conceive the effect of such a Declaration, when contrasted with William's noble Act of Grace of the preceding year. What James's folly had thus half done the Queen's sagacity completed. Urged on all sides to apprehend known Jacobites, with the denunciations of a plot, perfectly fictitious indeed, but none the less very plausible, the creation of a rascal of the name of Young, just placed in her hands, and fully conscious of the intrigues of Russell her admiral, she wrote a noble letter, expressing her trust and reliance on the patriotism of her fleet, and sent it to Russell, with orders to read it to the captains of his fleet. Russell, at heart a Whig and a devoted lover of his profession, hesitated no longer. He would fight, he said, though King James himself were in the hostile fleet. He went from ship to ship, encouraging the crews, and when Tourville bore down upon him there was no sign of faint-heartedness in the English fleet. Overpowered by numbers, the French fleet fled, broke into fragments, and was destroyed piecemeal. But twelve of the largest ships, with Tourville himself, took refuge under the Forts of La Hogue, under the eyes of James and Marshal Bellefonds, commander of the army. There, as they lay in two divisions in shallow water, they were attacked on two successive days by a flotilla of English boats, under Admiral Rooke; and under the guns of the forts, which were supposed to render them quite secure, they were taken and burnt, while James looked on and saw the destruction of this his last hope.
Second crisis of the war over.
This great victory over the French, the first which the nation had won for many years, drove the people wild with delight. All the more heavy was their disappointment at the feeble manner in which it was followed up, and at the ill success of the war in the Netherlands in the latter part of the year. An expedition against St. Malo failed through the jealousy of its commanders. Subsequent ill success of the fleet. The broken fleet of Tourville, unable to keep the sea, assumed a new form. French cruisers and privateers covered the ocean, and hundreds of English merchantmen fell a prey to them. The commercial world suffered more heavily from the individual enterprises of men such as the privateer captains Jean Bart and Dugouay Trouin than from the great united fleets of France, and almost regretted the victory which had called to life such enemies.
Fall of Namur. June 30.
The chief incidents of the war in the Netherlands—the fall of the great fortress of Namur, and the battle of Steinkirk—were very characteristic of the art of war at this period. It was a time of slow, methodical, and scientific movement in the field, but of great advance in the art of attacking and defending fortresses, which in the hands of Vauban and Cohorn was so far perfected, that for more than a century no important change was made in the system they advocated. Louis did not press his advantage; after taking Namur his army was diminished by detachments sent to other quarters, and William thought he saw an opportunity of striking a heavy blow against his weakened opponent. A traitor in the English army had habitually informed Marshal Luxemburg of every movement of the allied troops.