The French officers in James’s army had repeatedly urged him to retire into Connaught and defend the line of the Shannon, but on political grounds he declined to accept this excellent advice, and after some manœuvring took up a position on the river Boyne, near Oldbridge and Duleek. Here he entrenched himself, but on the 1st of July William attacked and routed him with considerable loss. As the XVIIIth regiment played no important part in the engagement, if, indeed, it came under fire at all, it is only necessary to say that though some of James’s troops fought with distinguished gallantry in this battle, others did not show the fine qualities they exhibited later at Limerick and Aughrim. Covered by a rear-guard of Frenchmen, the defeated army fell back upon the Shannon. James, for the second time, deserted his soldiers and fled to France, while William occupied Dublin, and matured his plans for the next phase of the campaign. By a great victory over the Anglo-Dutch fleet at Beachy Head the King of France won for the moment the absolute command of the British Channel, and thus could throw reinforcements at will into the south and west of Ireland by the ports of Waterford, Cork, Kinsale, Limerick, and Galway. These towns were, therefore, essential to William; and hardly less important was Athlone, the entrance to the wild districts of Connaught, to which he hoped to confine the future operations of the war. A strong detachment under General Douglas was therefore sent against Athlone, while William himself led the greater part of his army towards Limerick, where a large number of James’s troops had been concentrated. Though these regiments had worked hard to improve the fortifications of the city, its defences were still so imperfect that when the French heard that William was approaching they pronounced the place to be untenable and moved off to Galway, leaving the Irish, about 20,000 strong, to defend it, under the command of General Boisleau, an officer who had learned to appreciate the good qualities of his allies, and Sarsfield, an Irish soldier of great brilliancy and courage. Reinforced by Douglas, whose detachment had failed to make any impression on Athlone, William appeared before Limerick on August 9, and after brushing away the enemy’s skirmishers pitched camp within a quarter of a mile of the city wall, expecting little resistance from a place so weak that the French had declared it “could be taken by throwing apples at it.” In eight days William opened his batteries, though with very inferior ordnance, for by a daring raid Sarsfield had swooped on the convoy bringing up his siege-train and destroyed nearly all his heavy guns. On the 20th the grenadiers of the XVIIIth and Cutts’s regiments greatly distinguished themselves by the capture of a strong redoubt near John’s Gate. A sudden rush from the trenches brought them to the foot of the work, into which they hurled a shower of hand-grenades,