On the 14th of June he landed at Carrickfergus, and immediately set out for Belfast to take over the command from Schomberg. All Ulster rose with enthusiasm to receive him, and the soldiers, whom treachery and incompetency had been sacrificing by the hundred to the ravages of disease and privation, took heart once more. After ten days spent in concentrating his forces at Loughbrickland, William started southward at the head of 36,000 men. Two days after his nephew's landing James had left Dublin to lead his troops to Dundalk with the view either of giving battle at that point, or merely, as has been suggested, of eating up the country between the capital and the invading army, so as to impede its advance by difficulties of supply. But if the former were the original object of the movement it was soon abandoned. When William's army approached Dundalk James fell back upon Ardee; and the former still pressing southwards, the latter still continued his retreat, until the pursuer was brought to a halt on the morning of the 30th of June by the halt of the pursued, and the English and Irish armies at last looked each other in the face across the now historic waters of the Boyne. Lauzun, who had succeeded De Rosen in the command of James's forces, was a courtier rather than a general, but the position he had here taken up, behind entrenchments and with a river in front, was strategically a strong one--so strong indeed that the veteran Schomberg doubted his master's wisdom in resolving upon an immediate attack. But William, as he had told the Ulster men, had not come to Ireland to "let the grass grow under his feet." He had the advantage in numbers; the advantage in generalship; above all, the advantage in the quality of his troops, who, if but few of them were as good as the trained French soldiers of his adversary, were none of them so bad as the rapparee Irish levies who formed the bulk of James's forces. The day passed in an exchange of shots across the river, from one of which William had well-nigh lost his life. Having sat down to breakfast somewhat close to the brink of the Boyne, he attracted the attention of the Irish sentries on the opposite shore. Two field-pieces were planted opposite to him, and, on his rising and remounting his horse, were discharged at the group of which he was the centre. The first shot killed a man and two horses at some distance from him; the second, better aimed, struck the river bank and grazed the King's shoulder in its ricochet, inflicting a slight flesh wound. His staff thronged anxiously about him, but William, in his usual dry and stoical fashion, relieved their fears. He was unharmed, he told them, but "there was no need for any bullet to come nearer." His wound was dressed, and he remained in the saddle till nightfall. At nine o'clock he held a council of war, and, against the advice of Schomberg, declared his determination of effecting a passage of the river on the following day.