Unable to dissuade his master from the rash project, as he deemed it, the veteran general urged that at least a portion of the army should be sent up the stream at midnight to Slane Bridge, and crossing it at that point, should be in readiness either to assist them in the event of their attack being unsuccessful, by a diversion in the rear of James's army, or, in case the river should have been carried, to cut off the retreat of the Irish by the pass of Duleek. This plan, which, if adopted, would probably, as one of William's biographers points out, have ended the campaign at a stroke, was rejected: why, does not very clearly appear. The tactics were such as might have been thought likely to commend themselves to William, and he could apparently have well spared the men to execute them. It is said by the biographer above referred to that the plan was opposed "by the Dutch generals"; but it is not impossible that the objection may have really come from the King himself, and have been founded not on strategical but on political considerations. William, as we know, was especially solicitous about his father-in-law's life, and not perhaps suspecting how well it would be cared for by its owner, whom he must have remembered to have once been brave, he may have rejected Schomberg's scheme for its very completeness, and because he not unnaturally assumed that in cutting off the retreat of James's army he would be cutting off the retreat of James himself. The too complimentary assumption that the royal general would be last rather than first in the flight had yet to be rebutted by events. But whatever the reason, the Marshal's plan was rejected; he retired, chagrined and hurt, from the council, and the last night of the old soldier's life was spent, it is melancholy to think, in displeasure with the master whom he had so long and faithfully served.