of the defence was broken, and after one more brief stand at Plottin Castle, where the Inniskilleners were temporarily checked and had again to be rallied, and where Hamilton was wounded and made prisoner, the defeat of the Irish army became a rout, and their retreat a flight. James, who had watched the battle from the hill of Donore till it went against him, had already hurried through the pass of Duleek, and was making the best of his way to Dublin. His army, now a broken and confused mass of fugitives, struggled after him through the defile. The battle of the Boyne was won. The victory, though not so immediately decisive as it might have been if Schomberg's plan had been adopted, was practically fatal to the Jacobite cause. Drogheda surrendered the next day. James, who had reached Dublin on the evening of the battle, quitted it the day after for ever. On the 3d of July he reached Waterford, whence he embarked on board a French frigate and sailed for Brest. Lauzun and Tyrconnel collected their straggling forces as best they could, and, evacuating the Irish capital immediately after James's flight, marched westward with the design of reorganising resistance at such still remaining strongholds of the deposed monarch as Limerick and Athlone. William fixed his headquarters at Finglas, near Dublin, but enjoyed no long period of unmixed satisfaction with his victory. The day before the two armies closed upon the Boyne, the French fleet, under De Tourville, had encountered what should have been the combined fleets of England and the States off Beachy Head, but by the supineness or treachery of the English Admiral the Dutch had been left to bear the brunt of the battle alone. After hours of hard fighting they drew off with the worst of the encounter, and Admiral Herbert, destroying some of the Dutch ships, and taking the rest in tow, sailed up the Thames, leaving the enemy in undisputed possession of the Channel. The news of this defeat, and of the alarm for our unprotected coasts which it had occasioned in London, reached William on the 27th of July at Carrick-on-Suir, where he was encamped, after having reduced Waterford. He immediately hurried to Dublin with the intention of embarking to England; but, reassured by later advices informing him that the French attempt at a descent on the Devonshire coast had proved a failure, he returned to headquarters, and hastened to prosecute the campaign. The glory of the Boyne, however, was destined to be somewhat dimmed before many weeks were past. At Limerick the Celtic Irish showed, with the variability of their unstable race, that they could fight bravely when "i' th' humour." Sarsfield, left in command by the departure in disgust of Lauzun and Tyrconnel, approved himself a leader of vigour and resource. He intercepted and destroyed William's heavier battering-train before it could reach him. The besieged of Limerick, fighting with a desperate courage, which even