The Church silent and sombre, the army sad and humiliated, parties keenly exasperated--such was the domestic situation of William on the morrow of his triumph, when the uprising of Ireland menaced the peace of the kingdom, and the whole government still remained to be organized. Responsible and concordant ministers did not exist then: William called around him counsellors from different sides--Whigs, Tories, trimmers; Danby, Nottingham, Halifax, Shrewsbury, Herbert, Mordaunt. Disagreements were not slow to display themselves. The Tories had alone exercised power for some years. They were more experienced and skilful in public affairs than the Whigs; the latter were for the most part sincerely devoted to the new government, jealous and suspicious toward their adversaries, who had now become their colleagues. { 19} Traps and intrigues, sometimes violent scenes, succeeded one another without intermission, fettering and retarding the march of the government, sapping the popularity of the King, to whom all parties appealed, and who tried in vain to calm them all. An attack of John Hampden on Halifax appeared so violent that somebody cried in the House of Commons: "This is called a speech: it is a libel!"
William was weary of parliamentary struggles and eager to return to the camp life, which he always preferred to politics, when he pronounced, on the 27th of January, 1690, the dissolution of Parliament. The state of his affairs in Ireland imperatively demanded his presence.
Fleeing from England and the dangers which there threatened, as he thought, his liberty and life, King James had found in France, at the court of Louis XIV., the most generous and splendid hospitality. Lodged by the king at the castle of Saint-Germain, and in every respect treated as a sovereign and equal, James II. had asked and obtained from his royal host the aid which he needed not only to exist in France, but to undertake the conquest of rebellious and Protestant England by means of Ireland, which remained Catholic and true. Civil war had already broken out in this little kingdom; the cession by James of all the civil power to the Catholics and indigenous inhabitants disquieted knots of Protestants, scattered as colonists over certain districts. The small town of Kenmore, the cities of Enniskillen and Londonderry, were filled with refugees of their religion and race, driven by the tyranny exercised upon them to that refuge which the Scotch Presbyterians had lately founded in Ulster. Tyrconnel had tried in vain to maintain an appearance of order; the Irish population, whose passions had been long aroused, would not yield to his influence. Ireland was in flames, when James II. landed at Kinsale on the 12th of March, 1689. { 20} He had embarked at Brest, accompanied by a small body of French officers under the orders of the Count de Rosen. With him Louis XIV. had sent Count d'Avaux, charged with the diplomatic part of the expedition, and with plans to be tried among the English malcontents. From the start, this clever politician, familiar with complicated continental intrigues, foresaw the trouble that the fallen monarch, whose cause he was to plead, would occasion him. "It will not be an easy thing to keep any secret with the King of England," wrote Count d'Avaux to Louis XIV.; "he has told before the sailors of the St. Michel, what he ought to have reserved for his most confidential friends. Another thing which will give us trouble is his irresolution, for he often changes his mind and does not always settle on the best course. He frequently dwells upon little things, on which he employs his whole time, and passes lightly over most essential matters. Moreover he listens to everybody, and one has to spend as much time in removing the impressions which bad advice has produced on him, as in inspiring him with correct ones." "All the troops Tyrconnel had been able to raise, were occupied with the Protestant rising in Ulster," says King James in his Memoirs; "the Catholics of the country had no arms, while the Protestants had an abundance, and the best horses in the kingdom; there were only eight small field-pieces in condition to accompany the army; no provisions or ammunition in the magazine, little powder or balls, no money in the chest, and all the officers gone to England."