ABSTRACT
In the latter part of 1688, just as the Nine Years' War commenced, Louis XIV was badly outmanoeuvred by his most inveterate enemy, William of Orange, who seized the English throne in the Glorious Revolution. It was said that of his seven or eight aides-de-camp there, only one could speak English, and Friedrich Hermann von Schomberg told William that the Huguenot soldiers were worth twice the number of any other troops. Although a large number of Huguenots had participated in the invasion of England, the regiments raised for Schomberg's expedition to Ireland were the first specifically French Protestant units in William's service. For the 1691 campaign, Henri Massue, second Marquis de Ruvigny, joined the army in Ireland as a major-general and colonel of the Huguenot cavalry regiment. In exile he continued to be an influential spokesman and benefactor of the refugees.
