 Under his command, affairs had remained static and very little had been accomplished, partly because the English troops suffered severely from fever and the army's move south was blocked by Jacobite forces; both sides camped for the winter.In an Irish context, the war was a sectarian and ethnic conflict, in many ways a re-run of the Irish Confederate Wars of 50 years earlier.For the Jacobites, the war was fought for Irish sovereignty, religious tolerance for Catholicism, and land ownership.