Battle of the Boyne
The Battle of the Boyne took place in 1690 between the forces of the deposed King James II, and those of King William III who, with his wife Queen Mary II, had acceded to the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1689. The battle was fought across the River Boyne close to the town of Drogheda in the Kingdom of Ireland, modern-day Ireland, and resulted in a victory for William. This turned the tide in James's failed attempt to regain the British crown and ultimately aided in ensuring the continued Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.
The battle took place on 1 July 1690 O.S. William's forces defeated James's army, which consisted mostly of raw recruits. Although the Williamite War in Ireland continued until the signing of the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691, James fled to France after the Boyne, never to return.
Background
The battle was a major encounter in James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, resulting from the Invitation to William and William's wife, Mary, from the 'immortal seven' English peers to take the throne to defend Protestantism. But the conflict had broader and deeper European geopolitical roots, of the League of Augsburg and the Grand Alliance against the expansionist ambitions of Catholic Louis XIV of France, or of the House of Bourbon against the House of Habsburg. If the battle is seen as part of the War of the Grand Alliance, Pope Alexander VIII was an ally of William and a friend to James; the Papal States were part of the Grand Alliance with a shared hostility to the Catholic Louis XIV of France, who at the time was attempting to establish dominance in Europe and to whom James was an ally.The previous year William had sent the Duke of Schomberg to take charge of the Irish campaign. He was a 74-year-old professional soldier who had accompanied William during the Glorious Revolution. He brought an army of 20,000 men, which arrived at Bangor. 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. The Catholic upper classes had lost or had been forced to exchange almost all their lands after Cromwell's conquest, as well as the right to hold public office, practice their religion, and sit in the Irish Parliament. To these ends, under Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnel, they had raised an army to restore James II after the Glorious Revolution. Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter being the commander-in-chief of all King James's forces in the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary. By 1690, they controlled all of Ireland except for Derry and Enniskillen.
The majority of Irish people were Jacobites and supported James II due to his 1687 Declaration of Indulgence or, as it is also known, the Declaration for the Liberty of Conscience, that granted religious freedom to all denominations in England and Scotland and also due to James II's promise to the Irish Parliament of an eventual right to self-determination.
Conversely, for the Williamites in Ireland, the war was about maintaining Protestant rule in Ireland. They feared for their lives and their property if James and his Catholic supporters were to rule Ireland, nor did they trust the promise of tolerance, seeing the Declaration of Indulgence as a ploy to re-establish Catholicism as the sole state religion. James had already antagonised English Protestants with his actions. In particular, they dreaded a repeat of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which had been marked by widespread killing. For these reasons, Protestants fought en masse for William of Orange. Many Williamite troops at the Boyne, including their very effective irregular cavalry, were Ulster Protestants, who called themselves "Enniskilliners" and were referred to by contemporaries as "Scots-Irish". These "Enniskilliners" were mostly the descendants of Anglo-Scottish border reivers; large numbers of these reivers had settled around Enniskillen in County Fermanagh.
Commanders
The opposing armies in the battle were led by the Roman Catholic king James II of England and Ireland and, opposing him, his nephew and son-in-law, the Protestant king William III who had deposed James the previous year. James's supporters controlled much of Ireland and the Irish Parliament. James also enjoyed the support of his cousin, Louis XIV, who did not want to see a hostile monarch on the throne of England. Louis sent 6,000 French troops to Ireland to support the Irish Jacobites. William was already Stadtholder of the Netherlands and was able to call on Dutch and allied troops from Europe as well as England and Scotland.James was a seasoned officer who had proved his bravery when fighting in Europe, notably at the Battle of the Dunes. However, recent historians have suggested that he was prone to panicking under pressure and making rash decisions, which it has been suggested may have been due to poor health associated with the Stuart line.
William, although a seasoned commander, had yet to win a major battle. William's success against the French had been reliant upon tactical manoeuvres and good diplomacy rather than force. His diplomacy had assembled the League of Augsburg, a multi-national coalition formed to resist French aggression in Europe. From William's point of view, his taking power in England and the ensuing campaign in Ireland was just another front in the war against France in general, and Louis XIV in particular.
James II's subordinate commanders were Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who was Lord Deputy of Ireland and James's most powerful supporter in Ireland; Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter, Brigadier General in command of all the Jacobite forces in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary, and an intimate of James II; and the French general Lauzun. William's commander-in-chief was the Duke of Schomberg. Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Schomberg had fought for a few different countries and had formerly been a Marshal of France, but, being a Huguenot, was compelled to leave France in 1685 because of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Armies
The Williamite army at the Boyne was about 36,000 strong, composed of troops from many countries; Only around half of them were British. Around 20,000 troops had been in Ireland since 1689, commanded by Schomberg. William himself had landed in Carrickfergus on 14 June O.S. He met Schomberg at nearby Whitehouse, and then proceeded south through Belfast. Loughbrickland was the rallying point of the scattered divisions of the army. He arrived there with another 16,000 in June 1690. On 30 June O.S. William had reached the top of a hill near the southern border of County Louth.William's troops were generally far better trained and equipped than James's. The best Williamite infantry were from Denmark and the Netherlands, professional soldiers equipped with the latest flintlock muskets. The Danish infantry was commanded by General Ernst von Tettau. There was also a large contingent of French Huguenot troops fighting with the Williamites. William did not yet have a high opinion of his English and Scottish troops, with the exception of the Ulster Protestant "skirmishers" who had held Derry in the previous year; the English and Scottish troops were felt at this stage to be politically unreliable, since James had been their legitimate monarch up to a year before. Moreover, they had only been raised recently and had seen little action. However, this battle would give William cause to evaluate them more favourably, due to the impressive behaviour of the English troops, such as the Duke of Beaufort's Regiment of Foot.
James’s flag was erected at the town of Donore, on the opposite side of the river Boyne. The Jacobites were 23,500 strong. James had several regiments of French troops, but most of his manpower was provided by Irish Catholics, with some English and Scottish Jacobites also present. The Jacobites' Irish cavalry, who were recruited from among the dispossessed Irish gentry, proved themselves to be high-calibre troops during the course of the battle. However, the Irish infantry, predominantly peasants who had been pressed into service, were not trained soldiers. They had been hastily trained, poorly equipped, and only a minority of them had functional muskets. In fact, some of them carried only farm implements such as scythes at the Boyne. Furthermore, the Jacobite infantry who actually had firearms were all equipped with the obsolete matchlock musket. The French and Irish troops wore a white rallying mark, as a compliment to the Bourbons and to distinguish them from the Williamites.
Battle
William sailed from Hoylake in Cheshire, landing at Carrickfergus, County Antrim on 14 June O.S. and marched south. Referring to Dublin, he was heard to remark that "the place was worth fighting for". James chose to place his line of defence on the River Boyne, around from Dublin. The Williamites reached the Boyne on 29 June. The day before the battle, William himself had a narrow escape when he was wounded in the shoulder by Jacobite artillery while surveying the fords over which his troops would cross the Boyne.The battle itself was fought on 1 July O.S., for control of a ford on the Boyne near Drogheda, about north-west of the hamlet of Oldbridge. As a diversionary tactic, William sent about a quarter of his men under the cover of morning mist to cross the river at Roughgrange, about west of Donore and about south-west of Oldbridge. The Duke of Schomberg's son, Meinhardt, led this crossing, which a small force of Irish dragoons in picquet under Neil O'Neill unsuccessfully opposed. James thought that he might be outflanked and sent a large part of his army, including his best French troops along with most of his artillery, to counter this move. What neither side had realised was that there was a deep, swampy ravine at Roughgrange. Because of this ravine, the opposing forces there could not engage each other, but literally sat out the battle as artillery engaged. The Williamite forces went on a long detour march which, later in the day, almost saw them cut off the Jacobite retreat at the village of Naul.
At the main ford near Oldbridge, William's infantry, led by the elite Dutch Blue Guards under Solms, forced their way across the river, using their superior firepower to slowly drive back the Jacobite foot soldiers, but were pinned down when the Jacobite cavalry, commanded by James II's son James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, counter-attacked. Having secured the village of Oldbridge, the Williamite infantry tried to hold off successive Jacobite Irish cavalry attacks with disciplined volley fire, but many were scattered and driven into the river, with the exception of the Blue Guards. When William saw his Dutch Guards isolated on the enemy side of the river and without any protection from natural obstacles he was extremely worried according to an eyewitness: The Blue Guards had formed up in three separate squares and were, by using platoon fire, able to drive away the Jacobite cavalry. The Williamites were not able to resume their advance until their own horsemen managed to cross the river and, after being badly mauled, particularly the Huguenots, managed to hold off the Jacobite cavalry. William's second-in-command, the Duke of Schomberg, and George Walker were killed in this phase of the battle. The Irish cavalry finally gave up when Danish infantry commanded by Wurttemberg and cavalry led by Godert de Ginkel, who had both crossed the river further downstream, advanced towards them.
The Jacobites retired in good order. William had a chance to trap them as they retreated across the River Nanny at Duleek, but his troops were held up by a successful rear-guard action. The Dutch secretary of King William, Constantijn Huygens Jr., has given a good description of the battle and its aftermath, including subsequent cruelties committed by the victorious soldiers.
The casualty figures of the battle were quite low for a battle of such a scale—of the 50,000 or so participants, about 2,000 died. Three quarters of the dead were Jacobites. William's army had far more wounded. At the time, most casualties of battles tended to be inflicted in the pursuit of an already-beaten enemy; this did not happen at the Boyne, as the counter-attacks of the skilled Jacobite cavalry screened the retreat of the rest of their army, and in addition William was always disinclined to endanger the person of James, since he was the father of his wife, Mary. The Jacobites were badly demoralised by the order to retreat, which lost them the battle. Many of the Irish infantrymen deserted, abandoning clothing in their escape. The Williamites triumphantly marched into Dublin two days after the battle. The Jacobite army abandoned the city and marched to Limerick, behind the River Shannon, where they were unsuccessfully besieged.
Soon after the battle, William issued the Declaration of Finglas, offering full pardons to ordinary Jacobite soldiers, but not to their leaders.