Battle of the Boyne
The Battle of the Boyne was a turning point in the Williamite War in Ireland when the
deposed King James VII of Scotland and James II of England and Ireland and his
Jacobite supporters were defeated by James' son-in-law, William III, who had deposed
him, along with his Williamite forces. Both Kings acted as Commander of their
respective armies.
The battle took place on July 1, 1690 (OS) just outside the town of Drogheda on
Ireland's east coast. Though not militarily decisive, its symbolic importance has made
it one of the most infamous battles in British and Irish history and a key part in Irish
Protestant folklore. It is still commemorated today, principally by the Orange Institution.
As a consequence of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the battle is now
commemorated on July 12 every year.
A sectarian battle?
The battle of the Boyne was the decisive encounter in a war that was primarily about
James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, but is widely
remembered as a crucial moment in the struggle between Irish Protestant and
Catholic factions. However, recent analyses have played down the religious aspect of
the conflict. In fact, both armies were religiously mixed; William of Orange's own elite
force — the Dutch Blue Guards — had the papal banner with them on that day, many
of them being Dutch Catholics. They were part of the League of Augsburg, a cross-
Christian alliance designed to stop a French conquest of Europe, supported by the
Vatican. The war in Ireland was also the beginning of a long-running but ultimately
unsuccessful campaign by James's Jacobite supporters to restore the Stuarts to the
British thrones. While most Jacobites in Ireland were indeed Catholics, many English
and Scottish Jacobites were Protestants and were motivated by loyalty to the principle
of monarchy (considering James to have been illegally deposed in a coup) or to the
Stuart dynasty in particular, rather than by religion. A handful of British Jacobites
fought with James at the Boyne. In addition, some of the French regiments fighting
with the Jacobites were composed of German Protestants. In a European context,
therefore, the battle wasn't a religiously motivated one, but part of a complicated
political, dynastic and strategic conflict.
In an Irish context, however, 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 toleration for Catholicism, and land
ownership. The Catholic upper classes had lost 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. They saw the Catholic King James as a means of redressing these
grievances and securing the autonomy of Ireland from the English Parliament. To
these ends, under Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, they'd raised an army to
restore James to his throne after the Glorious Revolution. By 1690, they controlled all
of Ireland except for the province of Ulster. Most of James II's troops at the Boyne
were Irish Catholics.
Conversely, for the Williamites, the war was about maintaining Protestant and British
rule in Ireland. They feared for both their lives and their property if James and his
Catholic supporters were to rule Ireland. In particular, they dreaded a repeat of the
Irish Rebellion of 1641, which had been marked by widespread massacres of
Protestants. For these reasons, Irish Protestants fought en masse for William III. Many
of the Williamite troops at the Boyne, including their very effective irregular cavalry,
were Protestants from Ulster, who called themselves "Eniskilleners" and were referred
to by contemporaries as "Scotch-Irish".
The competing sides
Commanders
The opposing armies in the battle were led by the Roman Catholic former King James
of England, Scotland and Ireland and opposing him, his son-in-law the Protestant
William III ("William of Orange") who had deposed James from his English and Scottish
thrones in the previous year. James's supporters still controlled much of Ireland and
the Irish Parliament. James also enjoyed the support of the French King, Louis XIV,
who didn't want to see a hostile monarch, such as William, on the throne of England.
To support James's restoration, 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 continental Europe as well as from Great
Britain.
James was a seasoned general who had proven his bravery when fighting for his
brother — King Charles II — in Europe, notably at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658.
However, recent historians have noted that he was prone to panicking under pressure
and to making rash decisions. William was also a seasoned commander and able
general, but had yet to win a full battle. Many of his battles ended in bloody
stalemates, prompting at least one modern historian to argue that William lacked an
ability to manage armies in the thick of conflict. William's success against the French
had been reliant upon tactical maneuvers 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 takeover of
power in England and the ensuing campaign in Ireland was just another front in the
war against Louis XIV of France. James II's subordinate commanders were Richard
Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who was the Lord Deputy of Ireland and James's most
powerful supporter in that country; and the French general Lauzun. William's second
in command was the Duke of Schomberg, a 75-year-old professional soldier. Born in
Heidelberg, Germany, Schomberg had formerly been a Marshal of France, but, being
a Huguenot, was compelled to leave his adopted country 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. Around 20,000 had been in Ireland since 1689, commanded by
Schomberg. William himself arrived with 16,000 more in June 1690. William's troops
were in general 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. There was also a large contingent of French Huguenot
troops fighting with the Williamites. William didn't have a high opinion of his British
troops, with the exception of the Ulster Protestant irregulars who had held Ulster in the
previous year. The English and Scottish troops were felt to be politically unreliable,
since James had been their legitimate monarch up to a year before. Moreover, they'd
only been raised recently and had seen little combat. The Jacobites were 23,500
strong. James had several regiments of French troops, but most of his manpower was
provided by Irish Catholics. The Jacobites' Irish cavalry, who were raised 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 supplied, and only a minority of them had functional muskets. In fact, some of
them carried only farm implements such as scythes at the Boyne. On top of that, the
Jacobite infantry who actually had firearms were all equipped with the obsolete
matchlock musket.
The battle
William had landed in Carrickfergus in Ulster on June 14 1690 and marched south to
take Dublin. It has been argued that the Jacobites should have tried to block this
advance in rugged country around Newry, on the present day Irish border. However,
James only fought a delaying action there and chose instead to place his line of
defence on the Boyne river, around 50 km 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 by Jacobite artillery while surveying the fords over which his
troops would cross the Boyne.
The battle itself was fought on July 1 for control of a ford on the Boyne at Oldbridge,
near Drogheda. William sent about a quarter of his men to cross at a place called
Roughgrange, near Slane, about 10 km from Oldbridge. The Duke of Schomberg's
son Meinhardt led this crossing, which Irish dragoons unsuccessfully opposed. James
panicked when he saw that he might be outflanked and sent half his troops, along with
most of his cannon, to counter this move. What neither side had realised was that
there was a deep ravine at Roughgrange, so that the forces there couldn't engage
each other, but literally sat out the battle. The Williamites there went on a long detour
march which, late in the day, almost saw them cut off the Jacobite retreat at the village
of Naul.
At the main ford at Oldbridge, William's infantry led by the elite Dutch Blue Guards
forced their way across the river, using their superior firepower to slowly drive back
the enemy foot-soldiers, but were pinned down when the Jacobite cavalry counter-
attacked. Having secured the village of Oldbridge, some Williamite infantry held off
successive cavalry attacks with disciplined volley fire while others were driven into the
river. William's second in command, the Duke of Schomberg and George Walker were
killed in this phase of the battle. The Williamites were not able to resume their
advance until their own horsemen managed to cross the river and, after being badly
mauled, held off the Jacobite cavalry, who retired and regrouped at Donore, where
they once again put up stiff resistance before retiring.
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 casualty figure of the battle was quite low for a battle of such a scale — of the
50,000 or so participants, about 2,000 died, three-quarters of whom were Jacobites.
The reason for the low death toll was that in contemporary warfare, most of the
casualties tended to be inflicted in the pursuit of an already-beaten enemy. This didn't
happen at the Boyne, as the counter-attacks of the Jacobite cavalry screened the
retreat of the rest of their army. The Jacobites were badly demoralised by their defeat,
however, and many of the Irish infantrymen deserted. 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 besieged.
After his defeat, James didn't stay in Dublin, but rode with a small escort to
Duncannon and returned to exile in France, even though his army left the field
relatively unscathed. James's loss of nerve and speedy exit from the battlefield
enraged his Irish supporters, who fought on until the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. In
Irish folk memory, James was derisively nick-named Seamus a' chaca — a title that
translates literally to "Shitty James" or "James the Shit."
Aftermath
The battle was overshadowed in its time in Great Britain by the defeat by the French
of an Anglo-Dutch fleet two days later at the Battle of Beachy Head, a far more
serious event in the short term; only on the Continent was the Boyne treated as a
major victory. Its importance lay in the fact that it was the first proper victory for the
League of Augsburg, the first-ever alliance between Catholic and Protestant
countries, and in achieving it William of Orange and Pope Alexander VIII (the League's
prime movers) scotched the myth, which emanated particularly from Sweden, that
such an alliance was blasphemous. Thus the victory motivated more nations to join
the alliance and in effect ended the very real danger of a French conquest of Europe.
The Boyne wasn't without strategic significance for both Great Britain and Ireland,
however. It marked the end of James's hope of regaining his throne by military means
and virtually assured the triumph of the Glorious Revolution. In Scotland, news of this
defeat moved the Highlanders to gradually abandon the Jacobite Rising which Bonnie
Dundee had led. In Ireland, the Boyne was the beginning of the Williamite victory over
the Jacobites by which British and Protestant dominance over the country was
maintained. For this reason, the Boyne is still celebrated by the Protestant Orange
Order on the twelfth of July.
Commemoration of the battle
Originally, Irish Protestants commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12 July, as
symbolising their victory in the Williamite war in Ireland. At Aughrim, which took place a
year after the Boyne, virtually all of the Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies
(dispossessed of lands to accommodate the plantations under Elizabeth I and Oliver
Cromwell) were wiped out. The Boyne, which in the old Julian calendar, took place on
1 July, was treated as less important, third in commemorative value after Aughrim and
the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 on 23 October. What was celebrated on
the Twelfth wasn't William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne", but the
extermination of the elite of the Catholic Irish at Aughrim, thereby ending the fear of
having to surrender the planted lands.
In 1752, a new Gregorian calendar was introduced to the United Kingdom, which
placed the Boyne on the Twelfth of July instead of Aughrim. However, even after this
date, 'The Twelfth' still commemorated Aughrim. But after the Orange Order was
founded in 1795 amid sectarian violence in Armagh, the focus of parades on July 12
switched to the battle of the Boyne. Usually the dates before the introduction of the
calendar on 14 September 1752 are mapped in English language histories directly
onto the Julian dates without shifting them by 11 days. Being suspicious of anything
with papist connotations, however, rather than shift the anniversary of the Boyne to
the new 1 July or celebrate the new anniversary of Aughrim, the Orangemen
continued to march on the 12 July which, in New Style dates marked the battle of the
Boyne. Despite this, there are also smaller parades and demonstrations on 1 July, the
date which maps the old style date of the Boyne to the new style in the usual manner
and which also commemorate the massacre of the 36th (Ulster) Division on the first
day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
It has also been suggested that the Boyne was preferred to Aughrim because the
Jacobites' rout there allowed the Irish Catholics to be presented as contemptible
cowards, whereas at Aughrim they fought bravely and died in great numbers. In the
context of a resurgent Irish nationalism from the 1790s onwards, it's argued that the
narrative of the Boyne was more comforting for Loyalists in Ireland. The
commemoration of the battle of the Boyne therefore has more to do with the politics of
the Unionist community than it has to do with the military significance of the battle itself.
The memory of the battle also has resonance among Irish Nationalists. Most Irish
people see the battle as a major step on the road to the complete British colonisation
of Ireland. In 1923, IRA members blew up a large monument to the battle on the
battlefield site on the Boyne and also destroyed a statue of William III in 1929 that
stood outside Trinity College Dublin in the centre of the Irish capital.
"The Twelfth" in Ireland today
The Battle of the Boyne remains a controversial topic today, especially in Northern
Ireland, where Protestants remember it as the great victory over Catholics that
resulted in the sovereignty of Parliament and the 'Protestant monarchy'.
In recent years, "The Twelfth" has often been marked by confrontations, as members
of the Orange Order attempt to celebrate the date by marching past or through what
they see as their traditional route. Some of these areas, however, now have a
nationalist majority who object to marches passing through their areas. This change is
mainly due to natural population migrations, whereby rural Irish Catholics have
relocated to major cities to be closer to potential employers.
Each side thus dresses up the disputes in terms of the other's alleged attempts to
repress them; Catholics still see Orange Order marches as provocative attempts to
'show who is boss', while Protestants insist that they've a right to "walk the Queen's
highway" and see any attempt to deny them the right to walk through traditional routes
used for centuries as a move to marginalise them and restrict their freedom to
celebrate their Protestant identity earned in the Glorious Revolution settlement. Since
the start of the Troubles, the celebrations of the battle have been seen as playing a
critical role in the awareness of those involved in the unionist/nationalist tensions in
Northern Ireland.
The battlefield today
The site of the battle of the Boyne sprawls over a wide area west of the town of
Drogheda. At Oldbridge, the scene of the main Williamite crossing, there's an Irish
Government Interpretive Centre dedicated to informing tourists and other visitors
about the battle. This facility is currently being redeveloped. The battle's other main
combat areas (at Duleek, Donore and Plattin - along the Jacobite line of retreat) are
marked with tourist information signs.
On 4 April, 2007 in a sign of improving relations between Unionist and Nationalist
groups, the newly-elected First Minister of Northern Ireland, the Reverend Ian Paisley,
was invited to visit the battle site by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern later in the year.
Following the invitation, Dr Paisley commented that "such a visit would help to
demonstrate how far we've come when we can celebrate and learn from the past so
the next generation more clearly understands." On 10 May the visit took place, where
Dr Paisley presented the Taoiseach with a musket in return for Mr Ahern's gift at the
St Andrews talks of a walnut bowl made from a tree from the site. A new tree was also
planted in the grounds of Oldbridge House by the two politicians to mark the occasion.
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The Battle of the Boyne was a turning point in the Williamite War in Ireland when the
deposed King James VII of Scotland and James II of England and Ireland and his
Jacobite supporters were defeated by James' son-in-law, William III, who had deposed
him, along with his Williamite forces. Both Kings acted as Commander of their
respective armies.
The battle took place on July 1, 1690 (OS) just outside the town of Drogheda on
Ireland's east coast. Though not militarily decisive, its symbolic importance has made
it one of the most infamous battles in British and Irish history and a key part in Irish
Protestant folklore. It is still commemorated today, principally by the Orange Institution.
As a consequence of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the battle is now
commemorated on July 12 every year.
A sectarian battle?
The battle of the Boyne was the decisive encounter in a war that was primarily about
James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, but is widely
remembered as a crucial moment in the struggle between Irish Protestant and
Catholic factions. However, recent analyses have played down the religious aspect of
the conflict. In fact, both armies were religiously mixed; William of Orange's own elite
force — the Dutch Blue Guards — had the papal banner with them on that day, many
of them being Dutch Catholics. They were part of the League of Augsburg, a cross-
Christian alliance designed to stop a French conquest of Europe, supported by the
Vatican. The war in Ireland was also the beginning of a long-running but ultimately
unsuccessful campaign by James's Jacobite supporters to restore the Stuarts to the
British thrones. While most Jacobites in Ireland were indeed Catholics, many English
and Scottish Jacobites were Protestants and were motivated by loyalty to the principle
of monarchy (considering James to have been illegally deposed in a coup) or to the
Stuart dynasty in particular, rather than by religion. A handful of British Jacobites
fought with James at the Boyne. In addition, some of the French regiments fighting
with the Jacobites were composed of German Protestants. In a European context,
therefore, the battle wasn't a religiously motivated one, but part of a complicated
political, dynastic and strategic conflict.
In an Irish context, however, 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 toleration for Catholicism, and land
ownership. The Catholic upper classes had lost 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. They saw the Catholic King James as a means of redressing these
grievances and securing the autonomy of Ireland from the English Parliament. To
these ends, under Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, they'd raised an army to
restore James to his throne after the Glorious Revolution. By 1690, they controlled all
of Ireland except for the province of Ulster. Most of James II's troops at the Boyne
were Irish Catholics.
Conversely, for the Williamites, the war was about maintaining Protestant and British
rule in Ireland. They feared for both their lives and their property if James and his
Catholic supporters were to rule Ireland. In particular, they dreaded a repeat of the
Irish Rebellion of 1641, which had been marked by widespread massacres of
Protestants. For these reasons, Irish Protestants fought en masse for William III. Many
of the Williamite troops at the Boyne, including their very effective irregular cavalry,
were Protestants from Ulster, who called themselves "Eniskilleners" and were referred
to by contemporaries as "Scotch-Irish".
The competing sides
Commanders
The opposing armies in the battle were led by the Roman Catholic former King James
of England, Scotland and Ireland and opposing him, his son-in-law the Protestant
William III ("William of Orange") who had deposed James from his English and Scottish
thrones in the previous year. James's supporters still controlled much of Ireland and
the Irish Parliament. James also enjoyed the support of the French King, Louis XIV,
who didn't want to see a hostile monarch, such as William, on the throne of England.
To support James's restoration, 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 continental Europe as well as from Great
Britain.
James was a seasoned general who had proven his bravery when fighting for his
brother — King Charles II — in Europe, notably at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658.
However, recent historians have noted that he was prone to panicking under pressure
and to making rash decisions. William was also a seasoned commander and able
general, but had yet to win a full battle. Many of his battles ended in bloody
stalemates, prompting at least one modern historian to argue that William lacked an
ability to manage armies in the thick of conflict. William's success against the French
had been reliant upon tactical maneuvers 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 takeover of
power in England and the ensuing campaign in Ireland was just another front in the
war against Louis XIV of France. James II's subordinate commanders were Richard
Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, who was the Lord Deputy of Ireland and James's most
powerful supporter in that country; and the French general Lauzun. William's second
in command was the Duke of Schomberg, a 75-year-old professional soldier. Born in
Heidelberg, Germany, Schomberg had formerly been a Marshal of France, but, being
a Huguenot, was compelled to leave his adopted country 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. Around 20,000 had been in Ireland since 1689, commanded by
Schomberg. William himself arrived with 16,000 more in June 1690. William's troops
were in general 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. There was also a large contingent of French Huguenot
troops fighting with the Williamites. William didn't have a high opinion of his British
troops, with the exception of the Ulster Protestant irregulars who had held Ulster in the
previous year. The English and Scottish troops were felt to be politically unreliable,
since James had been their legitimate monarch up to a year before. Moreover, they'd
only been raised recently and had seen little combat. The Jacobites were 23,500
strong. James had several regiments of French troops, but most of his manpower was
provided by Irish Catholics. The Jacobites' Irish cavalry, who were raised 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 supplied, and only a minority of them had functional muskets. In fact, some of
them carried only farm implements such as scythes at the Boyne. On top of that, the
Jacobite infantry who actually had firearms were all equipped with the obsolete
matchlock musket.
The battle
William had landed in Carrickfergus in Ulster on June 14 1690 and marched south to
take Dublin. It has been argued that the Jacobites should have tried to block this
advance in rugged country around Newry, on the present day Irish border. However,
James only fought a delaying action there and chose instead to place his line of
defence on the Boyne river, around 50 km 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 by Jacobite artillery while surveying the fords over which his
troops would cross the Boyne.
The battle itself was fought on July 1 for control of a ford on the Boyne at Oldbridge,
near Drogheda. William sent about a quarter of his men to cross at a place called
Roughgrange, near Slane, about 10 km from Oldbridge. The Duke of Schomberg's
son Meinhardt led this crossing, which Irish dragoons unsuccessfully opposed. James
panicked when he saw that he might be outflanked and sent half his troops, along with
most of his cannon, to counter this move. What neither side had realised was that
there was a deep ravine at Roughgrange, so that the forces there couldn't engage
each other, but literally sat out the battle. The Williamites there went on a long detour
march which, late in the day, almost saw them cut off the Jacobite retreat at the village
of Naul.
At the main ford at Oldbridge, William's infantry led by the elite Dutch Blue Guards
forced their way across the river, using their superior firepower to slowly drive back
the enemy foot-soldiers, but were pinned down when the Jacobite cavalry counter-
attacked. Having secured the village of Oldbridge, some Williamite infantry held off
successive cavalry attacks with disciplined volley fire while others were driven into the
river. William's second in command, the Duke of Schomberg and George Walker were
killed in this phase of the battle. The Williamites were not able to resume their
advance until their own horsemen managed to cross the river and, after being badly
mauled, held off the Jacobite cavalry, who retired and regrouped at Donore, where
they once again put up stiff resistance before retiring.
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 casualty figure of the battle was quite low for a battle of such a scale — of the
50,000 or so participants, about 2,000 died, three-quarters of whom were Jacobites.
The reason for the low death toll was that in contemporary warfare, most of the
casualties tended to be inflicted in the pursuit of an already-beaten enemy. This didn't
happen at the Boyne, as the counter-attacks of the Jacobite cavalry screened the
retreat of the rest of their army. The Jacobites were badly demoralised by their defeat,
however, and many of the Irish infantrymen deserted. 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 besieged.
After his defeat, James didn't stay in Dublin, but rode with a small escort to
Duncannon and returned to exile in France, even though his army left the field
relatively unscathed. James's loss of nerve and speedy exit from the battlefield
enraged his Irish supporters, who fought on until the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. In
Irish folk memory, James was derisively nick-named Seamus a' chaca — a title that
translates literally to "Shitty James" or "James the Shit."
Aftermath
The battle was overshadowed in its time in Great Britain by the defeat by the French
of an Anglo-Dutch fleet two days later at the Battle of Beachy Head, a far more
serious event in the short term; only on the Continent was the Boyne treated as a
major victory. Its importance lay in the fact that it was the first proper victory for the
League of Augsburg, the first-ever alliance between Catholic and Protestant
countries, and in achieving it William of Orange and Pope Alexander VIII (the League's
prime movers) scotched the myth, which emanated particularly from Sweden, that
such an alliance was blasphemous. Thus the victory motivated more nations to join
the alliance and in effect ended the very real danger of a French conquest of Europe.
The Boyne wasn't without strategic significance for both Great Britain and Ireland,
however. It marked the end of James's hope of regaining his throne by military means
and virtually assured the triumph of the Glorious Revolution. In Scotland, news of this
defeat moved the Highlanders to gradually abandon the Jacobite Rising which Bonnie
Dundee had led. In Ireland, the Boyne was the beginning of the Williamite victory over
the Jacobites by which British and Protestant dominance over the country was
maintained. For this reason, the Boyne is still celebrated by the Protestant Orange
Order on the twelfth of July.
Commemoration of the battle
Originally, Irish Protestants commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12 July, as
symbolising their victory in the Williamite war in Ireland. At Aughrim, which took place a
year after the Boyne, virtually all of the Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies
(dispossessed of lands to accommodate the plantations under Elizabeth I and Oliver
Cromwell) were wiped out. The Boyne, which in the old Julian calendar, took place on
1 July, was treated as less important, third in commemorative value after Aughrim and
the anniversary of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 on 23 October. What was celebrated on
the Twelfth wasn't William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne", but the
extermination of the elite of the Catholic Irish at Aughrim, thereby ending the fear of
having to surrender the planted lands.
In 1752, a new Gregorian calendar was introduced to the United Kingdom, which
placed the Boyne on the Twelfth of July instead of Aughrim. However, even after this
date, 'The Twelfth' still commemorated Aughrim. But after the Orange Order was
founded in 1795 amid sectarian violence in Armagh, the focus of parades on July 12
switched to the battle of the Boyne. Usually the dates before the introduction of the
calendar on 14 September 1752 are mapped in English language histories directly
onto the Julian dates without shifting them by 11 days. Being suspicious of anything
with papist connotations, however, rather than shift the anniversary of the Boyne to
the new 1 July or celebrate the new anniversary of Aughrim, the Orangemen
continued to march on the 12 July which, in New Style dates marked the battle of the
Boyne. Despite this, there are also smaller parades and demonstrations on 1 July, the
date which maps the old style date of the Boyne to the new style in the usual manner
and which also commemorate the massacre of the 36th (Ulster) Division on the first
day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
It has also been suggested that the Boyne was preferred to Aughrim because the
Jacobites' rout there allowed the Irish Catholics to be presented as contemptible
cowards, whereas at Aughrim they fought bravely and died in great numbers. In the
context of a resurgent Irish nationalism from the 1790s onwards, it's argued that the
narrative of the Boyne was more comforting for Loyalists in Ireland. The
commemoration of the battle of the Boyne therefore has more to do with the politics of
the Unionist community than it has to do with the military significance of the battle itself.
The memory of the battle also has resonance among Irish Nationalists. Most Irish
people see the battle as a major step on the road to the complete British colonisation
of Ireland. In 1923, IRA members blew up a large monument to the battle on the
battlefield site on the Boyne and also destroyed a statue of William III in 1929 that
stood outside Trinity College Dublin in the centre of the Irish capital.
"The Twelfth" in Ireland today
The Battle of the Boyne remains a controversial topic today, especially in Northern
Ireland, where Protestants remember it as the great victory over Catholics that
resulted in the sovereignty of Parliament and the 'Protestant monarchy'.
In recent years, "The Twelfth" has often been marked by confrontations, as members
of the Orange Order attempt to celebrate the date by marching past or through what
they see as their traditional route. Some of these areas, however, now have a
nationalist majority who object to marches passing through their areas. This change is
mainly due to natural population migrations, whereby rural Irish Catholics have
relocated to major cities to be closer to potential employers.
Each side thus dresses up the disputes in terms of the other's alleged attempts to
repress them; Catholics still see Orange Order marches as provocative attempts to
'show who is boss', while Protestants insist that they've a right to "walk the Queen's
highway" and see any attempt to deny them the right to walk through traditional routes
used for centuries as a move to marginalise them and restrict their freedom to
celebrate their Protestant identity earned in the Glorious Revolution settlement. Since
the start of the Troubles, the celebrations of the battle have been seen as playing a
critical role in the awareness of those involved in the unionist/nationalist tensions in
Northern Ireland.
The battlefield today
The site of the battle of the Boyne sprawls over a wide area west of the town of
Drogheda. At Oldbridge, the scene of the main Williamite crossing, there's an Irish
Government Interpretive Centre dedicated to informing tourists and other visitors
about the battle. This facility is currently being redeveloped. The battle's other main
combat areas (at Duleek, Donore and Plattin - along the Jacobite line of retreat) are
marked with tourist information signs.
On 4 April, 2007 in a sign of improving relations between Unionist and Nationalist
groups, the newly-elected First Minister of Northern Ireland, the Reverend Ian Paisley,
was invited to visit the battle site by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern later in the year.
Following the invitation, Dr Paisley commented that "such a visit would help to
demonstrate how far we've come when we can celebrate and learn from the past so
the next generation more clearly understands." On 10 May the visit took place, where
Dr Paisley presented the Taoiseach with a musket in return for Mr Ahern's gift at the
St Andrews talks of a walnut bowl made from a tree from the site. A new tree was also
planted in the grounds of Oldbridge House by the two politicians to mark the occasion.
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