Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:The Confusion:146:toast the victory of the French, the free English… (Alan Sinder)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is The Confusion page for Battle of the Boyne

Stephensonia

Bob Shaftoe's letter to Eliza did highlight the confusion involved with the fighting in Ireland. And it would be rude to drink to anyone's death.

Authored entries

Wikipedia: Battle of the Boyne: Those Kings Also Killed Irishmen

A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all Christian faiths other than the established Church of Ireland. The principal victims of these laws were Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism. Ireland played a crucial role in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Roman Catholic King James II/VII (of England and Scotland) was deposed by Parliament and replaced by joint monarchs, James' protestant daughter Queen Mary II and her husband, King William III of Orange. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in a series of battles in Ireland, most famously the Battle of the Boyne.

The Battle of the Boyne was a controversial military clash between the deposed King James II and his son-in-law and successor, William III, for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones. It took place on July 1, 1690 (as a consequence of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar the battle is now commemorated on July 12) just outside of the town of Drogheda on Ireland's east coast. Though a minor miltary skirmish in reality, its symbolic importance has made it one of the most infamous battles in British and Irish history and a key part in Protestant and Catholic folklore.

The Competing Sides

The opposing armies in the battle were led by the Roman Catholic King James II of England, Scotland and Ireland who had been deposed from his English and Scottish thrones in the previous year, but whose supporters still controlled much of Ireland and the Irish Parliament and his Protestant successor, the co-monarch William III (William reigned jointly with his wife, James's daughter Queen Mary II). James was a seasoned general that had proven his bravery when fighting for his brother - King Charles II - in Europe, whereas William, his son-in-law, was a seasoned commander and able general, but he was yet to win a full battle. His success against the French had been reliant upon tactical manoeurves and good diplomacy rather than force of arms. That all changed after the Boyne Water. After his defeat, James quickly returned to exile in France, even though both armies left the field relatively unscathed.TheFlightMW.jpg
**A Lost Cause — King James II's Flight

After the Battle of The Boyne
Artist: Andrew Carrick Gow
James was never to set foot in the British Isles again**

Catholics and Protestants Fought On Both Sides

The battle represented the culmination of James's attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland, but is remembered (wrongly) as a decisive moment in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic factions - in fact both armies were mixed, and William Of Orange's own elite force - the Blue Guards - had the Papal Banner with them on the day. They were part of the League of Augsburg, a cross-Christian alliance designed to stop a French conquest of Europe. It was also the beginning of a long-running and ultimately unsuccessful campaign by James's supporters, the Jacobites, to restore the Catholic Stuart dynasty rule to Britain. In terms of the war in Ireland, however, the conflict (now led by Jacobite captain Patrick Sarsfield upon James II's flight) metamorphisised into one for Irish independence.

Both the Duke of Schomberg and the Reverend George Walker were killed in the fighting. The casualty figure of the battle must stand as the lowest ever for a battle of such a scale - of the 40000 or so participants, under 2000 died, mostly as a result of heat exhaustion. It was regarded in its time as a minor affair in Great Britain (the Anglo-Dutch fleet was all but destroyed by the French two days later off Beachy Head, a far more serious event) - only in Europe was it treated as a major victory. The reason for this was that it was the first proper one for the League of Augsburg, the first ever alliance between Catholic and Protestant countries, and in doing so William of Orange and Pope Innocent (its prime movers) scotched the myth - particularly eminating from the Swedes - that such an alliance was blasphemous, resulting in more joining the alliance & in effect ending the very real danger of a French conquest of Europe.