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The Boyne, 1690The prize fought for at the Boyne in 1690, as at Rathmines in 1649, was possession of Dublin. By forcing the crossing of the river which was called 'the Rubicon of the Pale', and which 'had, in all former rebellions, been maintained with their blood by those ancient English colonies planted there', King William compelled his Jacobite opponents to give up the capital ofIreland and to retire into the interior of the country. He thus gained the best possible base for his future operations and did all that could be done on land to secure the line of communications with England; communications in which lay, then as in Napoleon's and all other ages, the secret of war.William's success at the Boyne was, besides, a great victory of prestige. King James had rightly considered the capital of the kingdom worth fighting for. William found it worth winning; for him, as for the Normans and the Cromwellians before him, it proved the key to Ireland. The battle of the Boyne was thus, despite subsequent propagandist efforts to minimise its effects, a decisive one. The selfstyled 'literary agitator' – who was nevertheless a painstaking historian – J. C. O'Callaghan, writing more than a century ago 'in vindication of the national military character from English and Anglo-Irish aggression and calumny', played down the Irish defeat. o'Callaghan referred particularly to 'the excellent retreat of James's army'. He has been followed by many writers. Others, and a great many who chose rather to shout than write, have remembered the Boyne as a 'glorious and immortal' occasion when the Cromwellian settlement-the result of Cromwell's reconquest of Ireland-was preserved. Many times refought, the Boyne is perhaps the best remembered, the best applauded, the best decried battle in Irish history. The first writer to appreciate the significance of the tactical movements at the Boyne appears to have been Lieut.-General Sir Henry Sheehy Keating, who described them in 1795 when he was still a very young subaltern at the beginning of a warlike and illustrious career. Keating believed that the battle was 'one of the most interesting actions recorded in history' and held that its outcome 'was in a great degree decided by its locality'. james's position at the Boyne was, he said, well chosen, but the king and his advisers were guilty of 'great and glaring misconduct' in not foreseeing the use that might be made of its topographical features. Their omission was punished by their defeat. A reexamination of the evidence regarding the battle seems to bear out Keating's contention. When William displaced the Catholic King James at the climax of the Glorious Revolution in England, James fled to France. Later, in March 1689, he came to Ireland in the hope of retrieving his position. His supporters were most numerous here and in Scotland, and so Ireland suggested itself as his base and Scotland his stepping stone for a return to the scene of his former dominion in England. But this was not the only reason for the warfare between Williamites and Jacobites in Ireland in 1689-91. Many of the Irish considered the occasion one for the redress of Irish grievances rather than the encouragement of Stuart hopes, grievances arising from religious disabilities, the confiscation of property that had followed Cromwell's victory and the denial of what were claimed to be constitutional rights. James's Irish Parliament, summoned after his arrival, established liberty of conscience, reversed the Cromwellian settlement-thereby restoring landed property to its condition in 1641-and declared that 'his Majesty's realm of Ireland is and hath been always a distinct kingdom from that of his Majesty's realm of England'. These were more than declarations of allegiance to one king and a denial of support to another. In the English view, they were fighting words that showed not only an unbearable recalcitrance on the part of the Irish but an opportunist determination to seek revenge. D' A vaux, the representative in Ireland of James's supporter, King Louis XIV of France, concluded from his observation of the people that they were irreconcilable enemies of the English and that the real hope of many of them was that King James's arrival among them would 'release them from English servitude'. The history of the Battle of the Boyne, 1690 continues here Taken from Irish Battles by G.A. Hayes-McCoy, published by Appletree Press. Further reading: A Little History of Ireland by Martin Wallace with illustrations by Ian McCullough. Click here for more information on the book. |
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