The Battle of The Boyne, 1690 (part 4 of 14)

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The Boyne, 1690

Infantry regiments were made up usually of thirteen companies each, or of twenty-two companies in the few two-battalion regiments. One company in each regiment was ordinarily-or perhaps it would be more correct to say, was wherever possible-a grenadier company. The foot grenadiers, like their mounted counterparts, were a new type of soldier. John Evelyn the diarist wrote in 1678 of 'a new sort of soldiers called granadeers, who were dextrous in flinging hand granados, every one having a pouch full'. The soldiers of the line companies consisted, in 1690 as fifty years earlier, of musketeers and pikemen, but the pike was falling into disuse and the proportion of pikes to muskets was as low as about one to five. In the Williamite forces it was lower still. Some of the English regiments had no pikes, but Forbes's (later the Earl of Meath's, later the 18th Royal Irish) had fewer than three muskets to each pike; generally there were about six English musketeers to one pikeman. The proportion was about the same in the Dutch regiments, but the Danish infantry had no pikes at all. In battle the musketeers were formed ordinarily in six ranks and the pikemen, unless hostile cavalry was approaching, were drawn up behind them. The first three ranks could, as one body, fire a volley; they discharged their pieces together, the first rank crouching, the second kneeling and the third standing. Fire having been given, these ranks filed off to the rear and reloaded, while the other three ranks stepped forward and gave their fire. But formations were flexible; a different order could, as we shall see in a moment with regard to the Dutch, be adopted to suit particular circumstances. The pikes were in front when it was a matter of resisting cavalry, which was now their main function.
The infantrymen of this period had a new weapon that eventually made a pike of every musket, that solved the old problem of how best to combine the new with the old-firearms with spears, missile arms with arms that merdy extended the reach of their holders-and a weapon that has remained part of the armoury of the foot slogger and his successor even to our own day. This weapon was the bayonet, which on its general adoption combined two separate weapon categories and made all footsoldiers of the line alike. Bayonets were introduced into the British army from France, where they seem to have originated much earlier, before the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and their use by 1690 was widespread. The original weapon, or that called nowadays the plug bayonet, was fixed by inserting the haft into the muzzle of the musket, which could not of course be fired while the bayonet was in position. Improved forms of ring and socket bayonet were soon evolved; these, by fitting a sleeve which formed part of the hilt of the bayonet around the barrel of the musket on the outside, permitted the firing of the musket while the bayonet was fixed. These improvements were of very recent introduction in 1690, however, and the bayonets used at the Boyne were no doubt mostly of the plug variety. Some of the Williamite soldiers who fought there are spoken of as 'screwing their swords to the muskets' -hangers or long daggers which could be used as bayonets would have been called swords-to receive a cavalry charge. Bayonets were scarcer in the Jacobite ranks and none seem to have been received from France, but they were by no means unknown.

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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