The Battle of The Boyne, 1690 (part 6 of 14)

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The Boyne, 1690

The war fought in Ireland by the supporters of the rival kings began in Ulster, which province was of vital importance to both sides. The Protestant descendants of the Ulster planters, disturbed by the ascendancy of the Catholics under Tyrconnell, took refuge in Derry and Enniskillen, declared for William and prepared to fight. Tyrconnell attempted to coerce them. The road from Dublin to London via Edinburgh ran through Ulster. If King James was to travel by it his northern Irish opponents must first be put down. On the other hand, if King William, whose position was soon established in England, was to win Ireland as well he must first secure Ulster as the obvious point of entry to the island. James held Dublin and the southern and western parts of Ireland. William was supported on religious grounds, because he was de facto king of England, and as a matter of policy in relation to property holding only-to any considerable extent-in the north. Ulster must therefore be his bridgehead. As was said on his behalf in March 1689, Chis Majesty's greatest concern hath been for Ireland, and particularly for the province of Ulster'; he proposed to help his Ulster supporters to defend themselves so that, by doing so, he might in due course be able 'to rescue the whole kingdom and resettle the Protestant interest there'. That was why Derry was besieged, and defended.
At the beginning, the pace of operations in a country of tracks rather than roads and at a time when all armies were ponderous and the Irish ones were raw was slow and deliberate. There were bogs everywhere and there was 'no passing but just upon the highways'; the waterlogged country was 'full of bridges', most of which were 'broken down at the ends', so that 'before a man can come at the bridge he must wade at least up to the knee' -so ran an English report.
The English relieved Derry-as they had founded it-by sea, and the siege was raised on 1 August 1689 after the garrison and townspeople had gallantly resisted attack for fifteen weeks. On the day before that the Enniskillen men had defeated a superior Jacobite force at Newtownbutler, Co. Fermanagh. Practically the whole of Ulster was now in Williamite hands and King William's hold on that part of Ireland was strengthened on 13 August when the elderly German soldier of fortune Frederick, Duke of Schomberg-a veteran of the Thirty Years War, and, until the recent expulsion of the Huguenots, a Marshal of France -landed from England with 20,000 men at Bangor, Co. Down. Schomberg advanced to Dundalk, where he was faced, but not engaged, by King James. The armies on both sides were full of raw men, and both sides were cautious. There was some action on the south-western Ulster border. Sarsfield, of whom so much was to be heard later, surprised Sligo and secured Connacht for James. The French general, the Count de Rosen, who had come to Ireland with the king and who had at one time commanded the Jacobites at Derry, threatened Schomberg's communications by attacking Newry on the far side of the Moyry pass. But there was no action at Dundalk; Schomberg did not attempt to push on towards Dublin, James did not try to drive him back. General Keating believed that James 'had Schomberg in a cul-de-sac, his retreat cut off, his army wasting by sickness, shut up in entrenchments, and James himself with a superior army in their front'. He held that Schomberg could have been destroyed if James had had the resolution to attack. It was perhaps not as simple as that. Schomberg's force had certainly deteriorated rapidly, and he suffered from a chronic shortage of supplies; but the Jacobites were little better than amateurs. They needed more time for organisation and training before they were ready to fight, and the delay at Dundalk earned it for them.

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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